Tabraiz Shamsi is one wicket away from 50 in T20Is

Sri Lanka's batting order has one more chance this series. In both matches so far, they appeared barely competent - they were unable to hit enough boundaries, frequently struggled to rotate the strike, and often found the opposition's spinners difficult to negotiate. On tracks they are supposed to be familiar with, Sri Lanka have batted as if they are the visiting team. Across the two matches, they have not managed a single top-flight T20 innings between the lot of them. Dinesh Chandimal's 66 off 54 was a substantial knock, sure, but it required a host of batters playing more aggressively around him for it to have contributed to a team victory; it wasn't a fantastic innings in isolation.

For South Africa, this is essentially a pre-World-Cup training run. The series now won, they may be tempted to give their wider squad a run in this match. They will perhaps be pleased, too, if the pitch is another big turner, because it is possible that towards the end of the World Cup, the UAE will throw up such surfaces.

South Africa's batters have proved through the course of this tour that they can not only play the turning ball, but that they are adept at finding boundaries against the spinners, and are not daunted by mystery spin. Their quicks have developed excellent strategies on slow pitches too.