Cardiff: India started off their campaign on a winning note as they outplayed South Africa by 26 runs in the inaugural match of the ICC Champions Trophy here on Thursday. It was some brilliant batting from Rohit Sharma (65) and Shikhar Dhawan (114) which setup the tone for India and later the spin-twins of R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja bowled brilliantly to help the men-in-blue win their opening encounter.
Chasing the target of 332, South Africa had a shaky start as they lost Hashim Amla and Colin Ingram quite early. But De Villiers and Peterson played some swashbuckling shots to keep Proteas in the hunt as they reached 2/77 after 10 overs.
The Indian pacers were a complete failure which forced Indian skipper MS Dhoni to bring in Ashwin, Jadeja and Suresh Raina into attack which allowed India to put brake on the scoring rate of South Africa. However the Proteas managed to reach 154 in the 24th over.
Jadeja gave India the breakthrough when got rid of Peterson through run-out and later picked up the wicket of JP Duminy to give his team the upperhand. Tha fall of De Villiers, followed by David Miller reduced SA to 188/6. Ryan McLaren and Faf Du Plesis did smack some boundaries to give Proteas an outside chance with their 45-run partnership before Ishant Sharma got the wicket of Du Plesis.
McLaren smacked a terrific half-century and remained unbeaten on 71 which were studded with 11 fours and a six. He added 48 runs for the last wicket to keep his side in the hunt but Bhuvneshwar got Morne Morkel out to seal the fate of the match.
Earlier, it was brilliant batting from the new opening duo of Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan which gave India a strong start. Sharma smacked regular boundaries off Tsotsobe and Morkel and took pressure off Dhawan who took his time to settle down. The duo helped India reach 126 runs by the end of 21st over.
But Sharma got carried away while trying to accelerate the scoring rate and departed after scoring 65 runs off 80 balls. Virat Kohli came onto the crease to accompany Dhawan who by then had got into the groove and had started dealing in fours and sixes. Shikhar kept score ticking and helped India reach 179 in 30 overs. Meanwhile, he also reached his maiden hundred. Soon Kohli also came in to party and scored two back-to-back boundaries off Morkel but departed soon while trying to muscle the ball for six off Tsotsobe.
Soon Indian innings lost the momentum as Dhawan played a half-hearted shot off Duminy and was out on 114 runs and was followed by Dinesh Karthik and Suresh Raina. McLaren gave these back-to-back blows as he took the wicket of Karthik for 14 runs whereas Raina could add just nine runs to the team’s total. Ashwin got run out after scoring run-a-ball 10.
But it was some brilliant batting from Jadeja towards the end which helped India reach a respectable total of 331 runs in their 50 overs. Meanwhile Dhoni smashed 27 runs off 26 balls before he was sent back to the pavilion. Jadeja remained unbeaten at 47 runs off 29 balls.