South Africa Won 60-1 (Hendricks 29*, Farooqi 1-11) Afghanistan 56 (Omarzai 10, Shamsi 3-6, Jansen 3-16) 9 wickets
For a team notoriously nervy in finals matches, the victory was overwhelming and complete. South Africa left very little to chance. They bowled well, defended well and survived some difficult early overs, pouncing on loose balls.
As a reward, they reached the Men’s World Cup final for the first time and extended their unbeaten run in the tournament to eight matches. Their nine-wicket victory with 67 balls to spare highlighted their control of the match from start to finish.
Jansen and Rabada break the top-order
Rabada’s first over saw Afghanistan in a complete slump. He bowled two balls back and hit the wood both times. A strike off Ibrahim Zadran’s top middle stump proved the deciding blow. At this point, Ibrahim was Afghanistan’s best hope of scoring a high score. With the fourth ball, he delivered another superb delivery to get Mohammed Nabi out off stump. That over was their first double-wicket win.
Nortje and Shamsi will take care of the rest.
Shamsi bowled a leg stump line against the right-handed batsman and kept giving out lbw with each successive ball that came his way. All three decisions were reviewed but the on-field umpire had declared him out and the umpire’s decision at impact was satisfactory.
Farooqui and Naveen unable to destroy South Africa’s top-order
And Naveen should have deployed Markram in the next over, but most of the Afghanistan players failed to hear the thin edge to the wicketkeeper and Rashid was not convinced enough to review the decision.
Markram and Hendricks give chase.
The pitch remained high and often bowled low, making for some tough times, but whenever Afghanistan bowled poorly, the South African batsmen stepped up to the plate. They were rewarded with 13 runs in just the fifth over – more than a fifth of the target. South Africa reached home in the ninth over, and despite it being a historic win, there was muted celebration.
