Chloe Tryon clouted a huge six over midwicket off the first ball of the final over to take South Africa’s Women to a six-wicket victory over India in the first T20I at Hollywoodbets Kingsmead on Friday night.
India had earlier made 157 for seven in their innings after South Africa had won the toss and inserted their opponents.
The win came with some nerves for the appreciative 3 800 crowd because victory should really have been wrapped up earlier. But Laura Wolvaardt, after striking her 14th T20I half-century with some typically fluent strokes in her eight fours, then inexplicably holed out to deep midwicket when the kind of sensible cricket she had already played would have taken her team to a more comfortable victory.
But after Anneke Bosch was trapped leg before to increase the tension, it was Annerie Dercksen (44 not out off 34 balls) and Tryon who took their team to victory with an unbroken stand of 29 in 26 balls. In fact, Wolvaardt’s dismissal, after she and Dercksen had added 52 in 37 balls, effectively gave the allrounder the chance to show her nerve in the drive to victory, and she certainly did that with some clinical play that included four fours and a six.
Her knock was particularly important because South Africa’s batting was a little light with Marizanne Kapp, Dane van Niekerk and Kayla Reyneke absent through injury and illness.
Earlier, South Africa managed to keep the Indian innings under control on an easy-paced Kingsmead pitch on a balmy autumn evening.
India showed aggressive intent but lost wickets regularly with none of their batters reaching 50. The highest scorer was their captain, Harmanpreet Kaur, who remained undefeated on 47 in 33 balls (5x4s, 1x6) but didn’t receive enough of the strike deep into the innings.
It was Shafali Verma who was the driving force in an opening partnership of 46 in five overs, although she was fortunate to survive a dropped catch by Sune Luus on 13 in the second over. After striking five fours and a six, Verma finally gave away her wicket, pulling a short ball from seamer Tumi Sekhukhune to Tazmin Brits on the deep midwicket boundary. Smriti Mandhana followed soon afterwards, driving Ayabonga Khaka to Laura Wolvaardt in the covers.
The Indian batters then took control through Kaur and Jemimah Rodrigues in a partnership of 71 in 50 balls with Rodrigues driving and sweeping with authority but, just when a total approaching 200 seemed feasible, Rodrigues was caught on the boundary. Wickets fell regularly after that with player of the match Khaka returning the best analysis of 3/16 in her four overs for South Africa.
Commenting on the win, Wolvaardt said: “It was a great start; we were good in all departments. Dercksen batted excellently. We would have liked to finish it earlier but we broke the back of the chase earlier, which was nice. This is how we wanted to start the series.”
The second T20I is on Sunday (2pm) with the remainder of the five-match series in Johannesburg and Benoni next week.
INDIA: 1 Smriti Mandhana, 2 Shafali Verma, 3 Jemimah Rodrigues, 4 Harmanpreet Kaur (capt), 5 Richa Ghosh (wk), 6 Deepti Sharma, 7 Arundhati Reddy, 8 Kashvee Gautam, 9 Shreyanka Patil, 10 Shree Charani, 11 Renuka Thakur
SOUTH AFRICA: 1 Laura Wolvaardt (capt), 2 Sune Luus, 3 Tazmin Brits, 4 Annerie Dercksen, 5 Anneke Bosch, 6 Chloe Tryon, 7 Nadine de Klerk, 8 Sinalo Jafta (wk), 9 Ayabonga Khaka, 10 Tumi Sekhukhune, 11 Nonkululekho Mlaba