Twenty20 Preview: South Africa vs. Zimbabwe

South Africa kick off their cricket season against regional neighbours Zimbabwe today, in what promises to be an entertaining affair.

Easing people into the one day series, this Twenty 20 clash is being hailed as the benchmark on which to measure Zimbabwe's progress over the past year.

Where this series importance lies, is in that the cricketing fraternity will be watching with great interest as to assess exactly how far Zimbabwe have progressed, and how far off they might be with regards to once again contesting in the international test match arena.

On paper, this series would appear to be just another unequal struggle, especially given that Zimbabwe have only ever won two encounters against the regional heavyweights- none occurring in the past decade

South Africa are massive favourites leading into today's clash, with bookies putting them at 1.1, compared to Zimbabwe at 10.0

South Africa head into this match with a very 'new look' squad, which is supposed to signify the future direction in which South Africa is attempting to move.

South Africa: 1 Graeme Smith, 2 Loots Bosman, 3 Colin Ingram, 4 JP Duminy, 5 Heino Kuhn (wk), 6 David Miller, 7 Johan Botha (capt), 8 Ryan McLaren, 9 Morne Morkel, 10 Wayne Parnell, 11 Lonwabo Tsotsobe.

Zimbabwe: 1 Brendan Taylor, 2 Hamilton Masakadza, 3 Grant Flower, 4 Tatenda Taibu (wk), 5 Charles Coventry, 6 Chamu Chibhabha, 7 Elton Chigumbura (wk), 8 Prosper Utseya, 9 Shingirai Masakadza, 10 Ed Rainsford, 11 Chris Mpofu.

Perhaps the story of the week has been the imminent return of Grant Flower to the Zimbabwe squad. Flower last played for Zimbabwe over 6 years ago, however comes off an astonishingly successful season for Essex.

South Africa will consider this a nice warm up leading into their international calendar.

Playing at home against a side very much in the rebuilding phases will see them attempting things that they would never consider against more 'formidable' opponents

South Africa will win this easily