South Africa beat England at a canter by CricketArchive Staff Reporter

---

Scorecard:	England v South Africa
Player:	JH Kallis, WD Parnell, DW Steyn, OA Shah
Event:	ICC World Twenty20 2009

---

DateLine: 11th June 2009

 

South Africa would be happy about the fairly comfortable win they had over England, but the think-tank would be left wondering why they could not be totally dominating in the face of very little that England had to offer.

 

Chasing England’s very poor 111, South Africa reached 114/3 in the 19th over, which could be seen as a comfortable win, but not a commanding one, especially in the batting department.

 

Jacques Kallis was the cornerstone of the win, with a fluent unbeaten 57 off 49 balls and while Herschelle Gibbs got a run-a-ball 30, he didn’t look in his elements.

 

The England bowlers didn’t have much to defend, but they managed to keep some control on the scoring for the early part of the innings. But they will have to find some additional gears if they want to go any further in the tournament, especially since they take on India next.

 

Batting first, England couldn’t have asked for a worse start. They normally depend a lot on Ravi Bopara and Luke Wright to get them off to a decent start, but once Bopara had dragged a slower one from Dale Steyn on to his stumps, and Wright edged one to Mark Boucher off Wayne Parnell, the slide was incurable.

 

Four for two became 25 for three when batting mainstay Kevin Pietersen lofted one from Albie Morkel to Roelof van der Merwe at mid-on.

 

Owais Shah and skipper Paul Collingwood added 53 runs after that but the rate was never rapid and once Jacques Kallis had blasted through Collingwood’s defences, it was pretty much downhill.

 

Shah was the only batsman who had anything to offer, and once he had carted a Johan Botha full toss for a six, it seemed to free his mind and the next over from Van der Merwe went for two fours and a six, and more came from Shah’s bat in later overs.

 

But sadly for England, there was no support. James Foster and Dimitri Mascarenhas couldn’t negotiate Van der Merwe and the tail really didn’t have enough to negotiate the bowling.

 

The bowlers naturally all had decent figures, with left-arm seamer Parnell claiming three wickets and Kallis and Van der Merwe getting two apiece. The fielding was sharp, and England were really up against it all the time.