The Proteas turned a good tour into a great one when the Standard Bank ODI squad overwhelmed the world champion Australians by eight wickets with more than 10 overs to spare in the fourth ODI at the Adelaide Oval on Monday.
Full Scoring
It left a capacity Australia Day crowd stunned as the Proteas took the ODI series 3-1 to add to the 2-1 win that the Castle Test squad achieved earlier in the tour.
There remains the final ODI at Perth on Friday and the Proteas have the chance to go 4-1 up and in the process claim Australia's No. 1 world ranking in this form of the game.
The series has been a personal triumph for South Africa's stand-in captain Johan Botha who has filled Graeme Smith's enormous boots more than adequately. He has impressed all and sundry with the composed manner in which he has taken the reins after joining the team in mid-tour, he scored the winning runs in two matches and his bowling has been a big factor, particularly in the last two wins at Sydney and Adelaide.
In these two matches he has taken five wickets for only 60 runs in his full complement of 20 overs and has pulled the Australian batting back into line after strong starts. “The key has been to get a couple of wickets early in my spells,” he commented. “Then you get the chance to bowl at new batsmen and put them under pressure.”
Coach Mickey Arthur said that the squad was showing signs of growing very quickly into a formidable unit.
It is likely that the three newest members of the side who have had limited opportunities so far on tour – Vaughn van Jaarsveld, Wayne Parnell and Lonwabo Tsotsobe – will all get the chance to play in Perth but Botha said there would be no taking the foot off the pedal. “We have turned a good tour into a great one by winning both series and we can now turn it into an amazing tour if we complete a 4-1 victory.
There are many areas in which the team has gone forward, most notably the contribution of spin bowlers Botha and JP Duminy and the manner in which the bowlers as a unit have managed to close Australia down in the last 20 overs of each match, both in terms of restricting the run rate and taking wickets.
Tuesday's victory was set up by the bowlers who restricted Australia to 222. It was the first time that South Africa had managed to bowl the champions out inside the distance in successive ODIs.
Typically AB de Villiers stepped into Mark Boucher's wicketkeeping gloves as though he had been doing the job all his life and then he shared an unbroken partnership of 143 for the third wicket with Hashim Amla to clinch the victory and the man of the match award.
It could have gone to either batsman and should probably have been shared and it could equally have gone to Botha as well.
It is a sign of the team work of this team that there have been three or four candidates for man of the match honours in every match they have won and it should be a close contest for the man of the series award on Friday night.
www.cricket.co.za
