CT 2017: Match 7, Who Said What: Pakistan v South Africa

After a very disappointing outing against India in their first match of the Champions Trophy 2017, team Pakistan was up against the upbeat South African side. The Proteas camp came into the match 7 of the tournament riding on a big win over Sri Lanka in their first match. Another win against Pakistan in this game would have confirmed their position in the semi-finals of the ICC mega event.

On the other hand, a win for the Pakistani team would have kept them alive in the race to the semis. As the things transpired in the match, it was Proteas skipper AB de Villiers who won the toss and opted to bat first. They got off to a decent start with Quinton de Kock getting 33 to his name. However, a top order collapse saw the team reeling for 118/6 by the end of 29 overs. A fighting unbeaten 75 from David Miller helped South Africa post 219/8 on the board.

In the run chase, Pakistan had a brisk start with Fakhar Zaman smashing 31. Some good bowling followed before Shoaib Malik and Babar Azam led the fightback in the middle overs. They were cruising towards the total at 119/3 in 27 overs when it started to rain. The gods up over the clouds were in no mood to allow the game to resume and eventually the decision to call it off was arrived at.

Pakistan were 19 runs ahead of the par total and thus won the match by that margin as per D/L method.

Pakistan skipper Sarfraz Ahmed

“It’s a very important win for us. Credit goes to our bowlers and fielders. We were good in all departments today. Steve Rixon was very happy today, we didn’t field well the other day, today we were much better. It’s a very important game. We had a meeting and a very good meeting. We worked very hard, the one practice session we hard. It was not outdoors, but we worked really hard for the match.”

South Africa skipper AB de Villiers

“They bowled pretty well, put us under pressure. We lost some wickets, which wasn’t a great response for us, but we recovered well thanks to David and a few other guys who put up partnerships. We fought really well on the field, got into a very good position. Whether it was par score or not doesn’t matter. It’s a difficult situation, you never know what to do. If I had known it would only be 27 overs, I would have attacked a lot more on the field. We have to up our ante a bit. We started well, we know which areas to work on. The hamstring is okay, felt a little tweak, but we’ll check it out tomorrow. I don’t think it’s too serious.”

Man of the Match Hasan Ali

For his brilliant figures of 3/24 Hasan Ali was named the Man of the Match, he said: “It was a team effort,” he says. “Coach gave me a plan, and I just stuck to that. I dropped Yuvi in the previous match and he scored a lot. We all worked very hard on our fielding. It was raining, so we didn’t really do any fielding practice before the match. It’s very important for me, getting this award, because it’s my first ICC event.”