Courtesy of the brilliant bowling spells of Arshdeep Singh and Deepak Chahar, team India continued its good form and defeated the South African team by 8 wickets.
Arshdeep was the stand-out bowler who took 3 wickets followed by Deepak Chahar taking 2.
The chase became a little dicey when India lost both Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli early. However, experienced Rahul and Suryakumar saved the team and took the team to the winning end.
Team India was coming after the series win against Australia last week while the South African team was on a winning 4 out of 5 matches recently.
South Africa Inning
The conditions were a bit bowling friendly and as expected Indian skipper Rohit Sharma decided to bowl first after winning the toss.
The start wasn’t what South Africa was expecting and it lost the skipper Bavuma in the very first over. After bowling a few outswingers, Chahar bowled a sharp inswinger to pass through the South African skipper’s gate.
In the very next over Arshdeep dented the Proteas innings further by claiming the wickets of De Kock, Rilee Rossouw, and David Miller. Miller and Rossouw couldn’t even open the account.
This was David Miller’s first duck in t20 internationals. The Proteas were soon 9 for 5 wickets as they lost the youngster Stubbs for a duck as well.
The match seemed pretty much all but over for the visitors. Although allrounder Parnell(24) and Keshav Maharaj did try to save the team from some humility it wasn’t enough.
Keshav Maharaj ended up as the highest scorer with scores of 41 off 36. South Africa could only score 106 in 20 overs losing eight wickets.
Arshdeep was the stand-out bowler with 3 wickets for 32. Chahar and Harshal Patel took 2 wickets each. Ashwin was the most economical bowler giving just 8 runs in four overs.
Indian Innings
The target seemed very easy for the Indian batters. The openers took a slow start scoring 9 runs in 2 overs.
The sharp seam-up delivery of Rabada took Rohit Sharma’s edge to the keeper. Kohli too departed soon scoring just 3 runs.
Now the responsibility was on the vice-captain KL Rahul and the man in form Suryakumar. Thankfully both didn’t disappoint their fans.
Rahul took all his time to consume the pressure and SKY took the charge of putting the South African bowling attack on the backfoot.
Rahul scored 51* off 56 and SKY remained unbeaten with 50 in 33 balls. Rabada was the only standout bowler giving just 16 in 4 overs with 1 wicket.
The unbeaten partnership of 93 runs was enough to chase the target comfortably in 17 over.
Player of the Match
Arshdeep was given the player of the match for his brilliant spell. He said that he was always wondering what he would say when he would get the POM someday; that day had come and he was excited.
He praised Chahar for setting up the tone by taking Bavuma’s wicket in the first over.
He then Miller was waiting for an outswinger and bowled an inswinger to surprise. He planned to keep it simple. He also said that he had a good training session at NCA and was feeling good.
Some records
Though the match turned out to be the low scoring one, it did end up making some interesting records
- KL Rahul scored 51* off 56 balls. This was the slowest 50 made by an Indian player in t20is. Earlier it was held by Gautam Gambhir.
- India has now played the most t20 in a year with 30 matches till now.
- Rohit has won 16 t20i matches this year now. This is the most by an Indian captain in a year. Dhoni had won 15 in 2016.
- SKY surpassed Shikhar Dhawan’s tally of 689 runs (2018) to score the most t20i runs in a year for team India.
- SKY has the most sixes in a calendar year in T20i ie 44* surpassing Mohammed Rizwan of Pakistan(41).
- The score of 17-1 was the lowest powerplay score by team India. (Stats Source: @Kaustats on Twitter)
