Watch cricket video highlights of ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 thirty-first match between South Africa vs Nepal. Venue of the match will be Kingstown.
Nepal’s fans in Kingstown were devastated when their team lost to South Africa in a thrilling match by only one run. Both players and fans were in tears as a result of Nepal’s elimination from the T20 World Cup 2024 Super Eight round. With four victories in a row, South Africa swept the group stage thanks to Tabraiz Shamsi’s 4 for 19, which pulled them back with an impressive 18th over. But the game appeared to be Nepal’s to lose for a very long time. Even on a challenging, shifting surface, their spinners had woven a web to restrict South Africa to a pitiful 115 for 7, and with seven wickets remaining, they were able to reduce the equation to 25 required from 30 balls with the bat.
However, Shamsi, who replaced Keshav Maharaj, changed the course of the match with a double-wicket 18th over that included Aasif Sheikh’s 42 off 49. The game was reduced to two off two balls by two late runs from Sompal Kami and the eighteen-year-old Gulsan Jha, despite the dots that followed raising the needed rate. However, Nepal was unable to get bat on the ball both times because to Ottneil Baartman’s two dots, and their final try at a last-gasp run came up just short.
Perhaps still shaken from their previous tournament experiences, South Africa started the match a little too cautiously and, as a result, batted conservatively when the circumstances were ideal for batting. South Africa was guilty of waiting for loose deliveries rather than forcing the bowlers off their lines early on, even if their 38 for 1 in the powerplay was their greatest score of the competition. As for Nepal, they never looked back once the spinners took hold and seldom deviated from their lines and lengths.
The opening ball from Sandeep Lamichhane gripped and spun past Reeza Hendricks’ defense at 6.2 degrees, and it set the tone for South Africa, who seldom looked comfortable against the turning ball after that. In Nepal’s first encounter outside of the United States, Lamichhane’s probing session yielded just 18 runs in his opening appearance of the tournament, even though he would end up wicketless. However, Nepal had enough spin overs to take advantage of the circumstances thanks to the bowling of Dipendra Singh Airee (3 for 21) and Kushal Bhurtel (4 for 19), who combined to take all seven South African wickets.
South Africa tried their best to play the circumstances calmly, but they were unable to raise their game despite putting up runs-a-ball stands of 22 and 46 for the first two wickets. Only Tristan Stubbs, who came in at number eight and hit 27 off of 18 balls, had a strike rate greater than 100. Nepal bowled 14 overs of spin, including the last over of the innings, in total. After giving up just 57 runs in the first 10 overs, Nepal had only given up 58 runs for six wickets at that point until Bhurtel claimed two wickets for nine runs.
An early relief came for Nepal when Kagiso Rabada fumbled a catch. Following that, Nepal chose to play risk-free cricket, slogging their way to 32 at the conclusion of the powerplay without dropping a single wicket. However, because spin is such a crucial component of the game, Shamsi’s entrance was always going to be important, and it was. He unsettled Bhurtel and Rohit Paudel’s stumps in his opening over alone, igniting South Africa’s comeback. Following Shamsi’s subsequent over, Anil Sah and Aasif both attempted to reconstruct. After two boundaries from Anrich Nortje increased their pace and a six from Shamsi gave them a real chance to win, Sah was the first to up the ante. Sheikh came on in the next over, taking Rabada for six and four before the two connected for fifty off of only 36 deliveries.
Because South Africa only had one front-line spinner in the XI, they had to timing Shamsi’s comeback exactly so. The Sah-Sheikh stand had been broken by Aiden Markram’s intermittent pauses, but Airee was adamant on sticking with the predetermined Sheikh. But Shamsi now appears. Quinton de Kock received a feather touch on Airee’s attempted pull after his third delivery of the eighteenth went down the leg side. The contact was so little that Airee looked back, believing he had not touched anything. Then, with his last delivery, Shamsi got the big fish, blasting one past Aasif’s bat and pad and into the stumps with a clatter. After he finished, Nepal required 16 out of 12.
In the last over, Nortje provided support for Shamsi by bowling four consecutive dots, one of which removed the top of Kushal Malla’s middle stump. Nepal needed to score eighteen points, meaning they needed to score at least one major goal before it was too late. The penultimate over saw Kami unleash a devastating 105-meter pull that sent the ball flying over the bleachers, cutting the deficit to eight. The Nepali supporters got up and took out their phones to record what might become a historic occasion when the adolescent Jha found a boundary over cover to make it four runs off three balls.
Nepal demonstrated perfect comprehension of the brief with a hard-run two off the following ball, but two beautifully timed slower bouncers by Baartman off the last two deliveries proved too brilliant to be ignored. A last-ball bye may have resulted in a Super Over, but Heinrich Klaasen, who was hiding close to the stumps, caught the ball as it deflected off Jha and flipped it to the non-striker’s end. Nepal was out and Jha was short.
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