England and South Africa locked horns in the final league match of group 1 in the T20 World Cup 2021 in Sharjah. England had already one foot in the semi-final while South Africa had to beat England by a considerable margin to qualify.
Eoin Morgan won the toss and elected to bowl first. England brought Mark Wood in place of injured Tymal Mills while South Africa remained unchanged for this game.
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Batting first, South Africa posted a big total of 189/2 in 20 overs, where Rassie van der Dussen scored unbeaten 94 runs while Aiden Markram remained not out on 52 runs.
In response, England got off to a decent start but they lost Jason Roy to a hamstring injury, who limped off in the 5th over. Jos Buttler played a few aggressive shots but got out to Anrich Nortje. Moeen Ali threatened to take the game away from South Africa but got out to Tabraiz Shamsi for 37.
Dawid Malan and Liam Livingstone were hitting boundaries and eliminated South Africa by crossing the 131-run mark. Both batters were playing aggressively and it looked they will win the game for England. However, both got out at the wrong time for their team.
With 15 runs required off the final six balls, Kagiso Rabada came to bowl who had a terrible day with his first three overs going for 45 runs. Rabada dismissed Woakes on the first ball before removing England skipper Eoin Morgan on the second ball. Chris Jordan walked out and faced the hat-trick ball, which he tried to put away for a boundary. But David Miller took Jordan’s catch as Rabada completes a match-winning hat-trick.
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Rabada defended the 15 runs in his final over and won the match for South Africa by 10 runs. However, the Protea team will bow out of the tournament owing to an inferior net run rate in comparison to Australia.
