T20 World Cup | SA vs WI: Markram, Pretorious lead Proteas to comfortable win against defending champions

The South Africans hardly broke a sweat as they demolished defending champions West Indies by eight wickets to pocket two easy points. They got back to winning ways after a close loss to Australia in the opening game of Super 12. Aiden Markram and Rassie van der Dussen made the target of 144 runs look seemingly easy as the former batted with a strike rate of 196 on a wicket where most of the batters struggled. 

Along with the two batters, the bowling department of South Africa did extremely well to restrict a batting line-up comprising of the likes of Kieron Pollard, Chris Gayle, Andre Russell and Nicholas Pooran to only 143. Dwaine Pretorius was the pick among the bowlers as he picked three wickets and gave away only 17 runs bowling at the death. 

The Proteas chase didn’t really begin well as their skipper and opener Temba Bavima was removed in the very first over courtesy of a runout. Reeza Hendricks, who was drafted in the playing XI after Quinton de Kock refused to take the knee as per guidelines of Cricket South Africa, made use of the opportunity and scored a 39 off 30 balls. Most importantly, he built a 57-run stand for the second wicket to avoid early damage and hence pace the chase better. 

After Hendrick’s dismissal, Markram joined van der Dussen, who kept playing cautiously. But Markram chose a completely different path and went berserk right from the ball go. Courtesy of his 51 off 26 balls, the men in green chased down 143 with 10 balls remaining. They didn’t even give any chance as no Windies bowler looked like playing a wicket. 

Earlier in the day, Bavuma won the toss and chose to bowl first. Markram bowled brilliantly as he was given the ball in the powerplay and gave only four runs in his first two overs, before finally being punished for 18 runs in his third over by Evin Lewis. While Lewis started teeing off and scored 56 off 35 balls, the other opener Lendl Simmons’ boring and hopelessly slow innings of 16 runs coming off 35 balls put a lot of pressure on the batters that came later on. 

With some tight line bowling by Keshav Maharaj and Anrich Nortje, the pressure increased and as a result, all the big names in Russell, Gayle, Bravo and Pollard alongside young guns Pooran and Shimron Hetmyer failed big time and the Caribbean team could reach only 143 for loss of eight wickets in their 20 overs. Nortje was given Man of the Match for his bowling. 

The Windies will now have to win all their remaining games against Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Australia to even try and make a case for the Semi-Finals. The Proteas though would be looking to take this momentum in their remaining three games as well which are against England, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.