The weather held off long enough, the Dutch, already under-manned, lacked firepower and the Proteas earned a crucial 10 points that will help their chances for automatic World Cup qualification with a comfortable eight-wicket victory in Benoni on Friday.
South Africa gave their Super League net run rate a boost too which may prove significant if Ireland do win all three of their matches against Bangladesh in May and thus tie with the Proteas on the log.
They started well after Bavuma chose to bowl, with the openers Max O’ Dowd and Vikramjit Singh adding 58 for the first wicket in 11 overs. Besides good bounce, there was little assistance for the new ball bowlers in terms of movement through the air, though Marco Jansen got the odd one to wobble off the seam.
It was the ideal situation for Tabraiz Shamsi to bowl in after his recent struggles with confidence, that coach Rob Walter acknowledged would require some work from a technical perspective. Walter said last week the left-arm wrist spinner had developed “bad habits” playing so many T20 matches. On Friday however, the Dutch batters couldn’t really attack him, which allowed Shamsi to find a rhythm and through that there was better control of both line and length.
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