India v South Africa: India wind up South Africa tour by winning T20I series

CAPE TOWN: Debuting at 31 years of age, allrounder Christiaan Jonker came close to pulling off a memorable T20 win for South Africa at the Newlands Cricket Ground here on Saturday evening, his fiery 24-ball 49 single-handedly changing the course of a game that looked India’s to take for most part of the evening.


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However, Jonker’s effort came a little too late in the evening after the game had already tilted India’s way when they batted first, put 172-7 on board, and shackled the hosts’ scoring opportunities with a neat line early in the second innings. Jonker’s knock came after South Africa skipper JP Duminy’s 41-ball 55 alone had kept the home team in the chase but the target seemed too daunting for the hosts towards the end as they lost the match by seven runs and the series 1-2.

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If the hosts came into this final T20 believing they finally had got a hang of India’s wrist-spin post the Centurion win, the visitors stayed a step ahead in the contest, switched from Plan A to Plan B, rested both their wrist spinners and went back to pace.

South Africa picked three fulltime spinners in Tabraiz Shamsi and Aaron Phangiso, alongside Duminy whereas India didn’t bother bowling their own fulltime spinner Axar Patel his full quota of four overs.

The eventual 172/7 that India put on board at the end of 20 overs - riding on a 65-run second wicket partnership between Shikhar Dhawan (47) and Suresh Raina (43) - began to appear more than enough with each passing over once South Africa began the chase.

Strand-in skipper Rohit Sharma, the three-time IPL winning captain for Mumbai Indians, realised early enough that there wasn’t enough on this wicket for spinners to gain from and in the process finished bowling the fifth bowler’s quota - shared between Suresh Raina and Axar Patel - before the end of the first 12 overs.

The 13th over onwards, South Africa had the trio of Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya and Bhuvneshwar Kumar to counter and it proved a lot difficult to score at one of South Africa’s biggest venues in terms of the field size. Skipper Duminy’s knock kept South Africa in the hunt and Jonker’s brisk innings, in fact, gave the hosts a good chance towards the end, except that the effort came too late.

Earlier in the evening, after spending sixty days of being on the job non-stop, captain Virat Kohli finally took a break from cricket with this game, with Rohit Sharma taking over the role. Kohli sat out with a stiff lower back and the team management said “it is nothing serious and he will recover soon”.

When India batted, left-handers Shikhar Dhawan and Suresh Raina added important runs for the second wicket before the latter was caught in the deep. The partnership would go on to form the backbone of India’s total, one that proved enough in the end.