Shikhar Dhawan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar guide Indian team to win over South Africa in first T20I

Johannesburg, February 19: Shikhar Dhawan with the bat and Bhuvneshwar Kumar with the ball provided the stand-out performances which led team India to register an emphatic victory over South Africa by 28 runs in the first T20I on Sunday.

 

Notably, Shikhar Dhawan smashed 72 from 39 balls to help India post 203/5 their highest-ever T20I score against South Africa before Bhuvneshwar put on a T20 bowling clinic to claim his best figures in the format of 5/24 as South Africa finished well short on 175/9.

After invited to bat first, Indian team got off to a good start. Rohit Sharma (21 off 9) set the tone by smashing two sixes off Dane Paterson's opening over. He soon edged Junior Dala (2/47) behind to give the seamer his maiden T20I wicket on debut, but his brief stay gave the sense a big score was on the cards.

Dala soon saw off Suresh Raina (15 off 7) but despite the two early wickets the runs kept flowing. Dhawan peppered the leg-side in particular, with 52 of his 72 runs coming in boundaries. He latched onto anything short, flaying hooks and cuts, while he also used his feet to find the mid-wicket boundary with regularity.

For once on this tour Virat Kohli (26 off 20) fell early, lbw to Tabraiz Shamsi, and although South Africa slowed the run rate somewhat towards the back-end of the innings, Manish Pandey (29), MS Dhoni (16) and Hardik Pandya (13*) ensured they got over the 200-mark.

South Africa knew they needed a good start and JJ Smuts and Reeza Hendricks gave them just that before Bhuvneshwar's knuckle ball did for the former. Stand-in captain JP Duminy fell in similar fashion with an excellent catch from Raina and David Miller miscued a slower ball from Pandya to leave South Africa struggling on 48/3.

Hendricks (70 from 50) batted well, finding the boundary with regularity, and he shared a stand of 81 with Farhaan Behardien (39 from 27), but it always seemed like an uphill battle as India tightened the screw.

Once Behardien had been caught off Yuzvendra Chahal's final ball, the match slipped quickly away from the hosts. Hendricks perished to a Bhuvneshwar slower ball and three of his teammates departed in the same over. Heinrich Klaasen and Chris Morris picked out Raina on the long-on boundary before Paterson ran himself out to give India a team hat-trick.

South Africa faded away to finish 28 runs short and hand yet more momentum to India on this tour, whose only negative was an injury to captain Kohli, who spent most of the second innings off the field with an injury to his glute. In the post-match presentation ceremony, Bhuvneshwar Kumar was adjudged as a Man of the Match.