Despite Suryakumar’s heroics, India lost the match against South Africa by 5 wickets.
On a pitch that was arguably the fastest and the liveliest most players from either side would have ever played on, India and South Africa squared off on Sunday (October 30) at Perth in the ongoing T20 World Cup 2022.
Opting to bat first, the Men in Blue were reduced to 41/3 with Lungi Ngidi taking all the wickets. In a game where no other batter (who faced more than 10 balls) had a strike rate of more than 130, Suryakumar Yadav perhaps played the innings of his life, smashing 68 off just 40 balls striking at 170.
Yadav’s scintillating knock bailed his India out of a dire situation to take the team’s total to 133/9 in 20 overs. The rest of the team aggregated 57 off 80 balls.
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Former New Zealand skipper Stephen Fleming remarked that it’s difficult to find a weakness in the star batter. He reckoned that the 32-year-old has developed a technique that makes it difficult for the bowlers to find the right length against him.
"It's difficult to find an area of weakness," he was quoted as saying on the ESPNcricinfo show T20 Time: Out.
"He just has a really positive mindset. And he has a very open and aggressive stance which allows him to play in a lot of unusual areas. So he's sort of created a technique which bowlers are finding it hard to find the right lengths [against] because if they're full he'll hit all the way over cover or around; if they're fractionally short he'll go over third man and point.
"And anything straight, he's very good with the short ball. So he's developed a technique that's very hard to find an area of weakness [in]," he added.
The Rohit Sharma-led side, though, couldn’t defend the total despite Arshdeep Singh and Mohammad Shami’s immaculate opening spell which saw the back of three Proteas batters for the score of just 24.
However, a 76-run stand between Aiden Markram (52 off 41 balls) and David Miller (59* off 46 balls) got the Proteas back in the game. With only two balls left, they finally made it to the finish line.
Rohit Sharma and his men are still favorites to qualify for the semi-finals from Group B given that their next two matches are against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh on November 2 and 6, respectively.
(ESPNcricinfo Inputs)