India vs South Africa — 1st T20I
On 9th June, after a wonderful season of IPL India(IND) faced South Africa(SA) at Arun Jaitley Stadium,Delhi to maintain their streak of T20I’s win and make a world record of 13 straight wins.
The toss was won by SA and they chose to bowl first. So in the first innings, Ishan Kishan and Ruturaj Gaikwad opened for IND with a good start of 13 runs in the first over. In the second over, Kagiso Rabada conceded 2 runs from that over, but from the very next over the opening partnership started making an average of around 9 runs in every over in powerplay. With a good 57 runs made in powerplay, the match headed towards the middle overs where after a six Gaikwad was dismissed by Parnell breaking this partnership. Then, Shreyas Iyer came on crease and rotated the strike with Kishan with a few boundaries to keep the scoreboard running, but another opener Ishan Kishan was also dismissed by the end of the middle overs by Keshav Maharaj. In the death overs, IND skipper Rishabh Pant came on crease and partnered with Iyer but in the very next over Shreyas Iyer was dismissed by Dwaine Pretorius. After Iyer’s dismissal Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant’s massive boundaries helped the team to improve their team total. At the end after the last dismissal of Pant, Dinesh Karthik and Hardik Pandya ended the innings with 211 runs.
In the second innings, Quinton de Kock and Temba Bavuma opened for SA where they opened with a decent 7 runs and a good 14 runs in the next over. In the 3rd over, the new ball specialist Bhuvneshwar Kumar took the wicket of SA skipper Bavuma and dismissed him early. After a six or nothing over Dwaine Pretorius was also dismissed in the final powerplay over by Harshal Patel. Towards the end of the powerplay Rassie vd Dussen came on strike and had a slow start with Quinton de Kock, but after de Kock’s dismissal in the 9th over by Axar Patel he picked up the pace of making runs in every ball with David Miller. David Miller and Rassie vd Dussen partnership was the much needed partnership for SA to chase this huge score of 212 runs where they made 131 runs in partnership. With 5 balls still left in the innings, SA won the match by 7 wickets in turn breaking the straight win streak of IND since 2021.
In the above runs progression chart we can notice that SA was at par with IND in almost every phase which was needed for their win. Though in the powerplay, SA bowlers like Keshav Maharaj and Anrich Nortje were not able to take any wicket but they compensated that in the coming phases. On the other hand, IND bowlers took the wickets in the powerplay and mid-middle overs, but from the end of middle overs they were quite expensive and couldn’t break the Miller-Dussen partnership.
Note: The analysis is solely number based. Climatic and pitch conditions are not taken into consideration.