Iceman’s Realm

Be it batting first or second, the South Africans were not at all looking comfortable out there. Smith’s absence has taken a toll on the team quite badly and the new team under the captaincy of Neil McKenzie, is looking down the barrel. It’s quite obvious that without the original skipper, the team is void. Now coming to the second twenty-20 of the series, the skipper chose to bat first keeping in mind that it was conducive to bat, plus, the main frontline bowler, Ntini, who was asked to sit back due to an injury, it seemed. With wickets tumbling in quick succession, the visitiors were afraid they would be running short of batsmen even before the full quota of 20 overs were bowled, but fortunately, JP Duminy played another fantastic knocks and almost rescued the team as he does always. At the end, they could only put up 157 runs on the board, which was not at all satisfactory on this pitch. Meanwhile, their bowling wasn’t that good either. Defending a small total, you had to strike early to put breakes on the Australian batting, but that never happened. Eventually, it was a comprehensive victory for the hosts. 157 was not at all enough.