South Africa defeat West Indies and history…..

South Africa v West Indies contests in multilateral tournaments, such as the 1996 World Cup quarter final, or the 2003 World Cup opener or Champion’s Trophy knock out matches in 2004 and 2006, have usually found the West Indies batting line up playing well enough to beat South African team work. Lara has twice made centuries against South Africa in World Cups, while the Champions Trophy results have been achieved by Gayle, Sarwan and Chanderpaul. The West Indies bowling has invariably been good enough to limit South Africa to attainable scores.

Todays game was a must win game for both sides, and South Africa gave a clinical exhibition of Cricket 4.0. The contest was beyond the West Indies batsmen even before they started their innings. Lara’s unique (and at time baffling) marshaling of his resources in the field (he took the final power-play in the 44th over!) didn’t help the West Indies. Against a Cricket 4.0 machine, even playing well is sometimes not good enough. Here we had a West Indies outfit under-performing. South Africa might in fact have been disappointed that inspite of the last 11 overs producing 152 runs, they ended up with a mere 356. The contest was truly over once Lara went and the South Africans cruised home by 67 runs. The match track below shows that the South Africans dominated the contest starting with the Kallis-de Villiers partnership and the West Indies had no answer from that point on.

South Africa have taken a giant step towards securing a semi-final birth today. Now, it is Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and South Africa with more or less secured semi-final slots with Bangladesh and England having an outside chance. Bangladesh will have to beat England, West Indies and Ireland to progress. Each of these teams now are in must win situations though.