Miller and Markram powered South Africa to a 5-wicket victory in the 30th match of the ICC T20 World Cup, 2022.
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ndia won the toss and opt to bat first. The Men in Blue lost five wickets before even reaching the fifty-run mark. While Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Hardik Pandya were out on the bouncers, playing the pull, KL Rahul and Deepak Hooda found edges carried to the slip and wicketkeeper, respectively.
On the other end, Suryakumar Yadav was batting on a different planet. Though Dinesh Karthik struggled to score runs, he stayed with Suryakumar to rebuild the innings with a 52-run partnership for the 6th wicket.
The partnership was looking dangerous for South Africa, Parnell got rid of the crawling DK in the 16th over. SKY (68 off 40) continued his dream run as he reached to his 8th T20I fifty in 2022 before getting out in the 19th over. A few runs from the Indian tail in the final over helped the team to crawl past the 130-run mark.
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For South Africa, it was Lungi Ngidi who demolished the Indian top-order with the figures of 4-0-29-4. While Wayne Parnell struck late with the ball, he finished with the figures of 4-1-15-3.Â
The duo of Arshdeep Singh and Bhuvneshwar Kumar produced a fantastic start to the defense. The pair swung the ball around corners with Arshdeep accounting for Quinton de Kock and Rilee Rossouw while Bhuvneshwar sent back Temba Bavuma. The Proteas were reeling at 24-3 but the pair of Aiden Markram and David Miller batted maturely to ensure no further dismissals.
South Africa reached 40-3 at the half-way mark after which Markram stepped up the ante by targeting Hardik Pandya and Ravichandran Ashwin. The right-hander also had some fortune coming his way Virat Kohli dropped a dolly off Ashwin’s bowling.
The Indian team missed some more chances including a simple run-out chance for Rohit Sharma with Markram way out of the crease. These missed chances came back to haunt India as Miller also joined the party and took South Africa over the line.
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India v South Africa: Post Match Comments
Temba Bavuma (South Africa captain): (At the 10-over mark) The discussion was to try and up the intent. When you do that, that’s when opportunities come your way. Fortunately things did go our way and we were able to get that momentum. Our batting line-up is in good form barring myself. It’s a batting unit that’s been together for a while. To come through in pressure moments will boost the guys’ confidence. We watched the games that were being played here and decided on the lengths. The variable bounce assisted us. We backed our execution, fortunately it came off for us. We don’t like that tag (favourites), we’ve come into the tournament as not the favourites. We’ll keep flying under the radar. It’s important we keep improving and that’s exactly what we are doing.
Rohit Sharma (India captain): We expected that the pitch will have something in it. We knew that there’ll be a lot of help for the seamers, that’s why it wasn’t an easy target to chase. We fell a little short with the bat. We fought well, but South Africa were better today. When you see that score (40/3 in 10), you’ll always think you’re in the game. That was a match-winning partnership from Markram and Miller. We were a little poor in the field, we gave so many chances and we weren’t clinical. We were just not good enough. The last two games, we were pretty good in the field. We couldn’t hold our chances, we missed a few run-outs. We need to keep our heads high and take a learning from this game. I’ve seen what happens with the spinners in the last over, so I wanted to go the other way. If I can finish Ash, I just wanted to make sure that the seamers are bowling the right overs. You have to use it at some point. With the new batter, it was the perfect time for him to bowl. Miller played some good shots as well.
Lungi Ngidi (Player of the Match): It was pretty nerve-wracking when games get down that close, as a bowler you can’t do much and just have to believe in the boys. This is one of my biggest dreams, to get something like this (award) at the World Cup and help the country win a game, will cherish it for a long time. It comes with watching a lot of games being played here, fortunately I have played here as well and had that information (on how to bowl). We saw Pakistan bowl earlier and pretty much had to do the same thing. After the 10-over break, Markram moved the game forward and David followed him. That partnership brought us close and then David finished it off.
