Sri Lanka score historic series win over Proteas
Sri Lanka created their own piece of history when they beat the Standard Bank Proteas by 5 wickets with a ball to spare in the final KFC T20 International at PPC Newlands on Wednesday night.
It gave them a 2-1 victory in the series, the first time they have won a series in any format in South Africa.
The heroes of their success were Niroshan Dickwella (68 off 51 balls, 10 fours and a six), who shared a third-wicket partnership of 71 with Dhananjaya de Silva and Seekkuge Prasanna who scored a career-best 37 not out off just 16 balls with 3 fours and 3 sixes to finish the job.
To a slightly lesser extent, the experienced Nuwan Kulasekara contributed significantly to the success by taking 1/11 in his last two overs, including the key one of AB de Villiers, that prevented the Proteas from exploiting the last six overs of their innings to the extent that they should have done.
They only scored 39 runs in five overs and it was only some strong hitting by Mangaliso Mosehle in the final over that added 21 runs to the total including 3 sixes in 4 balls that gave the Proteas something reasonable to defend.
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De Villiers was the main contributor to the South African total (63 off 44 balls, 2 fours and 3 sixes, the second of which was his 50th in T20 International cricket) and his second-wicket partnership of 71 with Reeza Hendricks set the Proteas up to construct a far more challenging total.
The Proteas were unlucky to lose Lungi Ngidi after he had bowled only 2 of his 4 overs with a hip injury after he fell heavily on one of the side pitches but in the end, they had only themselves to blame for their defeat.
The key moment came in Wayne Parnell’s 2nd over when the Proteas dropped a hat-trick of catches off the 4th, 5th and 6th balls of the over. De Silva was dropped on 3 and then Dickwella on 19 and again on 23.
In the end, those chances made all the difference.
Dickwella finished the series as the only batsman on either side to score more than 100 runs in the series and he was deservedly named both KFC Man of the Match and KFC Man of the Series.