Where this fixture is played changes it more than anything either side does at the toss. Ground records from both countries below, plus live AI win probability updated after every ball once a match starts.
A first innings averages 156.6 at the 8 England grounds we hold ball-by-ball data for, across 79 matches, against 154.6 in South Africa over 103 matches. Scoring rates run 7.39 an over against 7.32. Of the countries we track, Pakistan is the highest at 172.4 and West Indies the lowest at 149.3.
Chasing costs 17.8 runs on average in England and 16.4 in South Africa — but the country average hides the spread that matters. It is 23.8 at Old Trafford, Manchester and 2.0 at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff. A total that defends comfortably at one ground is chased down at another.
| Ground | Matches | 1st inns | Chasing | Gap | RPO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old Trafford, Manchester | 11 | 151.0 | 127.2 | +23.8 | 6.98 |
| Lord's, London | 10 | 157.6 | 135.7 | +21.9 | 7.36 |
| County Ground, Bristol | 6 | 187.7 | 167.2 | +20.5 | 8.87 |
| Trent Bridge, Nottingham | 12 | 153.6 | 134.0 | +19.6 | 7.19 |
| The Rose Bowl, Southampton | 10 | 160.1 | 143.1 | +17.0 | 7.58 |
| Edgbaston, Birmingham | 6 | 162.3 | 145.5 | +16.8 | 7.7 |
| The Oval, London | 17 | 151.6 | 135.2 | +16.4 | 7.18 |
| Sophia Gardens, Cardiff | 7 | 144.3 | 142.3 | +2.0 | 7.16 |
| Ground | Matches | 1st inns | Chasing | Gap | RPO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Wanderers, Johannesburg | 5 | 183.6 | 143.2 | +40.4 | 8.17 |
| St George's Park, Gqeberha | 10 | 150.8 | 127.2 | +23.6 | 6.95 |
| SuperSport Park, Centurion | 24 | 163.8 | 148.5 | +15.3 | 7.82 |
| Kingsmead, Durban | 33 | 149.2 | 134.6 | +14.6 | 7.09 |
| Newlands, Cape Town | 31 | 149.9 | 136.9 | +13.0 | 7.17 |
These cover all T20 cricket at those grounds rather than internationals alone, so treat them as ground character. Sample sizes are per ground in the tables and vary widely — a venue with five matches behind it deserves far less weight than one with a hundred. The live model does not use these averages: once a ball is bowled it reads the actual over-by-over run and wicket pattern instead.
It starts when the match does. There is no pre-match tip here. Win probability is recalculated after every ball from the score, wickets in hand, balls and runs remaining, and how the pitch is behaving in this innings rather than on average.
Measured, not claimed. 81.5% win-probability accuracy on a true holdout: trained on 2017-2024 matches only, then scored on 2,546 matches from 2025-26 the model had never seen, rising from 79.2% at over 6 to 82.2% by over 15.