South Africa beats India by 31 runs in first ODI

Centuries from Rassie van der Dussen and Temba Bavuma helped South Africa ease to a 31-run win and pick up 1-0 lead in the three-match ODI series in Paarl. The pair made 204 for the fourth wicket and helped the hosts post 297. There were half-centuries for Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli in the chase but India eventually ran out of steam, despite Shardul Thakur’s maiden ODI half-century.

KL Rahul, said, It was a nice game. There’s so much to learn. We started off really well, we couldn’t get wickets in the middle. We’ll look to see how we get wickets in the middle overs and stop the opposition. The middle-order couldn’t get going. We were on par for the first 20-25 overs of the game. I thought we would chase it down easily but SA bowled really well and got crucial wickets. I didn’t bat after the 20th over, I don’t know if it changed drastically.

Virat and Shikhar told that it was a good wicket to bat on, you just had to spend some time in the middle, unfortunately we couldn’t get the partnership going. They did really well, they put pressure on the bowlers and we couldn’t get those wickets in the middle. 290+ was 20 runs extra, but we just needed more partnerships in the middle. Every game is important for us, we all want to go out there and give our best performances. We haven’t played one-day cricket for a while, we have the WC in mind and we want to get the best XI on the park. We’ll make mistakes but we’ll learn from them.

0

0