South-Africa. (Photo by Pankaj Nangia/Gallo Images/Getty Images)
In the 10th match of the ICC ODI World Cup 2023, it was South Africa who were up against Australia. South Africa was asked to bat first and they put up a solid score, largely thanks to the fantastic performance of Quinton de Kock. De Kock’s second consecutive World Cup century was a game-changer, and he was like the anchor of the South African team.
Aiden Markram also played a significant role, scoring a quick-fire half-century, even though the pitch was making it tough to score runs, especially when the ball wasn’t coming on to bat. Initially, it looked like South Africa might reach a score of 325 or more, but Australia made a strong comeback towards the end to slow down the run flow in death overs.
The standout bowler for Australia was Glenn Maxwell, who made the most of the challenging pitch conditions. Even as the ball lost some of its early zip, De Kock and Markram stood firm. Markram’s composure during the middle part of the match was particularly praiseworthy. Maxwell and Mitchell Starc both took two wickets each.
As for Australia’s chase, they never really seemed to be in the game and kept losing wickets at regular intervals. None of their batters could handle South Africa’s fiery bowling attack, led by Kagiso Rabada, who took three wickets. Marnus Labuschagne did put up some resistance with his 46 runs, but in the end, South Africa secured a comfortable victory by a substantial margin of 134 runs.
POTM Quinton de Kock said:
It was a great win for the boys, to be honest, we didn’t know how the pitch would play, we assessed the conditions beautifully and then applied ourselves well with the bat. The guys who spent time on the wicket, got a hand on the conditions and then used their scoring options. 311 was an above par score, I have played here for the Lucknow team (in the IPL), it becomes harder to bat second. The wicket does change a bit. It was sweaty and humid, the bowlers were on top of their game, no real loose balls and they picked early wickets. I think we are keen to prove ourselves, we played well, but it’s just 2 games, the World Cup is a long tournament and games come quickly around, we will take it on a match-by-match basis.
Winning Skipper Temba Bavuma said:
I do think 311 was a couple over par, probably 290-300 was par. I guess I’m glad we lost the toss because we wanted to chase as well. I was scratchy with the bat, found it hard but Quinton (de Kock) needs to be given credit for the way he played. I think I’d be really greedy if I said there are things we can improve. It was almost the perfect game. The bowlers bowled really well, they have been under some slap but looking at all the phases, I think the guys really dominated. I’ll take that as our second game. Need to acknowledge the batting effort, the bowling effort was all about being clinical. Lungi (Ngidi) taking the new ball and KG (Rabada) showing intensity is what we’re looking for. In our team, character is the biggest thing we’ve spoken about. You can’t overlook the good work we’ve done, let’s take the confidence and learnings. Let’s celebrate it and come back for the next one.
Losing skipper Pat Cummins said:
I thought Quinton (de Kock) batted really well, couldn’t get a breakthrough. From where they were, we were quite happy with 310, thought it was chaseable. Looked like hard work out there tonight, their bowlers bowled really well, think it nipped around a bit more under lights. (On if it would’ve been easier to bat first) Really hard to say, if we want to be challenging in this tournament we need to find ways of performing regardless of batting first or second. Don’t think much needs to be said tonight, everyone’s hurting, we’ll try and take a couple of days off and then make amends to come back stronger in the next one. There’s a few things we need to tidy up.