MARTIN GUPTILL produced two moments of brilliance in the field and then blazed his way to an unbeaten 78 to take the first T20 International match away from the Proteas at Wellington on Friday.
Although the match went all the way to the final over the New Zealand Black Caps won quite comfortably by six wickets with four balls to spare. The remaining two matches are at Hamilton on Sunday and at Auckland next Wednesday. Both matches start at 08h00 (CAT).
Guptill struck two mortal blows after the Black Caps had won the toss when he first ran out Hashim Amla off a misfield in a display that was similar to Jonty Rhodes’ famous run out of Inzamam-ul-Haq at the 1992 ICC World Cup. He followed it with an excellent low catch to remove Proteas’ captain AB de Villiers on a full blooded cover drive.
This set the Proteas right back to the extent that they did not score a boundary between the 4th and 15th over, the sequence only being broken when Justin Ontong celebrated his international return with four successive sixes off Kane Williamson.
After losing four wickets for 52 runs in the first nine overs the Proteas required urgent consolidation and that was provided by Ontong (32 off 17 balls with 4 sixes) and JP Duminy (41 off 37 balls with 3 fours) during a fifth wicket partnership that realised 50 runs off 37 balls.
The final total of 147/6 looked a good 20 runs short and that proved to be the case. The Proteas needed their bowling attack to be at its best. But the team as a whole did not look nearly as battle hardened as the New Zealanders with a failure by the batsmen to put away bad balls and of the bowlers to get their lines and lengths right.
Guptill got too many balls in his favourite hitting areas and responded with 5 fours and 4 sixes, two of which carried all of 120 metres.
Guptill has been in great form this season and it was his sixth successive international score of 50 or more. He was the obvious choice as Man of the Match.
“Not a great start, I take responsibility for that,” commented De Villiers. “Overs 4 to 9 cost us, we didn't cash in at all, but we fought back and in the end we got quite close. We played well in patches, but we want to get it all together in the next game.”
