A great half-century from Stuart Binny and superb spin bowling from Rahul Sharma and Pragyan Ojha helped India Legends beat South Africa Legends by 61 runs in Saturday’s Road Safety World Series opener. India is off to a great start to their Round the World on Road Safety campaign with this comprehensive programme. On the other hand, South Africa still has a lot of things to fix if it wants to progress further.
Chasing 218, Andrew Puttick and Morne van Wyk put the South African Legends off to a good start. Spinner Rahul Sharma gave India a breakthrough, trapping van Wyk lbw with 26 of 24 balls.
Soon after, Pragyan Ojha also put Puttick for 23 out of 24 balls, and Sachin Tendulkar started. South Africa Legends is 2/58 at this point.
South Africa went on to lose the match to the Indian vortex, with Ojha trapping Alviro Petersen just 10 after he was beaten by Naman Ojha. Later, Henry Davids’ wicket was taken by Yuvraj. Davids could only score six runs.
More than half the match, South Africa drew 4/90. Rahul Sharma got his second win after knocking out Jacques Rudolph in 16 shots and 14 shots.
Pacer Munaf Patel joined the team, cleaning Johan Botha’s ball all-round in just eight runs. South Africa Legends was eliminated at 106/6.
Captain Jonty Rhodes managed to steady one end. Johan van der Wath and Eddie Leie scored, trapped by Rahul and pacer Irfan Pathan, respectively. The score is 124/8 for South Africa in 17.2 passes.
Munaf got his second goal of the game, knocking out Makhaya Ntini by six points. With this, SA was left at 142/9 with a wide left to get 76 unattainable runs.
South Africa finished their innings at 156/9, winning fourteen runs in the final. Captain Jonty finished as the top scorer for his team with 38 out of 27 passes. India Legends won the match with 61 runs.
Rahul (3/17) and Pragyan Ojha (2/32) dealt damage with their spin while Munaf Patel also received two rackets. Irfan and Yuvraj each received a wicket.
Voting in advance, India Legends is off to a good start. Openers Naman Ojha and Sachin Tendulkar played in some nice shorts to the delight of nostalgic fans. However, South African athlete Makhaya Ntini finished 46 games in just 5.2 laps by knocking out Tendulkar just 16 of 15 balls after he was caught by Johan Botha.
Ojha was soon dismissed by Johan van der Wath for 21 of 18 passes, with India Legends 52/2 in 6.1 rounds.
Then Suresh Raina, who recently retired from all formats of the game becoming the focus of fan attention, scores with ease. Stuart Binny is also firing fast from the other end. They stood in the stands for an exciting 64 games, which ended with Raina being sent off 33 of 22 balls by Eddie Leie. Following that, struggling Yuvraj Singh also dropped cheaply with just 6 of 8 balls, dropping India to 129/4 in 14.3 overs.
This has put tough player Yusuf Pathan into the fold. After his arrival, India Legends’ scoring rate began to increase massively, with both hitters making aerial passes. Binny has also completed his half-century.
By the time the 20 passes were completed, India had achieved a high score of 217/4.
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Binny scored a superb 82 points out of 42 balls with five touchlines and six sixs. Yusuf Pathan also brings back his power hitting avatar to smash 35* with just 15 boundary balls and four big six balls.
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