Dubai: After suffering a defeat in their opening game, South Africa made a stellar comeback as they defeated West Indies in Super 12, Group 1 game of the ICC World T20 in Dubai on Tuesday.
The proteas chase down 144 with 8 balls to spare. Aiden Markram was the star of show hammering an unbeaten 26 ball 51 while having ample support from Rassie van der Dussen(43*).
South Africa lost their skipper Temba Bavuma in the in the opening over and were finding it hard to pick the pace of their innings. Though Reeza Hendricks(39) played a handy knock to settle the nerves but, the required run was starting to climb quickly.
With his side reeling at 61/2 in 9.2 overs,the sparkling Markram joined hands with veteran Van der Dussen to rebuild the innings and also picking up tempo.
While the later had a cautious approach, Markram went after the bowlers clearing the boundaries whenever they got the chance.The calculative approach meant South Africa got things over the line with Markram bringing up his fifty as well as hitting the winning runs in the 19th over.
Earlier, South Africa’s bowlers gave West Indies a tough time to deal with at the middle restricting them to 143/8 in 20 overs. The Caribbean though started off well stitching 73 run stand for the opening wicket before Evin Lewis(56), the eventual top scorer of the side with a steady half-century fell to Keshav Maharaj.
Runs started to dry-up after a collapse in the middle order with some good intelligent tight bowling by the Proteas as well. Even though skipper Kieron Pollard did try with a 20 ball 26 but others in line up failed to live up to the expectations. Though Dwaine Pretorius(3/17) topped the charts for South Africa, it was spell from Anrich Norje with figures of 1/14 in his quota was undoubtedly a highlight with the seamer later getting the Man of the Match award as well.
Brief Scores: South Africa 144/2 in 18.2 overs (Aiden Markram 56*, Rassie van der Dussen 43*; Akel Hosein 1/27) beat West Indies 143/8 in 20 overs(Evin Lewis 56, Kieron Pollard; Dwaine Pretorius 3/17, Keshav Maharaj 2/24) by 8 wickets.
