Venue : St George’s Park, Port Elizabeth
Toss : South Africa won the toss and opt to bat
Squad
South Africa | Playing : Quinton de Kock(w/c), Reeza Hendricks, Faf du Plessis, Rassie van der Dussen, David Miller, Pite van Biljon, Dwaine Pretorius, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje, Lungi Ngidi, Tabraiz Shamsi
Bench : JJ Smuts, Dale Steyn, Bjorn Fortuin, Andile Phehlukwayo
Australia | Playing : David Warner, Aaron Finch(c), Steven Smith, Matthew Wade, Mitchell Marsh, Alex Carey(w), Ashton Agar, Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Kane Richardson, Adam Zampa
Bench : Sean Abbott, D Arcy Short, Jhye Richardson
De Kock’s phenomenal strike
After a terrible loss against Australia in the first T20I South Africa seeks to win this match to keep Proteas alive in the T20I series. de Kock and R Hendricks enters the crease. de Kock is on strike, Starc opens the attack. Though openers dont show any boundaries in first over, de Kock smashed couple of sixes in the second over. After the bad performance in first T20I De Kock seems shows his glorious form by striking boundaries in every possible direction. De Kock seems unstoppable, he striked aggressively that boost the South Afica’s total. After the power play South Africa scored 59 runs without any lose of wicket.
K Richardson took the Hendricks’s wicket very much needed to provide a break through. Du Plessis joins hand with South African skipper and expect to play a tremendous game but Cummins dismissed Du Plessis with a slower ball off the outside half.
Proteas dragged to 158
van der Dussen and De Kock strikes boundaries to boost their teams total. Where Zampa ends the De Kock’s aggressive game when he scored 70 runs from just 47 balls. At that time South Africa scored 121 runs, where Miller joins hand with van der Dussen and drag the team towards 158. Miller and Pite van Biljon stands unbeaten in ground.
Australia towards series win?
Australia get down to bat with a focus to win the match and take the Series win while a match left. Warner and Finch are at the crease, Warner is on strike. Rabada will open the attack for South Africa. As Warner lose his wicket in an early stage in the first T20I seeks to play a defensive game in second T20I.
Ngidi’s three wicket saved the game
Warner partnered with Finch and starts strike focusing towards a steady run growth. But Ngidi with his Spell took Finch’s wicket and there’s a huge smile of relief from de Kock as Finch departs. Warner joins hand with his all time favourite Smith, where Smith blew a six in Ngidi’s ball. After 10 over Australia scored 84 runs for a wicket loss, three runs ahead of South Africa.
The expected break through is provided by Pretorius when he dismissed Smith for 29 runs. South Africa’s greatest fear Warner stands tall and played aggressively, though Proteas didn’t able to dismiss Warner they dismissed other players to avoid from creating a partnership with him.
Warner seems helpless
After Carey’s wicket none of the Australian players scored dual digit runs, everyone returns pavilion with single digit score. When its 17 runs required from last over with Warner at the non-striker end South Africa’s winning phase seems glorious. Nortje bowled the last over and picked a wicket and allowed only four runs in that. South Africa kept the series alive by defeating Australia by 12 runs.
David Warner’s 67* is the joint second-highest score by an opening batsman remaining not out in an unsuccessful T20I chase.#SAvAUS pic.twitter.com/nVe3yKmWFf
— ICC (@ICC) February 23, 2020
Man of the Match
Quinton de Kock (South Africa)
Batting : 70 runs off 47 balls (4×5,6×4)
De Kock : I’ve realized that the new ball is key while batting. It gets difficult at the end so we capitalized on the powerplay. I know it’s difficult to chase a target like this here and we knew that and we pulled it off. In international cricket we need to understand what needs to be done and I’m really proud of the boys. I think a couple of games before this our death bowling struggled, and we had a good chat, but the boys came out here and stuck to the plans to execute brilliantly. It’ll be a good game, expecting a good wicket, so hopefully the boys come up there and perform well.
Aaron Finch | Australia captain: It’s always exciting on a surface like that. Unfortunately we were on the wrong side of it today. The way their bowlers brought it back was outstanding. Quinny played well, but we did well to stop the batsmen in the end. I think we just lacked the kick at the end of the chase. Pace off was the way to go, and we tried running hard, but Miller and co make it hard to take twos. If you don’t get the balls where you want to in the powerplay, it’s about making sure we rotate the strike, but we managed to get off to a flier. They bowled to a simple and effective plan. David didn’t get much strike, but South Africa bowled beautifully despite the larger margin for error on such a surface. I think getting the winning feeling in the middle-order is important and I think this is an important game building up to the World Cup.
