South Africa vs India 3rd T20I – Who Said What

It was the decider of the series and the match fit the bill just perfectly. While India on being asked to bat first would’ve felt they were a few runs short managing 172 but the pitch was just getting slower. South Africa got in the chase a bit too late and despite a magnificent effort from Christiaan Jonker couldn’t take them home and India took the match by 7 runs and thus the series 1-0.

JP Duminy won the third straight toss and there was a surprise for the Indian fans, it was Rohit Sharma and not Virat Kohli who walked out. The regular skipper had a stiff back and thus opted out of the game, they made three changes in the XI bringing in Axar Patel, Jasprit Bumrah and Dinesh Karthik. South Africa handed Jonker his debut and added a spinner in Aaron Phangiso.

India had a bad start as Rohit once again was dismissed early in the inning but Shikhar Dhawan and Suresh Raina kept things going and going thick. Both of them scored the 40s being dismissed for 47 and 43 respectively. A few cameos in the lower order got them to 172/7 in 20 overs.

The South Africans had a slow start, the surfaces was holding the ball a tad bit and that didn’t allow the batsmen to play their shots. Indian pacers mixed the pace well and didn’t let them off the hook. Duminy once again got a half-century but it was a bit too slow in the context of the game. Jonker and Farhaan Behardien tried their best towards the end but couldn’t take the team home.

Indian skipper in the game Rohit Sharma said:

To be honest, we were 15 runs short. Because the way the first half went, I thought we lost our way in the end. These things happen and we learn from it. I thought it was a decent score and the bowlers did the job for us.

I hope games like these teach us a lot of things. We discussed certain plans and it worked today. The idea was to keep the ball on the stumps and we kept it tight in the first six overs. Credit to the new-ball bowlers. It was a complete bowling performance.

We will take these limited-overs trophies, throughout the series we played with a lot of aggression. As a group, we never back down from any situation. That is the reason we are standing here as winners.

Man of the Match Suresh Raina said:

You need to show intent in the first 6 overs. When you get the ball in your area, you hit it [on hitting the first-ball six]. The way we played in Tests and One-Days, we looked so calm. Things looked up to the mark.

Credit goes to the support staff, who gave us a lot of confidence to express ourselves. Bowling to two lefties after the 7th over gave me a lot of confidence. I have been working hard on my bowling, hopefully you’ll see more in the future.

Man of the Series Bhuvneshwar Kumar said:

It’s all about how you prepare yourself before every series. IPL has made Indian bowlers thinking bowlers. It’s important not to give away too many tuns in the powerplay. You had to keep it simple and of course slower balls and knuckle balls were there. You hardly get wickets like these in India.

South African captain JP Duminy said:

They bowled pretty well in the batting PP. We couldn’t get the boundaries and the singles. We were 30 runs behind after that PP but in the end we were behind by only 7 runs. Their slower and knuckle balls worked. Jonker, in his first game, to get us that close was a great effort.

In this format, guys get opportunity and they try and stake a claim. Great opportunity for guys to step up. We have learnt our lessons. Full credit to India. Outstanding white-ball tour. They gained a lot of confidence out of that win in the third Test