It was the 39th match of the World Cup where England chose to bowl first after winning the toss against the Proteas. It was an encounter between the best of the teams to secure a position for the semis and an important fixture during the Super 12 phase of the tournament.
An inferior run-rate restricted the Proteas to qualify even after winning four of their five matches while emerging as a strong contender.
In an interesting encounter yesterday, the Proteas beat England by eight runs in a close game but the victory went in vain as they were supposed to restrict England to under 131, then South Africa and England would have been the semifinalists from Group 1.
Batting first they set a healthy target of 190 by scoring 189 by losing just two wickets at the end of 20 overs.
The super batting performance by the Proteas
Reeza Hendricks and Quinton de Kock opened the innings for South Africa but the initial partnership of just 15 runs came to an end during the third over. Hendricks was bowled by Moeen Ali with a stunner of a delivery.
Post that Rassie van der Dussen – the star player with the bat for yesterday, took the guards and took responsibility with the bat after the initial failure.
Moeen Ali was seen displaying some tight bowling skills during the powerplay through his consistent bowling and maintaining a good length especially while coming around the wicket to de Kock making him difficult to play shots.
Only Ali and Adil Rashid managed to take a wicket for their team and were pretty inexpensive when compared to other bowlers.
Dussen was batting at his peak while managing to put on two vital partnerships. One with Kock (71 runs from 52 balls) while the other with Aiden Markram (103* runs from 52 balls). It was seen how the batters from proteas were adapting to the pitch and secured some interesting and important partnerships that took them to a score of 189 runs at the end of 20 overs.
At the end of the first innings, Dussen and Markram remained unbeaten at 94 and 52 and both struck at a strike rate of 156.6 and 208.0 respectively. Dussen scored the second-highest individual score of the tournament this year.
England’s failure with the chase
The explosive openers and the batters-in-form for England – Jason Roy and Joss Buttler gave a powerful start for England with the chase. The openers were building a partnership of 38 runs when Roy had to depart due to an injury, thus retiring hurt.
Post that Buttler who was looking in a good touch also left the crease during the sixth over by Nortje. The openers were meeting the expectations laid down by their fans and teammates but unfortunately had to leave due to the loss of momentum after Roy got hurt and left.
Post that Moeen Ali (33 runs 27 balls) and Dawid Malan (33 runs from 26 balls) helped the English side to revive from the damage that they were dealing with. Ali was playing an interesting inning which included a lot of movements in the crease, both moving across and coming down the track.
The English batters were seen to be accepting all the challenges put on their way by building small but effective partnerships but failed eventually as wickets went down. The lower middle-order including Woakes and Jordan also couldn’t do much for their team.
At a stage when England need 65 runs from the final five overs, Kagiso Rabada was pretty expensive with the initial three overs that he had bowled. Liam Livingstone scored three brutal sixes to the pacer in a row at a stage. However, Rabada’s final over included a Hattrick taking three of the finest cricketers from England and winning the show by 10 runs.
Tabraiz Shamsi and Dwaine Pretorius also managed to take two wickets and it was best of the ability of the South African bowlers to pick up wickets that changed the course of the game.