Durban,
\nCaptain Virat Kohli struck a stylish century to lead India to a comfortable six-wicket victory over South Africa in the first One-day International here today and end the hosts’ 17-match winning streak on home soil. India amassed 270\/4 to reach their target with 27 balls to spare at Kingsmead after South Africa captain Faf du Plessis, who won the toss, scored 120 of his side’s 269\/8.<\/p>\n
A record 189-run third-wicket partnership between Kohli, who made 112, and Ajinkya Rahane (79) set up India’s victory at the start of the six-match series. Kohli reached his 33rd ODI ton off 105 balls, while Rahane’s flamboyant knock came off 86 balls.<\/p>\n
Their partnership was the highest for the third wicket in an ODI at the Durban venue, beating a two decade-old mark held by Pakistan, and ensured India eased to victory with wickets and overs to spare.<\/p>\n
Du Plessis carried his side as his teammates were strangled by India’s wrist spinners, slumping to 134\/5 with Kuldeep Yadav the pick of the bunch as he finished with figures of 3\/34 in an economical 10-over spell. Together with Chris Morris (37), Du Plessis piled on late runs to take South Africa to a better than expected total, and hand a sell-out crowd hope but still significantly short of a defendable target.<\/p>\n
India have won eight of their previous nine ODIs chasing down a target and Kohli felt his side always in with a chance of doing so again.<\/p>\n
“It was a special knock for me because the first game of a series is always important. When we restricted South Africa we knew we needed one partnership to effectively take us home,” Kohli said.<\/p>\n
Spin twins
\nThe two wrist-spinners doing well in their first ODI in South Africa is good news, and Kohli must be delighted. \u201cThey help you in any conditions in the world,\u201d Kohli had said. \u201cThey can go for six an over but they will pick you three wickets as well, which is eventually the difference in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the record, Yadav\u2019s 3\/34 is the joint second-best analysis by an Indian spinner against South Africa on their pitches, after Harbhajan Singh\u2019s 3\/27 in 2001. Yadav has become only the fourth Indian spinner after Venkatapathy Raju (in 1992), Harbhajan, and Yuvraj Singh (in 2011) to take three wickets in an ODI against South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Durban, Captain Virat Kohli struck a stylish century to lead India to a comfortable six-wicket victory over South Africa in the first One-day International here today and end the hosts’ 17-match winning streak on home soil. India amassed 270\/4 to reach their target with 27 balls to spare at Kingsmead after South Africa captain Faf […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20616,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20614\/revisions\/20616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}