Close Thriller Still India Lost To South Africa

There is no stopping for India’s horrendous performance in South Africa. Already, the hosts have sealed the ODI series by winning the first two matches. In the final and third match held today, the visitors have been beaten again. India lost by 4 runs in this dead rubber.

Once again, it is the failure of the middle-order that had cost India in this game. It is almost like a repetition of the first ODI. While chasing a total of 288, India failed to get a good partnership from the openers as skipper KL Rahul went back to the pavilion very early.

However, Shikhar Dhawan (61) and Virat Kohli (65) settled the innings just like the way they did in the first game. In the process, they have also scored their respective half-centuries. However, things went haywire once they got dismissed.

None of the middle-order batters was able to build a good partnership. While it was Shardul Thakur who fought alone in the first ODI, it was Deepak Chahar (54) who did a similar feat in this game. He almost won the match for India. But he got out when the team needed 10 runs to win.

After Chahar’s dismissal, South Africa didn’t need much time to get the other batters out. As a result, India got all-out for 283. Meanwhile, it was Quinton De Kock (124) who shined for the home team on the batting front. Man-in-form Rassie van der Dussen (52) has played yet another brilliant knock.

On the whole, it was a terrible ODI series for Team India and it has a lot of problems to be solved. Both captain Rohit Sharma and head coach Rahul Dravid has a huge task of figuring out a formidable squad for the next year’s ODI World Cup.