Markam, de Kock star as South Africa set USA to chase 195

Powered by Quinton de Kock (74) and Aiden Markram (46), South Africa posted 194/4 after 20 overs against the USA in their Super-8 T20 World Cup fixture being played at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, North Sound, on Wednesday.

After being asked to bat first, South Africa didn’t have the brightest start as Reeza Hendricks continued his bad form and returned to the pavilion after just scoring 11 runs, leaving his side 16-1 in 2.4 overs.

However, after losing one wicket, the Proteas recovered quickly as Quinton de Kock decided to take charge of their innings and played his best knock of the tournament by scoring 74 runs on 40 balls with the help of seven fours and five sixes.

Heinrich Klaasen and Tristan Stubbs stayed till the end and helped South Africa conclude their innings at – in the allocated overs.

For the USA, Saurabh Netravalkar bagged two wickets for just 21 runs in four overs. Harmeet Singh also removed two Proteas batters for 24 runs.

Earlier, the USA’s skipper Aaron Jones won the toss and opted to bowl first. Jones confirmed that they will be going with an extra spinner as the conditions may not be much different from Dallas.

"We're going to go with the extra spinner," Jones said. "I don't think it's going to be too different to Dallas."

On the other hand, South Africa's captain Aiden Markram was unsure about what he would have done had he won the toss.

"We weren't sure what to do," Markram admitted. "We would also have leaned towards bowling but we're not too bothered with the result of the toss."

Playing XIs

South Africa: Quinton de Kock (wk), Reeza Hendricks, Aiden Markram (c), Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, Tristan Stubbs, Marco Jansen, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje, Tabraiz Shamsi

USA: Steven Taylor, Shayan Jahangir, Andries Gous (wk), Aaron Jones (c), Nitish Kumar, Corey Anderson, Harmeet Singh, Jasdeep Singh, Nosthush Kenjige, Ali Khan, Saurabh Netravalkar