Even though India failed to defend the target as South Africa romped home with 6 wickets in the bag, skipper Kohli made it a point to appreciate the knocks played by Raina, Dhoni and Manish Pandey (79* off 48 balls) as the Indians looked in the driving seat at the end of the first half of the rain-affected T20.
“Tough one for the bowlers. We were looking at 175 with the loss of early wickets. Manish and Raina batted well initially. Manish and MS were outstanding to get to 190. I thought that was a winning total. But the constant drizzle made it difficult from the 12th over onwards. Credit to the SA batsmen. Klaasen and Duminy really batted well. They were very positive. Good from the spectator point of view. You don’t want play to be stopped. Once the game was continued in the first innings, we knew it was going to be continued throughout. You don’t mind these things. We didn’t have problems with that. There was a constant drizzle, wasn’t too drastic at any stage. It was fine to play in. Not just the case with the short boundary, the ball travels here anyway” he said.
“With the drizzle, the wicket settled down. The ball was difficult to grip too. They took calculated risks. They targeted the short boundary and it came off for them. They deserve to win. We expect them to show some fight. They showed the passion which is needed to win games of cricket. They deserved to win tonight,” Kohli said at the end of the game.
JP Duminy and Heinrich Klaasen starred with the bat as South Africa defeated India by 6 wickets to level the three match series 1-1 in Centurion on Wednesday.
