South Africa finally set right an embarrassing record of never having won any one day international final of a tournament against Australia. For long, Australia have had a strong hold on South Africa in ODI finals. Steve Waugh once said that it didn’t matter if Australia lost matches in the group stages to South Africa, they would always win the big ones in the finals and semi-finals.
It took a special bowling performance by the greatest fast bowler of his generation, Dale Steyn for South Africa to finally win their first ODI final against Australia. This was followed by a typical Faf du Plessis innings, who has been playing like Sir Don Bradman of late, having made 3 hundreds already in the group stages and coming only 4 short of yet another hundred in the final.
South Africa won comfortably with over 9 overs to go and with 6 wickets in hand, and never really looked in trouble despite all the hype about this match. Dale Steyn was lethal as the match began, on a pitch that wasn’t used so far in the tournament. Perhaps because Zimbabwe weren’t playing, the groundsman thought it to be perfectly okay for him to prepare a fast bowler friendly pitch, and that’s what we got – a pitch that had pace, bouncer and swing, and later, reverse swing.
With Michael Clarke injured and out of the tournament, Australia looked fragile in the batting department and that showed with Phil Hughes getting out cheaply, followed by Steve Smith and captain George Bailey in quick succession. Australia were in a spot of bother, but Mitch Marsh and Aaron Finch stablilized things somewhat. But Steyn soon changed things around with the prodigious reverse swing that he was getting, quickly reducing the score to 137 for 7.
Australia were soon 144 for 8 with the loss of Mitchell Johnson’s wicket, but James Faulkner and Mitchell Starch weren’t really in a mood to throw the towel quite so easily. Beginning slowly, the two hard hitting lower order batsmen soon started dictating terms to the South African bowlers and hit more than a few lusty blows to take the score over 200, and Australia finally ended with 217, at the end of 50 overs.
Australia began well with Glenn Maxwell picking the wicket of Quinton de Kock with his left arm spin. That only brought the best batsman of the tournament, Faf du Plessis out to the crease and he was as good as ever, smashing boundaries through the covers, pulling short balls out of the park, jumping down to crease to James Faulkner for a glorious six.
Du Plessis only game Australia one chance in his entire innings, otherwise, he was once again faultless. Hashim Amla was doing well at the other end too, and the duo took the South African score beyond 100, before Amla lost his wicket. Wicket of Wayne Parnell soon followed, but that only brought AB de Villiers, perhaps the greatest batsman in the world today in the middle.
The match was already over by then, and by the time De Villiers got going, Australia had already given up. The only question was whether Faf du Plessis would get his fourth hundred of the series. Du Plessis missed out just 4 runs short. But that was enough to win the man of the tournament and Dale Steyn’s match winning figure of 4 wickets for 34 runs off 10 overs got him the man of the match.
It was a fine win for South Africa and it would give them great confidence as they visit Australia for the World Cup to be held there in just a few months time.
