South Africa won the toss and decided to bat against New Zealand
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Jeetan Patel was selected ahead of Ish Sodhi’s as New Zealand’s second spinner © AFP
New Zealand have made three changes in their bid to level the one-day series in Hamilton and keep alive their hopes of a ninth consecutive home series win, but they will have to chase on a surface expected to get slower and take some turn during the evening.
Martin Guptill, Luke Ronchi and Jeetan Patel are back in place of Neil Broom, Tom Latham and Lockie Ferguson. Patel, who played his first ODI in seven years against Bangladesh in Nelson earlier this season, was preferred to legspinner Ish Sodhi who can consider himself unlucky after promising displays in the opening two matches of the series.
However, New Zealand want a specialist spinner to take the ball away from South Africa’s left-handers. Ronchi, who has not scored an ODI fifty since his unbeaten 170 in January 2015, was slated to bat at No. 5.
South Africa have made one change, bringing in Chris Morris for Andile Phehlukwayo who has a tight groin meaning they have just the one frontline spinner in Imran Tahir although also have JP Duminy available. They need to win both remaining ODIs to retain their No. 1 ranking.
New Zealand 1 Martin Guptill, Dean Brownlie, 3 Kane Williamson, 4 Ross Taylor, 5 Luke Ronchi (wk), 6 Jimmy Neesham, 7 Colin de Grandhomme, 8 Mitchell Santner, 9 Tim Southee, 10 Ish Jeetan Patel, 11 Trent Boult
South Africa 1 Hashim Amla, 2 Quinton de Kock (wk), 3 Faf du Plessis, 4 AB de Villiers (capt), 5 JP Duminy, 6 David Miller, 7 Dwaine Pretorius, 8 Wayne Parnell, 9 Chris Morris, 10 Kagiso Rabada, 11 Imran Tahir
Andrew McGlashan is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo