Centurion, Jan. 22: Six weeks of a fiercely-contested tour couldn’t separate the two teams, but the final one-dayer of the five-match series has been so set up that come Monday morning when M.S. Dhoni’s men fly back to India and Graeme Smith’s bunch scatter to different parts of this country, one batch is bound to be more chirpier than the other.
It had begun here in Centurion mid-December, and in between Indian batting’s capitulation on Day One of the first Test to a somewhat similar show by them on Friday, the momentum has swung violently.
One-all in the Tests and 2-2 in the ODIs following India’s 48-run loss in the fourth one-dayer by virtue of D/L method in Port Elizabeth on Friday night, has ensured that whichever side wins the day-game at the SuperSport Park on Sunday, will walk away with the bragging rights of being the more well-rounded unit.
On the road for so long, the contests between two the two sides generally shift from being solely decided on players’ skills and their ability to handle pressure to their capacity to outlast opponents in critical times. Batsmen from the two teams were guilty of ill-advised strokes or impatience that took a big bite out of their team’s final totals, but while the visitors held their nerve in the second and third ties, the hosts had a lot more cooler heads than the Indian dressing room on Friday.
South Africa’s 265/7 in 50 overs was by no means a big target especially with the venue being one of the smallest in South Africa. But India had only registered scores of 154, 189 and 223/8 in the three preceding matches. Only Virat Kohli, who finished unbeaten on 87, looked like posing a threat. He was comfortable against both pace and spin.
Play was interrupted for 87 minutes during India’s chase at 8.53 pm, and just 1.5 overs after the resumption, the heavens opened again, ultimately leaving India stranded.
Scorecard
South Africa 265/7 in 50 overs
India
R. Sharma c Duminy b Tsotsobe 1, P. Patel lbw b Tsotsobe 11, V. Kohli n.o. 87, Yuvraj Singh c Smith b Botha 12, S. Raina st De Villiers b Peterson 20, M. Dhoni c Du Plessis b Peterson 2, Y. Pathan c De Villiers b Morkel 2, Harbhajan Singh n.o. 3.
Extras (lb-2, w-2) 4
Total (in 32.5 overs) 142/6
FoW: 1-1, 2-32, 3-49, 4-112, 5-123, 6-128.
Bowling: Steyn 4-0-15-0, Tsotsobe 6-1-25-2, Morkel 6-1-13-1, Botha 6.5-0-27-1, Peterson 8-0-46-2, Du Plessis 1-0-5-0, Duminy 1-0-9-0.
SA won by 48 runs (D/L method)