South Africa clinch Twenty20 series
After a humbling defeat at the hands of the Proteas in the 1st Twenty20 match, Bangladesh were looking forward to a redemption of sorts, but the win evaded them once more as their batting order crumbled against spin, losing the match and the series to South Africa by 31 runs.
South African skipper Faf du Plessis won the toss and elected to bat first. They retained their squad from the first match, except for debutant Eddie Leie who replaced fast bowler Kagiso Rabada.
Openers Quinton de Kock and AB de Villiers gave an early momentum with their healthy partnership, scoring 44 runs and 40 runs respectively.
T20 specialist JP Duminy got out for measly 6 runs to Nasir Hossain, while Bangladesh’s new hero, Mustafizur Rahman, who surprisingly went wicketless in the first match, grabbed the crucial wicket of South African skipper Faf du Plessis in the 17th over.
Mustafizur started the last over with a dot ball, building the pressure on the South African batsmen, but nonetheless, the visitors finished with a healthy total of 170 for 4.
The Bangladeshi batsmen continued to struggle against spin, as the debutant Leie had a field day, scalping 3 important wickets and conceding just 16 runs. A beautiful spell that won him the Man-of-the-Match award.
Leie was duly backed by Kyle Abbott and Aaron Phangiso who also grabbed 3 wickets each.
Soumya Sarkar, who’s proving to be one of the more consistent Bangladeshi batsmen, was the highest scorer with an entertaining innings of 37 runs of 21 balls, including 6 fours and 1 six. The second highest scorer was debutant Rony Talukdar with a score of 21 runs from 22 balls.
South Africa won the T20 series by 2-0 and Faf du Plessis, who scored an unbeaten 79 of 61 deliveries in the first match, was named as the Man-of-the-Series.
Scoreboard summary:
South Africa 169/4 (20/20 overs)
Bangladesh 138 (19.2/20 overs)