Black Caps spoil Proteas party

AB de Villiers, who filled in as captain, was expected to open the batting but pushed himself to No. 3 in the first match, allowing Morne van Wyk to partner Hashim Amla at the top.

“You want to give your most explosive and best player a crack at getting in early and scoring runs, that is something we will stick with even though the conditions here will probably suggest otherwise. He needs to get used to batting in that new role”. Unlike at Kingsmead, South Africa could not find their feet on a surface that appeared stripped of moisture and suited to spin, but surprisingly rewarded use of the short ball.

New Zealand came into the series fresh from an 80-run win over Zimbabwe in a one-off T20I in Harare but slipped in the first game against South Africa, losing by six wickets in Durban.

Wiese was the other standout South African bowler, taking one for 26 in his four overs and, had catches gone to hand, he would have had two more wickets.

“Credit has to go to the way South Africa bowled”, said Williamson. “We took wickets at crucial moments but we were also quite smart with our bowling”. We struggled to get momentum on our side.

“Leading up to the World Cup, winning games is extremely important”, du Plessis said.

Cape Town – The Proteas will, virtually needless to say, still have the oppressive matter of that major-tournament jinx hanging over them when they compete in the next ICC World Twenty20 tournament in India in March.

It seemed at that point that a unsafe NZ total of 180-plus was possible… but it was also roughly the time that South Africa pulled themselves together at a rate of knots and then never significantly relaxed the pressure for the rest of the contest.

Kane Williamson departed for a brisk 25 from 17 balls, attempting an expansive drive off Kagiso Rabada, and Kyle Abbott took a a good catch running in from the third man boundary as New Zealand lost their first wicket with the score on 52 in the sixth over.

“The guys that are here are high quality cricketers”.

The echoes of 2013 are getting louder for Martin Guptill, suddenly the Black Caps’ most experienced player can sense another one-day upset in South Africa. It’s premature to refer to cricket fatigue when the national side hasn’t turned out on home soil for seven months, but sports fans are mostly creatures of habit and cravers of context, and this time their routine has been rudely challenged by a series that appears to mean nothing.

New Zealand won the toss and decided to bat in the second and final Twenty20 worldwide at SuperSport Park on Sunday.