T20IWC : South Africa limp to a tense 3 wkt win over Windies to reach semis

 

South Africa became the second team to reach the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup after defeating the West Indies.  Aiden Markram's team beat Rovman Powell's team by 3 wickets in a rain interrupted match.  Batting first, the hosts of the World Cup made 135 runs for 8 wickets.  South Africa's target was revised at 123 in 17 overs due to rain.  Markram & Co won the match with five balls to spare.  South Africa scored 124 runs for 7 wickets in 16.1 overs.

 One of the heroes of South Africa's victory is Tabrez Samsi.  West Indies could not take advantage of  batting first in front of the spin bowling.  The left-arm spinner hit the West Indies innings with 3 wickets alone.  Other South African bowlers also kept the opposition batsmen under pressure.  Apart from two, none of the West Indies batsmen scored in the important match.  Opener Kyle Meyers made 35 off 34 balls.  Hit 3 fours and 2 sixes.  Dropping to number four, Roston Chase played an innings of 52 runs off 42 balls after being dropped at 11.  His innings also had 3 fours and 2 sixes.  Among the rest, Andre Russell (15 off 9) put in some effort.  No one else could help the team as the hosts wee hit hard with the loss of 2 early wickets including Pooran . 

 Samsi took 3 wickets with 27 runs.  1 wicket for 11 runs was taken by Kagiso Rabadar.  1 wicket for 17 runs was taken by  Marco Jansen.  Keshav Maharaj took 1 wicket costing 24 runs.  Captain Markram took 1 wicket for 28 runs. Markram read the conditions very well and bowled 12 overs of spin that restricted the West Indies.  

South Africa went into bat with a target of 136 runs to win. They lost Hendricks (0) and DeKock (12) in the same over of Russell to be 15/2 in 2 overs after which it started raining.  The game stopped for some time.  Later the over was reduced to 17.  The target for victory is 123 runs.  South Africa had to get some momentum to get that run.  No one could make a sizable score as they kept losing wickets.  South Africa did not start the innings well.   This initial pressure makes South Africa's task difficult.  Markram (18), Tristan Stubbs (29), Henrik Klassen (22) could not score big runs but kept the team in the fight consistently. Miller was out cheaply to Chase .  Jansen's six with five balls to spare finally brought victory.  He played an unbeaten innings of 21 runs off 14 balls.  Rabada (5 not out) joined him  under pressure at the end.

 West Indies' most successful bowler Chase took 3 wickets for 12 runs.  Andre Russell took 2 wickets for 19 runs.  2 wickets with 25 runs was taken by Alzari Joseph.  Both the T20 World Cup host countries were knocked out of the Super Eight phase due to West Indies' loss.

Shamsi for his 3 wickets was the player of the match .