At the Narendra Modi Stadium, South Africa defeated Afghanistan by five wickets to conclude their league campaign.
The Hashmatuallah Shahidi-captained team fought valiantly and remained in the game until the final five overs, but once the spinners reached their target, things started to go south. With the bat, the Afghans scored 244 runs thanks to a fantastic innings from Azmatuallah Omarzai.
Quinton de Kock got off to a strong start in the chase, but South Africa never seemed to be at ease. Rassie van der Dussen collected himself after returning to the pavilion and scored 76* runs to assist South Africa over the finish line. He continued to play his game and eventually delivered the goods even though wickets were falling from one end. Afghanistan will now go home, but they should be quite pleased of their performance. The Proteas will play Australia in the second semifinal of the 2017 ODI World Cup.
Azmatuallah Omarzai: A Single Man’s Might
From the outset, Afghanistan faced a difficult scenario because to Gerald Coetzee’s exceptional performance. But Omarzai, who had an amazing tournament, rose to the occasion once more, hitting 97* runs to help Afghanistan reach a respectable total. He was possibly Afghanistan’s standout player of the competition.
The injury of Temba Bavuma
Temba Bavuma, the captain of South Africa, was hurt in the opening over but did not change tactics until he was out. This is not good news ahead of the semi-final match against Australia, as captaincy experience can be useful in a crucial situation.
Speech by Rassie van der Dussen
Once more, Rassie van der Dussen contributed a spectacular 76* run innings to help South Africa win the game handily. He maintained his composure and assisted the team in returning to winning ways even though wickets were falling from one end.
Losing skipper Hashmatuallah Shahidi said:
As a captain I am quite happy with our performance. We fought till the last moment in each and every game. Good learnings for us in the future. Proud of the way our batters performed in this tournament. We were struggling before this tournament. We sat together and talked about the weak point, so at the end, you saw the result how our batsmen did.
That’s a positive thing, looking forward to the future. Everyone knows that we have good spin department. If we go with the same momentum, we’ll be a very good side. We gave a good message to the world in this tournament. We played big teams and we fought till the last moment. Australian game, it was in our hands, but it was shocking for us.
Winning skipper Temba Bavuma said:
My leg is sore, don’t know to what extent, it’s gonna have to be fine. I had that option of coming off. I wanted to be out there with the guys. Opportunity for me to spend some time out in the middle. That’s what I felt was right at that moment. Winning is a habit, we want to take that momentum through. We batted second and to get over the line in that manner, that’s going to put a lot of confidence.
Fantastic knock by Rassie who took ownership of the innings and guys batted around him. The wicket got better. We’ll take the win, take the confidence and the momentum that comes with it. We’d like to be playing here again. We have a big hurdle that we have to get over first that is Australia in Kolkata.
POTM Rassie van der Dussen said:
We were happy with bowling first, we would have chased anyway. We knew they are a quality bowling attack and we wanted to put ourselves in a difficult situation. There are one or two things we could have tweaked but happy overall. In any chase, there has to be someone to play the anchor role. We had a lovely platform with Quinny and Temba giving us a solid platform and that made it easy for me. Happy to play that role tonight and we got some good partnerships in the middle.
It’s funny when you do something so well and the other part is not so good, people say you are doing that badly. We were on the 50-50 mark in terms of chasing so we wanted to put ourselves in a difficult situation and test ourselves going forward. Going into the semi-final, this is what we wanted to do and it worked out well. We have taken a lot of learning from the last two games. Kolkata was a lot drier and a lot lower. We know what to expect going into the semi-final. Hopefully if we get back here again we’ll put in a similar performance.
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