Finally!! South Africa are in the final of an ICC event!! The team led by Aiden Markram has broken the trend of the Proteas choking in the semi-finals of the ICC World Cup events. But the T20 World Cup 2024 has been different and after seven close wins in the tournament, they finally played a perfect game to thrash Afghanistan by nine wickets in the low-scoring affair.
In fact, it was a cakewalk for South Africa in a semifinal after so many years of heartbreak. As for Afghanistan, making it to the knockouts for the first time in their cricket history was a peak moment for them and it seemed they never arrived for the big match. At the Brian Lara cricket stadium in Trinidad, they were even lucky to win the toss and bat first but what followed later was absolute carnage from South Africa pacers.
There was some help from the fast bowlers early on especially from the good length area and the likes of Marco Jansen and Kagiso Rabada perfectly exploited the conditions. The former got the better of the highest run-scorer of the T20 World Cup Rahmanullah Gurbaz in the very first over and it was all downhill for Afghanistan since then. The procession continued with Jansen picking two more wickets and Rabada joining him in the fun.
At 23/5 within five overs, Afghanistan were in tatters absolutely and there was hope for some batter to hang around but it never happened as Anrich Nortje and Tabraiz Shamsi joined hands after powerplay to pick wickets. Afghanistan were bundled out in just 11.5 overs for 56 runs with only one batter - Azmatullah Omarzai (10) - reaching the double-digits. In fact, extras section was the top-scorer with 13 runs coming through them.
South Africa were always going to chase this paltry total down and despite the ball misbehaving multiple times in their innings, they comfortably got over the line. Quinton de Kock was castled by Fazalhaq Farooqi early but Reeza Hendiricks and skipper Aiden Markram made sure they gunned down the target in 8.5 overs with nine wickets and 67 balls to spare.
