Kane Williamson saves New Zealand blushes

New Zealand managed to save the third cricket test as the series folded 1-0 in South Africa’s favour. The visitors emerged as winners in all the three formats of the game leaving the Kiwis with a lot to ponder ahead of the T20 cricket world cup in September,
this year.

South Africa scored a massive 474 in their first innings courtesy of centuries from Alviro Petersen and JP Duminy. The duo scored 156 and 103 respectively followed by contributions from Hashim Amla 63, AB de Villiers 38 and Mark Boucher 46. The Proteas declared
their innings at 474/9.

Mark Gillespie picked up six wickets, Chris Martin a brace while one wicket fell to Doug Bracewell. Daniel Vettori, Dean Brownlie and Kane Williamson went wicketless.

In reply, New Zealand scrapped their way to 275 with contributions coming from Daniel Flynn 45, Martin Guptill 59, Williamson 39 and Brendon McCullum 31. Vernon Philander picked up 6/81 while Dale Steyn bagged a brace for 41. Merchant de Lange took the other
wicket.

Leading by 199, the visitors scored with rapid pace in their second innings and declared at 189/3 at 6.37 runs per over. Petersen made 39(43), Graeme Smith 41(65), De Villiers 68(49) and Duminy 33 (23) not-out.

Asking New Zealand to chase 389, the hosts got off to the worst possible start as Morne Morkel reduced them to 83/5. Williamson and Kruger van Wyk added 80 for the sixth wicket before the latter departed for 39. Williamson and Brownlie saw the day out with
an unbeaten stand of 37 with Williamson remaining not-out at 102 and Brownlie on 20.

Morkel picked up all the six wickets and was declared the Man of the Match as South Africa won the three-match series 1-0.  

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Posted by Taha Habib on Mar 27 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry