Mumbai (India): Oct 21 : In the World Cup 2023 match, South Africa defeated the defending champion England by 229 runs thanks to the aggressive batting of Henrich Klaasen, Reza Hendricks and Marco Jensen.
In the match played at Wankhede Cricket Stadium in Mumbai, English captain Jos Buttler won the toss. Decided to bowl first. When South Africa started the innings, Quinton de Kock took a four on the first ball of the match, but on the very next ball, he caught the wicketkeeper on the ball of Race Topley. After that, Rassie van der Dusen came to support Reza Hendricks and both players put on a 124-run partnership for the second wicket. At this stage,
Adil Rashid ended Dawson’s 60-run innings, giving his team a crucial victory. World Cup debutant Reza Hendricks scored 85 off 75 balls with three sixes and nine fours but before he could score a century, Rashid dismissed Hendricks to give his team another win. . Klaassen took the field along with standing captain Adrian Markram and the two players put on a partnership of 59 runs to take the score to 233 runs but at this stage the Proteas suffered back-to-back losses and Topley followed Markram’s 42 runs to David. Miller’s innings also ended.
After losing 5 wickets for 243 runs in the 37th over, South Africa’s hopes of a big score seemed to be dashed, but the new batsman at the wicket, Marco Jensen, along with Klaasen, changed the course of the match in the next few overs. Both the players made the English bowlers a board exercise by batting aggressively and made a partnership of 151 runs off 76 balls by raining six fours and brought South Africa to a strong position. Klaasen scored 109 runs off 67 balls with 4 sixes and 12 fours and when he got out, the total of 394 runs on the scoreboard was showing South Africa’s superiority.
However, the real credit for this big score went to Jensen who scored 75 runs off just 42 balls with the help of 6 towering sixes and three fours. South Africa scored 399 runs for the loss of 7 wickets in the allotted overs.
On behalf of England, Topley took 3 wickets after thrashing 88 runs while Gus Atkinson and Adil Rashid took two wickets each.
Chasing the target, England’s opening pair had given the team a start of 118 runs when Jonny Bairstow caught Dawson on the boundary. By giving the catch, Marco Jensen became the wicket. Jensen continued his brilliant bowling after his excellent batting and took the valuable wicket of David Mullan on the very first ball of his next over. Ben Stokes, the hero of the last World Cup, who returned to the English team, could not make his comeback memorable and left the team in the middle and continued to walk and thus the England team lost 4 wickets for 67 runs.
Jos Buttler, adopting a traditional attacking style, scored 15 runs and took the score to 67 along with Harry Brooke, but on the same score, he was caught by the wicketkeeper off the ball of Gerald Coetzee. A ball later, Coetzee hit Harry Brook lbw with another strike, and the English team had lost all their reliable batsmen for 68 runs.
Adil Rashid also did not understand the delicacy of the matter and limited himself to playing big shots and went on to score 10 runs, while when Topley got out, the England team had lost 8 wickets for a total of 100. At this stage Mark Wood came in to support Gus Atkinson and both players started to play big shots while batting aggressively. Defeat seemed clear,
England’s tail-enders adopted the strategy of scoring maximum runs and established a partnership of 70 runs off 33 balls for the ninth wicket, but Keship Maharaj dismissed Atkinson, who scored 35 runs, and finally the defending champion team. The checkered flag was wrapped up at 170 runs.
Mark Wood, batting aggressively, scored 43 runs off just 17 balls with the help of five sixes and two fours, while Rhys Topley could not come to bat due to injury.
South Africa, who were defeated by the Netherlands, made a spectacular comeback in the World Cup by winning the match by 229 runs to occupy the third position in the points table.
This is England’s biggest defeat in terms of runs in the World Cup. England’s irresponsible batting can be gauged from the fact that when the team was bowled out for 170 runs, there were 28 overs left in the match. On behalf of South Africa, Coetzee took three wickets while Ngidi and Jensen took two wickets each. Classen, who scored a century, was adjudged Man of the Match.
