Gkebarha,After a poor performance by the batsmen in the second T20 match against South Africa at St. George's Park on Sunday, the Indian bowlers made a strong comeback and made the match exciting. However, Tristan Stubbs' unbeaten inning of 47 runs against Varun Chakraborty's five wickets proved to be heavy and the visiting team won the match by three wickets with one over to spare.
After India posted a modest looking score of 1246, Chakraborty took five wickets for 17 runs in four overs. This is the best performance of his career in T20. But Stubbs, who came to bat at number four, had other intentions. By hitting seven fours in his innings, he gave South Africa a thrilling win with one over to spare, due to which the host team has leveled the fourmatch series 11.
South Africa lost its seventh wicket in the 16th over. At that time the team's score was 86 runs and it needed 39 more runs in 26 balls to win. Tailender Gerald Coetzee (19 not out) provided full support to Stubbs and took the team to 1287. In his nineball innings, he hit one six and two fours.
The Indian fast bowlers did not perform well especially in the last three overs while captain Suryakumar Yadav allowed Axar Patel to bowl only one over.
While chasing the target, Ryan Rickelton and Reeza Hendricks hit two fours each, but Ryan Rickelton was out on 13 runs at deep backward square leg on a slow short ball from Arshdeep Singh. Chakraborty dismissed Aiden Markram with a googly in his first over. After this he dodged Hendricks on another googly in the same over.
Chakraborty again achieved success with a googly in the 11th over by dodging Marco Jensen. The big contest between Heinrich Klaasen and Chakraborty was in favor of the leg spinner. Klaasen was caught at longoff.
After this, Chakraborty bowled David Miller and took his fifth wicket.
Ravi Bishnoi dismissed Andile Simelane with a googly.
Stubbs stood firm at the other end. Eventually he found a matchwinning partner in Coetzee.
Earlier, when the Indian team came to bat after losing the toss, it had a very bad start. Sanju Samson, who scored a brilliant century in the first match, was out on the third ball of the match without scoring any runs. Good length ball from Marco Jensen hit his leg stump.
Abhishek Sharma (4) became the victim of Gerald Coetzee on the fifth ball of the very next over. Jensen caught him. On the last ball of the fourth over, Andile Simlane sent captain Suryakumar Yadav (4) LBW back to the pavilion. At that time the team's score was only 15 runs.
After the failure of the top order, India's score could cross 100 runs due to some runs scored by Hardik Pandya (39 not out), Akshar Patel (27) and Tilak Verma (20) in the middle order. Apart from these, no other batsman could even reach double digits. The South African bowlers gave away 14 extra runs, of which eight were wides.
Tilak Verma led the innings with Akshar Patel, but on the last ball of the eighth over, he was caught by David Miller off the ball of captain Aiden Markram, when the team's score was 45 runs.
Axar Patel was leading the innings along with Hardik Pandya, but he was run out in a very unfortunate manner. In the 12th over, Hardik Pandya played Nakabayomji Peter's Ganj straight to the front with the bat. His fast shot touched the bowler's hand and went straight to the stumps at the nonstriker's end. Akshar was out of the crease.
Hardik Pandya held one end, but did not get much support from the other end. Rinku Singh scored nine runs on 11 balls and Arshdeep Singh scored seven unbeaten runs on six balls.
At the end of 20 overs, India's score was 124 runs for six wickets.
South Africa fielded six bowlers, in which everyone except Keshav Maharaj took one wicket each.
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Image Credit: KhasKhabar.