It was a consolation for South Africa as the visitors won the final match. Although a dead rubber, it was an important match practice for both teams. While batting first, South Africa put on a total of 227 losing just 3 wickets in the process. Indian bowlers continued to disappoint.
Indian batting never looked settled and kept on losing wickets at regular intervals. India could only make 178 runs and lost all their wickets.
South African batting
The bad form of the skipper continued and Bavuma departed soon at 3. Came Rossouw, who hadn’t scored a single run in his first two matches. He started slow with 3 dots but he soon changed his gear.
Taking on Umesh Yadav, Suraj and Ashwin, he was soon at 30 on 15 balls. There wasn’t any shot that he didn’t play, be it pull, hook, or flick. Bowlers weren’t effective enough. Once again bowling concerns have caused a problem.
Ri
De Kock gave him able support and both added 90 runs for the second wicket. De Kock departed at the individual score of 68 off 43 balls. Rossouw was dropped at 24 by Siraj on Ashwin’s ball.
Tristan Stubbs was looking good too and both added 87 runs for the third wicket. Stubbed got out on 23 from 18 balls including two boundaries and one six.
Then the last match hero, Miller was on the crease and carried the form by hitting three sixes off Chahar’s last over. Team India needed 228 runs in the given overs.
India innings
In reply, India never looked good as they lost the skipper Rohit Sharma early on duck. Shreyas Iyer, who was playing in the team for a long time, came one down but he never looked comfortable on the pitch and always stayed on the back foot.
Pant and Karthik short-stayed blitz
The Indian wicketkeeper duo of Karthik and Pant tried to build a partnership. Both took on Parnell and Lungi Ngidi. Pant scored 20 runs in the fifth over bowled by Ngidi before giving his wicket trying to place the ball into the covers.
Dinesh Karthik charged on Parnell and then hit two sixes off Keshav Maharaj. Even though he had hit two sixes, Karthik tried to maximize the over and got bowled while doing the fancy reverse sweep. He scored 46 off 21 balls and was the highest scorer.
Man in form Surya couldn’t do much either and the rest kept on losing wickets one by one. Deepak Chahar did some fight for his 31 runs but got out while trying to hit slower delivery of Dwayne Pretorius. Team India lost all its wickets at 178.
Rilee Rossouw was adjudged Player of the Match and Surya Kumar Yadav was given the Player of the Series
Bowling Concerns for team India
While the Indian batting approach has been positive and attacking intent, Indian bowling seems to be the concern for the last few matches especially the death bowling is under the radar. India has tried the likes of Bhuvneshwar, Bumrah, Siraj, Chahar, Arshdeep and Harshal Patel in the death over and none of them has been able to deliver.
While Bhuvi went over 15 runs in the 18th or 19th over in his last three matches, others have leaked a lot of runs too. Yesterday Chahar conceded three sixes in the last over.
As World Cup is nearing, the woes have begun to trouble the team even more. Bumrah being injured and out of the Wt20 has weakened the bowling lineup further.
Rohit Sharma in his post-match interview said that he would like to see someone who has experience bowling in Australia before. Only Siraj and Shami seem to be the likely replacement.
Interestingly, Shami hasn’t played a t20i match since the last World Cup match against Namibia in 2021. It’s also important to notice that Shami has an economy over 9 and he wasn’t effective in the last t20 world cup.
Well, the fans would be hoping that team finds the answer sooner and would do better than what happened in the last world cup.
