Injury-hit Tigers face resurgent Proteas

With no wins from three Super 12 games, Bangladesh have been handed another blow with ace allrounder Shakib Al Hasan ruled out of the remainder of the T20 World Cup before they face South Africa.

On the other hand, the Proteas will be riding a high of winning a dramatic match against Sri Lanka where they needed 15 runs off the final over, and getting two wins from three games. 

Interestingly, Bangladesh still have an outside chance of qualifying for the semifinals if they can win their remaining two games by a big margin and other teams - South Africa, Australia, West Indies and Sri Lanka - also stay on two wins each.

The Tigers can then still qualify if they have the best net run rate.

But a loss here will all but guarantee that Bangladesh have been knocked out of the ICC T20 World Cup.

Battle of the bowlers

Both teams will rely on their bowling attacks to do the bulk of the job in this match as that is what their strength has been. 

South African spinner Tabraiz Shamsi, the number one ranked T20I bowler in the world, will be the player to watch out for against Bangladesh. 

He not only puts a lid on the runs but also takes valuable wickets in the middle overs, where the Proteas tend to dominate with the ball. 

He was once again doing what he does against Sri Lanka in the last match, taking three wickets and being nominated as the player of the match. 

For Bangladesh, the bowling of Taskin Ahmed and Shoriful Islam was impressive in the last match against a powerful Windies batting lineup. 

They might not have taken wickets but they made sure that there were no easy runs on the offing. 

The bowling of Nasum Ahmed and Mahedi Hasan has also been impressive for the most part in the tournament, and given South Africa's traditional weakness against spin bowling, they will be looking to hurt a batting unit that has looking fragile at times. 

The batters need to be better

Both sides will be looking to improve their batting performances from the last match.

Even though Bangladesh scored over 170 runs against Sri Lanka, power-hitting and scoring runs at the death overs have always been a problem for the side. 

Without Shakib Al Hasan, the pressure will be even more on the top-order that has been short of runs, and quick starts. 

Who bats in place of Shakib will also be a question and it could promote Afif Hossain up the order to no.3. 

The injury could make way for Shamim Hossain, who has shown signs of big-hitting against the likes of Zimbabwe, but the South African bowling unit will be a different proposition altogether.

The South African batting unit has also looked out of sorts and out of balance with five openers - Reeza Hendricks, Quinton de Kock, Temba Bavuma, Aiden Markram and Rassie van der Dussen - playing in the team.

They have to figure out what is the best position for which player in order to build the innings and accelerate at the right time with big hitters like David Miller to finish the job in the end.

Fielding could be the difference 

In a match where the batting and bowling of the two teams will not have too much of a difference between them, it will come down to fielding and how the teams field.

This has been an area of concern for Bangladesh for a while now and that could be what decides the match here. 

Bangladesh have dropped 10 catches in the tournament so far and the ones dropped against Sri Lanka by Liton Das are the ones that spring to mind the most. 

Those two catches dropped could have given Bangladesh total control of the match and they could have ended up on the winning side. 

They ended up losing that game and that came as a big blow for the side as they were morally deflated and have not recovered from that yet. 

Matches in Abu Dhabi have been games where runs have been made and the side that wins the toss would want to bowl first and restrict the opposition to a score around 150.

Given the batting of both teams, a score of 160 could easily be a winning total.