Vishakapattinam : After losing the toss for the third time in a row, India were put into bat on a good batting surface. While Ruturaj Gaikwad (57 off 35) got his team off to a flier, Ishan Kishan (54 off 35) played second-fiddle. However, the visitors pulled things back and restricted India to 179-5 in their 20 overs.
In reply, South Africa kept losing wickets regularly and never had any control of the game. Yuzvendra Chahal (3 for 20) and Harshal Patel (4 for 25) starred with the ball for India. South Africa were bundled out for 131 with five balls remaining.
Yuzvendra Chahal, Player of the Match, said, ‘ I bowled a lot of sliders and bowled quicker in the previous matches. Today, I changed my seam position. Spinning and getting the ball to dip are my strengths. Today I tried to get it to turn and bowl slower. I tried to bowl to my strengths, I focused on that. When batters try to reverse-sweep, it becomes tough for the bowlers. But now I have a second plan and set fields accordingly. I didn’t bowl well in the previous game, the coach asked me to back my strengths. The ground there (Rajkot) is bigger’.
Rishabh Pant said, ‘The execution was spot-on from the bowlers and the batters. We were 15 runs short, but we weren’t thinking about that. Bowlers did a fantastic job for us. In India, spinners play a big role and there is pressure on them, when they come off nicely then matches like this happen. When you get a good start, it’s difficult for a new batter to come in and go big straightaway. We lost too many wickets. We’ll look to improve in the next match. We have to make sure that we finish the game with a bigger margin.’
Temba Bavuma said, ‘As a collective, it wasn’t our best effort. They were the better side. With the ball, they put us under pressure. The fielding really didn’t back us up. With the batting, we didn’t really turn up. The partnerships weren’t there, there was no momentum. There have been a lot of improvements in the fielding department, this game we weren’t up to the mark, in the first two games we were quite strong. Thoughts coming out to bat, we tried to assess, tried to get some momentum, unfortunately we couldn’t do that. Losing three early wickets, always puts us under pressure. Quinton is an integral member of the team. Unfortunately we don’t have him. We back Reeza at the top. The opportunity is there, we’ll keep going with Reeza.’
Harshal Patel, said, ‘ Pretty good. We wanted to execute certain plans, but it didn’t work out in the last couple of games, it was a must win game to keep the series alive, pretty happy I did it in this game. Depends on how you look at it, again that old cliche, you follow the process, stay true when you are doing well or not, those are the things that carry you through bad phases and get you to improve when you are doing well. We have certain goals as a bowling group and we want to continue to achieve those goals. It is just adapting to it (the conditions), I went to yorkers early in the last two games, I focused on bowling the hard length today. This was a slow pitch and not good as Delhi or Cuttack, not quick as the other two grounds. One game at a time.’