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India beat South Africa by 7 wickets to play Bangladesh in Semi Finals of Champions Trophy
Defending champions India made it to the semi-final of the ICC Champions Trophy by defeating South Africa in a must-win encounter in the final league match by eight wickets at the Kennington Oval, London on Sunday.
After bowling out the number one ranked ODI team for a paltry 191, India chased down the target with 12 overs remaining. Shikhar Dhawan top-scored with an 83-ball 78-run knock while skipper Virat Kohli remained unbeaten on 76. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah claimed two wickets each. This is the fifth-time India have reached the semi-final stage of the Champions Trophy.
South Africa: Big Game; same story
South Africa’s torrid afair in knockout matches of ICC matches continued as the AB De Villiers led side lost the toss, from there onwards every thing went downwards for the Proteas.
AB de Villiers and du Plessis looked good in the early going after Quinton , but a miscommunication in the middle arrested the team’s momentum. De Villiers was struggling with a hamstring niggle and that eventually led to his downfall. After du Plessis took off for a risky single towards point, de Villiers, despite diving full length, could not beat Pandya’s throw and Dhoni did the rest. From then on it was a a total collapse of batting as South Africa crawled their way to 190.
Sedate start of Team India; Kohli the chasemaster comes to the party
Kohli walked out to join Dhawan in the middle after Rohit Sharma departed early due to a loose shot and was welcomed by a couple of rippers from Rabada and then by Morkel. He took 25 deliveries to get his first boundary – a six off medium-pacer Phehlukwayo. Dhawan, at the other end, had no issues finding the boundary rope. He got a move on taking back-to-back to boundaries off Morkel. Two more followed off Imran Tahir’s bowling as he neared his fifty. Kohli picked up his pace with four boundaries in quick time. With a boundary off Morris, Dhawan got to his 19th ODI fifty – his third successive fifty plus score in the tournament. Kohli followed suit and hit his 41st ODI fifty off 71 deliveries.
The second wicket association yielded 128 runs in just 24.4 overs. India went on to chase down the target with eight wickets in hand and 12 overs to spare. Yuvraj Singh sealed the match with a six and remained unbeaten on 23.
