T20 Series SA 1-2 IND

1st T20I

India 203/5 (20 ov)
South Africa 175/9 (20 ov)
India won by 28 runs

On a flat pitch, in the thin air of the Highveld, India's batsmen piled up 203 for 5, and that total proved more than adequate against a South African line-up missing a number of its biggest names. A 28-run win, with starring roles for Shikhar Dhawan and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, gave India a 1-0 lead in the three-match T20I series, but they may not have left the Wanderers entirely thrilled about their performance, particularly with the bat.

India's batting in T20s often seems more risk-averse than the format demands, built on a platform-setting template borrowed from ODIs. This innings was different. Short and wide bowling from Dane Paterson to Rohit Sharma allowed them to plunder 18 from the first over, but they kept going after the bowling even when it wasn't so charitable. Suresh Raina took it to an extreme, exposing all his stumps and slogging at everything to score a chancy 15 off 7 at No. 3. Dhawan also kept going hard, his top-edged hoicks over the keeper making the same impact on the scorecard as his pristinely-timed flicks over square leg and slaps either side of point.

This approach, aided by the bang-it-in tactics of South Africa's seamers, who didn't vary their pace nearly as much as they could have, brought India 78 runs in the Powerplay. By the time a Tabraiz Shamsi skidder trapped Virat Kohli in front in the 10th over, their score had already motored past 100. A pair of leg-side boundaries from Dhawan in the 14th over, off the debutant Junior Dala, moved India to 149 for 3. Getting to 200 seemed like a given now; the question was how much more they could get.

Dhawan fell in the 15th over, lap-scooping an Andile Phehlukwayo slower ball to the keeper. From that point, India simply weren't able to keep their momentum going; they only managed 46 off the last five overs, with Manish Pandey only managing one boundary in an unbeaten 27-ball innings. South Africa's bowlers, particularly Paterson who nailed his slower balls and yorkers in the 18th and 20th overs, brought the innings back under some sort of control at the death, but Pandey struggled to come up with answers to the questions he was being asked.

Still, 203 seemed like a winning total, despite the last four T20Is at this venue going to the chasing side - but how might things have panned out had South Africa fielded a full-strength batting line-up, or even if they had AB de Villiers available?

Even without de Villiers and the rest of the big names, there were moments during South Africa's innings when they seemed capable of chasing down this total. The first 15 balls of their innings, for instance, brought 28 runs, with Reeza Hendricks and JJ Smuts hitting merrily on the up. But, in Bhuvneshwar, India had a bowler who could get the ball to move sideways as well as use imperceptible changes of pace. His knuckle ball brought them the wickets of Smuts and JP Duminy, and put India firmly back on top. When Hardik Pandya followed up with a slower-ball dismissal of his own to send back David Miller, South Africa were 48 for 3 in the seventh over.

South Africa weren't done yet. Hendricks and Farhaan Behardien clattered 81 in 8.4 overs, and at one point during their fourth-wicket partnership the equation was a difficult but doable 86 off 41 balls. With all the risk-taking that task demanded, however, a wicket was always around the corner. It fell to Yuzvendra Chahal, Behardien holing out to long-on for 39. Then Hendricks and Heinrich Klaasen took 25 off the next two overs, leaving 50 to get off the last three, with six wickets in hand.

It took only six balls for India to wipe out four of those wickets and end the contest abruptly, South Africa crumbling in their desperation for boundaries; Bhuvneshwar grabbed three of them, in the process picking up his maiden five-wicket haul in T20Is, and a run-out did for the other.


2nd T20I

India 188/4 (20 ov)
South Africa 189/4 (18.4/20 ov)
South Africa won by 6 wickets (with 8 balls remaining)

While much else has gone against them through the limited-overs leg of this tussle against India, rain has been South Africa's friend, and Heinrich Klaasen a rare bright spark in a struggling batting line-up. Their only win of the ODI series featured rain and a destructive innings from Klaasen, and on Wednesday in Centurion, both ingredients were present in a series-levelling six-wicket win in the second T20I.

Klaasen smacked 69 off 30 balls to give a chase of 189 the impetus it needed, and JP Duminy batted through to the end to finish unbeaten on 64 off 40, ending the game with a pair of sixes off Jaydev Unadkat in the 19th over of the innings.

Rain wasn't necessarily a help to South Africa in the ODI win in Johannesburg - 202 in 28 overs was surely a more difficult chase than 290 in 50 - but it dulled the threat of India's wristspinners; Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav struggled to grip an often wet ball and went for a combined 119 in 11.3 overs. Now Chahal, playing as the lone specialist spinner, endured another difficult night, going for 64 - the most by an India bowler in a T20I - in his four overs.

A steady drizzle backdropped the early part of South Africa's chase of 189. It never grew heavy enough to halt play, but it was persistent, and ensured Duckworth-Lewis calculations were always at the back of both teams' minds. This was probably what prompted South Africa to promote Klaasen to No. 4, sending him in at a time when they needed 151 in 90 balls.

South Africa were also nine runs behind the Duckworth-Lewis par score at that stage, for two wickets down, and Klaasen swiftly began to rectify that situation, pulling Unadkat for two sixes in the sixth over, and launching Chahal for another over long-on in the eighth over. That took care of the par score, and staying in touch with it meant South Africa's chase was also on track.

At the end of the 10th over, South Africa's run rate was just under nine an over, and their required rate just over ten. Klaasen brought the two numbers into close proximity off the first ball of the eleventh over, lofting Chahal over extra-cover for six, and followed up three balls later with the shot of the match, a switch-hit six over point. By that stage Klaasen had hit five sixes and just one four.

Worse was to follow for Chahal; his third over went for 23, with Klaasen hitting him for 6, 6 and 4 and then turning the strike over to Duminy, who promptly slog-swept him for another six. Klaasen fell at the start of the next over, swinging too early at an Unadkat offcutter to edge behind, and David Miller followed in the next over, miscuing a short ball from Hardik Pandya, giving India the glimpse of a way back into the game. They didn't grab it, however, missing two chances in the 16th over, bowled by Chahal; MS Dhoni missed a leg-side stumping to reprieve Duminy on 40, and then Chahal himself dropped a return catch to let off Farhaan Behardien.

As they did in the first T20I, India batted with a sense of abandon not usually seen in their T20 game after being sent in to bat. They began with a maiden, but that had more to do with Chris Morris' new-ball swing than with Shikhar Dhawan's intent - he swung rustically at a couple of balls in that scoreless first over. Junior Dala took out Rohit Sharma with his first ball, an inducker, but thereafter the runs began to flow, with South Africa's quicks once again lapsing into bowling too short and Dhawan and Suresh Raina cashing in. Twenty came off the third over, Morris' second, before Dhawan picked out mid-on off a full-toss from Duminy in the fifth over. Then Dala's extra bounce sent Virat Kohli back for a rare low score, in an over that ended up as a wicket-maiden, and India were 45 for 3 after six.

Raina and Manish Pandey rebuilt slowly at first, not finding the boundary once in the first 19 balls of their partnership, before Pandey's leg-side hitting earned 19 off Tabraiz Shamsi in the 10th over. Raina's dismissal in the 11th brought Dhoni to the crease, and he showed his intentions quite early, stepping out and hitting JT Smuts for a straight six off only the seventh ball he faced. Dhoni and Pandey would go on to add an unbroken 98 off 56 balls, 55 of those runs coming off the last five overs of India's innings.

South Africa fed Pandey's naturally bottom-handed game with bowling that was often too short or too straight, and his eventual 48-ball 79 not out would contain 55 leg-side runs and only 24 through the off side. Dhoni clattered three fours and two sixes in the last two overs, the pick of them a flat, back-foot slap over the cover boundary off Dane Paterson, to finish with 52 not out off 28 balls. It was only his second T20I half-century, in his 88th match, and on another day could have ended up winning India the match.



3rd T20I

India 172/7 (20 ov)
South Africa 165/6 (20 ov)
India won by 7 runs

India sealed the T20 series against South Africa with a victory in the decider that was almost snatched away from them by a feisty South African lower-order effort.

South Africa were asked to pull off the second-highest successful chase at Newlands and then fell so far behind the required run-rate that they needed 59 runs off 21 balls. Then, debutant Christiaan Jonker and old-hand Farhaan Behardien plundered 51 runs in the last three-and-a-half overs but could not get the hosts over the line.

South Africa were 114 for 5 in the 17th when Behardien joined Jonker. If Jonker was nervous, he didn't show it. He took 18 runs off Shardul Thakur's final over to reconstruct his figures of 3-0-17-1 into 4-0-35-1 and leave South Africa with 35 to win off the final two overs.

Together, Behardien and Jonker scored 16 runs off Jasprit Bumrah and needed 19 off the last over and 12 off the last three balls but the mistakes their team-mates had made earlier were too big to rectify.

A slow start - South Africa were 25 for 1 after the Powerplay and 52 for 2 after 10 overs - on top of a clumsy fielding effort left South Africa so close, yet so far from the win that would answered some of the questions about their depth and their ability to handle pressure.

Shikhar Dhawan was India's top scorer but only fortuitously so because South Africa, in the form of Tabraiz Shamsi, let him off twice. Dhawan was on 9, and India 54 for 1 in the sixth over, when he cut a Chris Morris ball to short third man, where all Shamsi had to do was accept, but he was unstable as the ball popped out of his hands.

Seven overs and 49 runs later, Dhawan, who was on 34, top-edged Aaron Phangiso to Shami at short fine leg. Shamsi ran back but reprieved Dhawan again. Between the two chances, Dhawan found the boundary for the first time, off the 29th ball he faced, delivered by none other than Shamsi.

But, Shamsi also saw some success in that period. Suresh Raina, who had announced himself with a six off Junior Dala, tucked into Andile Phehlukwayo's first two balls and taken boundaries off short balls from Morris and JP Duminy, eventually holed out off Shamsi for a feisty 43. It was not Raina's dismissal, but Manish Pandey's that allowed South Africa to pull India back.

Pandey hit his one meaty six off Shamsi and then tried to do the same off Dala, who returned in the 14th over and immediately banged in a short ball. Pandey could not control the pull and was caught at long-on. In addition to the wicket, Dala only conceded six runs in that over, none in boundaries, and Phehlukwayo followed up with an eight-run boundary-less over of his own. That was enough to create some pressure and Dhawan was run-out off the first ball of the over that followed.

He hoicked a Shamsi delivery to deep midwicket, where Dala was stationed. A single was on, but Dhawan wanted a double and Dala effected a direct hit before Dhawan could complete his return to the striker's end.

At the end of 17 overs, India were 136 for 4, and had only scored 25 runs in the previous four overs. Instead of turning to Phangiso, who had kept things tight, Duminy opted for Morris, who conceded 21 runs in his last two overs, though he did also take two wickets. Still, India would have been satisfied especially with the way their attack started.

South Africa were kept quiet early on and in-form Reeza Hendricks was dismissed by a Bhuvneshwar Kumar knuckle ball, a variation India's seamers sprinkled liberally in their spells. David Miller started to find his touch with Duminy at the other end but before he could hit full flow, gifted a catch to Axar Patel at deep midwicket.

The asking rate when Miller was dismissed was almost 12 runs an over, and Duminy had to accelerate. He found his first boundary off the 20th ball he faced, the delivery after Miller had fallen, and hit back-to-back sixes off Axar. He reached his fifty off 38 balls with a gorgeous cover drive but three balls later top-edged a Thakur slower ball to mid-off and South Africa's hopes all but went with him. However, Jonker and Behardien mounted some fight but India had that little bit more.