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Monday, February 24, 2025

Du Plesis knocks Aussies off World Cup pinnacle

by

Sports Desk
2059 days ago
20190706
South Africa Chris Morris, centre, celebrates with teammates after he caught Australia's David Warner during the ICC World Cup at Old Trafford, Manchester, England, on Saturday. South Africa won by 10 runs to deny the Aussies the chance to finish atop the 10-team round robin table.

South Africa Chris Morris, centre, celebrates with teammates after he caught Australia's David Warner during the ICC World Cup at Old Trafford, Manchester, England, on Saturday. South Africa won by 10 runs to deny the Aussies the chance to finish atop the 10-team round robin table.

AP

South Africa skip­per Faf du Plessis led from the front with a cen­tu­ry to steer his team to a nar­row 10-run win over front-run­ners Aus­tralia in their fi­nal ICC World Cup match at Old Traf­ford, Man­ches­ter, Sat­ur­day.

Du Ple­sis hit ex­act­ly 100 off 94 balls, his team’s first hun­dred in a dis­ap­point­ing cam­paign, to steer the Pro­teas to 325 for six be­fore they re­strict­ed the Aussies to 315 all out.

Aussie open­er David Warn­er tried his best to guide his team to a record run chase with a bril­liant 122 at bet­ter than a run a ball. He hit 15 fours and two six­es and shared in a 108-run fifth-wick­et part­ner­ship with wick­et­keep­er Alex Carey which kept Aus­tralia in the hunt in­to the last 10 overs. But once Warn­er was caught by Chris Mor­ris off the first ball of the 40th over from medi­um pac­er Dwaine Pre­to­rius, the South Africans re­gained the as­cen­den­cy.

Carey then tried des­per­ate­ly to stay ahead of the in­creas­ing run rate be­fore he too per­ished for 85 off Mor­ris as he tried to rat­tle off those quick runs and pro­tect the tailen­ders. His knock fea­tured 11 fours and a six.

Kag­iso Raba­da was the best bowler for South Africa with three wick­ets for 56 runs.

The win dent­ed Aus­tralia’s hopes of fin­ish­ing atop the 10-team ta­ble, as they slipped to sec­ond with 14 points af­ter In­dia (15 pts) beat Sri Lan­ka (8 pts) ear­li­er in the day to go top. The Aussies will now meet Eng­land in the se­mi-fi­nals on Tues­day while In­dia faces New Zealand for places in the fi­nal.

Ear­li­er, Du Plessis shared a 151-run third wick­et part­ner­ship with Rassie van der Dussen to cre­ate the foun­da­tion his team need­ed for their mas­sive to­tal. He hit sev­en fours and two six­es in his knock. Van der Dussen, mean­while, de­nied his maid­en ODI cen­tu­ry when he was caught on the bound­ary by Glenn Maxwell try­ing to hit pac­er Pat Cum­mins out of the ground five runs short of the mark. He hit four six­es and four fours but helped his team keep the mo­men­tum to surge past the 300 mark.

Quin­ton de Kock al­so con­tributed a 51-ball 52 with sev­en fours to the ef­fort.

Aussie pac­er Mitchell Starc bagged two wick­ets for 59 runs, which moved him to 26 wick­ets in the tour­na­ment and in­to a tie with coun­try­man Glenn Mc­Grath for the most wick­ets in a sin­gle tour­na­ment. Mc­Grath achieved his feat in 2007 in the West In­dies, when the Aus­tralians won the ti­tle, but Starc now has at least one more match and pos­si­bly two to over­haul that tal­ly.

Off-spin­ner Nathan Ly­on al­so bagged two for 53.

SCORES:

SOUTH AFRICA 325-6 (50) (Faf du Ple­sis 100, Rassie van der Dussen 95, Quin­to de Kock 52, Mitchell Starc 2/59, Nathan Ly­on 2/53) v AUS­TRALIA 315 all out (49.5) (David Warn­er 122, Alex Carey 85, Kag­iso Raba­da 3/56, Dwaine Pre­to­rius 2/27)

Re­sult: South Africa won by 10 runs


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