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Shreyas Iyer's brilliant century, alongside Ishan Kishan's heroics and Mohammad Siraj's brilliant bowling, helped Team India to a comfortable seven-wicket win over South Africa in Ranchi on Sunday, October 9. Iyer scored his second ODI century to help the Shikhar Dhawan-led side to a series-equalling victory over the Proteas in what was a morale-crushing loss for the visitors.
Iyer continues good form
Riding on his good form from the first match of the ODI series, Shreyas Iyer scored an unbeaten 113 runs off 111 balls with 15 fours and no sixes during his innings. This ton comes after his hard-fought half-century in the first match of the series, where Iyer scored 50 runs off 37 balls in a losing cause.
Iyer paced his innings perfectly as India comfortably chased down a total of 278 runs. He started off playing as an anchor to Kishan, who was also in fine form with his 93 off just 84 balls, with four fours and seven sixes to his name. The pair shared a 161-run stand — the second-highest third-wicket partnership for India against South Africa.
They also helped India complete their highest successful chase against South Africa since March 2017 while also denying their visitors 10 points on the World Cup Super League table, meaning South Africa will remain in 11th place.
Kishan put SA bowlers under the hammer!
While Iyer stole the headlines with his ton, a lot of the credit for India's comfortable win goes to Kishan. The wicketkeeper-batter entertained his home crowd with his usual unorthodox hitting as a Lungi Ngidi-less South Africa was unable to contain him.
While Wayne Parnell and Kagiso Rabada made early inroads with the wickets of Shikhar Dhawan (13 off 20) and Shubman Gill (28 off 26), Anrich Nortje and Aiden Markram could not find the right lengths. Even Keshav Maharaj had a rare off day. Ngidi was swapped out of the XI for Nortje, meaning that the Proteas did not have their best executor of the slower ball at their disposal.
Siraj's heroics kept game alive
The South African batter cannot be faulted for their performance. After losing Quinton de Kock and Janneman Malan to Mohammad Siraj and Shahbaz Ahmed respectively, before the former took the crucial breakthroughs in the middle. Even the in-form Miller struggled to get going at the death and Siraj came out on top as they scored just 57 runs from the last 10 overs with the loss of two wickets.
Markram's run-a-ball stand of 129 gave South Africa some momentum but it was sandwiched between a slow start and finish by the remaining batters. The South Africans were 40 for 2 in the opening Powerplay and only managed 57 runs in the last 10 overs. Siraj delivered four overs upfront (1/24) and four from the 44th over (1/13) to wrap up a slow Proteas batting innings.
