'Ready for any challenge'

South Africa leg-spinner Imran Tahir wants his batsmen to post a total above 200 in the third and final ODI in Chittagong today. He believes that a score around that range can put either side under pressure in the final ODI, if the wicket at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium behaves similarly to the ones in Mirpur.

After the defeat in the second ODI, the leg-spinner thinks that it will be a challenge to beat the hosts in the final ODI.

"They played well in the last game. And we are looking forward to a challenge tomorrow. They played better than us in the last game and they deserved to win. I think if we had put up a better score on the board, it would have been different," said Tahir at the pre-match press conference yesterday.

"I think anything over 200 is going to be a good score. If you look at the way the pitch behaved in the last game, you could have looked for 300 as well. But it depends on how you play in the middle overs. I think 250 is going to be a good score," he added.

Despite the one-sided affair in the second match, Tahir insisted that the South Africa camp wasn't short of confidence.

"We are not worried about it at all. If they play well then they are going to win it, but we are a team that never back down from any challenge. So we are really looking forward to this.

"Everything is going well in our camp. We are very happy people. When we find ourselves in such positions, then we like to fight. We never look back. We are not worried about what happened in the last game or the game before that. We are just looking forward to tomorrow's game," said Tahir.

The leg-spinner can draw inspiration from his memories in Chittagong. South Africa played their group stage matches of the World T20 in the port city and Tahir, with 12 wickets, was the leading wicket-taker of the tournament.

While he believes that that experience will work well for him, he still opines that the third ODI will be different.

"I have played here. That's one thing that goes my way. But it was a good wicket the last time we played here. We don't know what the wicket looks like now. We are going to find out tomorrow. But we are up for any challenge."