Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer

Cape Town – South Africa’s first opponents in the ICC Champions Trophy, Sri Lanka at Centurion, will be something of a mystery factor to them and vice versa on Tuesday afternoon.

Despite the intense volume of one-day international cricket these days, meetings between these two have been surprisingly scarce recently.

It is accountable partly to the fact that the last time they were due to go to ODI battle in either country – the Proteas’ tour of Sri Lanka in 2006 – the 50-overs games following the Test series failed to take place after a bomb exploded not far from the tourists’ Colombo hotel, with seven deaths, and they returned home.

Certainly each team’s planning for the other at the latest jamboree will have been limited – several players from each side are likely to be locking horns for the first time.

The Proteas last played Sri Lanka at ODI level in the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean, when South Africa edged a Super Eight nail-biter by one wicket at Providence Stadium, Guyana.

It was the match where Graeme Smith’s side appeared to be cruising to their modest target of 210, after Charl Langeveldt’s five for 39 had reduced the Lankans to 209 all out.

Yet the Proteas nearly botched it from a massively healthy situation of 160 for two in reply, speedster Lasith Malinga’s hat-trick sowing all manner of panic before Robin Peterson edged the same bowler to third man for four to clinch the spoils.

South Africa will almost certainly field only four survivors at SuperSport Park from that meeting: Smith, AB de Villiers, Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher.

The Sri Lankan line-up will also be significantly different: the Proteas, for instance, have yet to face the devilishly versatile spin of Ajantha Mendis in an ODI and there are several other fresh faces to them.

The second last meeting between the sides came in the last Champions Trophy, when South Africa prevailed by 78 runs in Ahmedabad – a tournament Australia, nevertheless, went on to win.

And you have to go back a lot further for the last ODI encounter on South African soil, at the 2003 World Cup.

That was the fateful Kingsmead day/nighter in Pool B where the Proteas got their Duckworth-Lewis knickers in a knot as the rain arrived and the match was tied – eliminating the hosts from the next stage.

Still, some comfort for South African fans is that the home nation, among the hot tips for the Champions Trophy, boast 12 wins and only four defeats from all 17 contests against Sri Lanka in South Africa.

Proteas paceman Dale Steyn has already confidently predicted that the Lankans will not prove too taxing an obstacle first-up.

“They have not been here for a long time apart from those players who came for the Indian Premier League and that was during winter when the ball was not doing a lot and it was Twenty20 cricket,” he was quoted as saying on Monday.