South African skipper Aiden Markram admitted the target of 202 was chaseable after their 106-run loss against India in the third T20I at the New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg on Thursday. The home team was skittled out for a paltry score of 95 runs (their second lowest all-out score in T20Is) as they kept losing wickets at regular intervals.
After Mohammed Siraj bowled a brilliant maiden over to Reeza Hendricks, Mukesh Kumar had Matthew Breetzke chopped on. Siraj then affected a run-out to get rid of Reeza Hendricks whereas Arshdeep Singh bamboozled Heinrich Klaasen with a slower ball to reduce the Proteas to 42-3 inside the Powerplay overs.
Ravindra Jadeja struck on the first ball he bowled to South African skipper Aiden Markram right after Powerplay while David Miller had the rub of the green on his side as he was given not out by the standing umpire despite a huge deflection but India could not avail the services of DRS.
Kuldeep Yadav then ran through the South African batting line-up as he returned with his best T20I bowling figures of 5-17 to celebrate his birthday in style.
On the other hand, Suryakumar Yadav had earlier played a majestic knock of 100 runs off just 56 balls, which was his fourth T20I century. After scoring 21 runs off the first 20 balls, Yadav changed gears like a F1 car to score the next 79 runs off just 36 balls. Jaiswal also scored 60 runs and added 112 runs off just 71 balls with his captain, SKY.
Aiden Markram said in the post-match presentation, “Wasn’t too unhappy with chasing 200. Felt we could have chased it down. Was chaseable. It was slightly on the lower side. When we were fielding, it seemed batters could hit it everywhere. Would have been nice to do better. There are some positives that we can take forward. Couple of good things and couple of things we can work on.”
After the T20I series, both of these teams will take on each other in the three-match ODI series. The first ODI will be played at the New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg on Sunday.
