India punish wasteful Proteas
IN LAST FOUR Virat Kohli’s boys crush South Africa by eight wickets in a onesided group B match to seal semifinal berth
port to shut the door easily on South Africa.
When a team’s top four batsmen are out due to silly run outs and poor strokes, then it is bound to pinch.
South Africa hardly looked the world’s No. 1 ODI team when they blew away a good start to be all out for 191 in 44.3 overs.
South Africa lost skipper AB de Villiers and David Miller in a space of six balls as the Proteas ran into big trouble at a stage of the innings when they should have been consolidating.
De Villiers made a good start, freely scoring 16 runs off 12 balls but a poor piece of judgement and superman dive were not enough to save him from a brilliant piece of out-cricket from Hardik Pandya at point.
If that blunder with Faf du Plessis wasn’t enough, Miller was caught in a terrible mix-up that saw both batsmen stranded at the striker’s end.
South Africa made a hash of a commanding 76-run opening wicket stand after India won the toss and decided to field. It was a shame to see two set batsmen gifting away their wickets.
An adventurous Hashim Amla edged Ravichandran Ashwin to skipper MS Dhoni after a 54-ball 35 and indiscretion got the better of Quinton de Kock (53 off 72 balls), too. After surviving an LBW call, De Kock was bowled to sweep a Ravindra Jadeja delivery that was quicker off the wicket.
Jasprit Bumrah’s back-to-back wickets of Chris Morris and Andile Phehlukwayo and Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s back-to-back wickets polished off the tail as JP Duminy was left stranded on a laborious 20 (41 balls).
Kohli rotated his bowlers well and Jadeja once again stood out with his nagging line and length. So much so that not a single boundary was scored off his 10 overs that produced just 39 runs. He was the only bowler not to concede a wide as India gave away 16 extra runs, 10 of them being wides.