With a 5-1 lead and one eye on the plane home, South Africa's cricketers could be excused for taking preparations for the seventh and final one-day international against the West Indies a little easy. In fact, they have the perfect excuse - none of their training kit had arrived on the island by Monday night and practice was set to be little more than a chance for the players to familiarise themselves with the Arnos Vale ground and have perhaps the final touch rugby game of the tour.

No matter how low key the preparations, the game will have particular significance for one member of the squad. On Wednesday, Jonty Rhodes will become the first South African to play in 200 One-Day Internationals.

"I haven't been big into milestones and statistics in my career and may be that's a fault of mine," Rhodes said as he relaxed on the beach outside the team hotel. "Maybe I wouldn't have been left out of the Test side for a season and a half if I had a higher average.

"Especially with a guy like Hansie around who was always going to play every game, it wasn't as if I was ever going to be the most capped player. 200 was never really a milestone, the next World Cup is my goal. But there are 25 year-olds in the team who have already played 120 or 140 games - they'll be playing 250 or 300, so it's not that big a deal. I'm just grateful to have played 2, let alone 200.

"I always thought through the years of sports isolation that I would end up like a Clive Rice or a Jimmy Cook or a Peter Kirsten, just playing county cricket and that was the extent of your international exposure," Rhodes said.

Rhodes admits his decision to retire from Test cricket has added an extra burden of pressure to perform when he pulls on his international colours these days. But if there were any doubts at all of the extra dimension he adds to the South Africa team, he has emphatically erased them since joining the tour in Jamaica a month ago.

He is averaging comfortably over 50 with the bat and his standards in the field remain the highest in the world. A blinding catch to dismiss Chris Gayle in Jamaica and the match-winning run out of Brian Lara in Trinidad are only two of the highlights of a display which has had local fans and journalists alike slapping their thighs and exclaiming to the heavens in astonishment.

Nothing short of the Arnos Vale ground slipping into the sea (which is not entirely impossible - it is perched between the airport runway and a palm-fringed beach!) would seem to be able to prevent Rhodes winning his 200th cap on Wednesday. Andre Nel is less likely to earn his second after pulling up lame during his impressive debut in Trinidad, but Boeta Dippenaar has made a full recovery from the twinge which forced him off the field in the same game.

The desire to rotate roles within the side could also present Justin Ontong with an opportunity to bat higher up the order - a chance snapped up by Justin Kemp in Trinidad whose 46 in a partnership of 92 with man of the match Neil McKenzie was the backbone of the South African effort.

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