END OF OVER:16 | 13 Runs | SA: 174/2 | RR: 10.87
- AB de Villiers39 (36b)
- Richard Levi117 (51b)
- Tim Southee4-0-40-0
- Ronnie Hira4-0-34-0
I don't know about you but I'm still catching my breath after that. Levi should take many plaudits tonight, and rightly so. I'm sure our stats team will be beavering through Statsguru to give you the stats that matter from tonight's onslaught. Levi will have a chance to repeat the effort at a ground with even smaller boundaries, Auckland's Eden Park, on Wednesday night. Do join us for the 3rd and deciding match then, as well as the curtain raiser between New Zealand Women and England Women beforehand starting at 2.45pm local time. Until then, this is Avi Singh signing off on behalf of Gopi and Firdose, hoping we get another cracker of a game on Wednesday!
Richard Levi is the blindingly obvious choice for Man of the Match: "It was good fun, every shot we seemed to play came off, AB kept me calm. The leg side boundary was quite short, so I targeted that. I have no idea about the records, the time just went unbelievably quickly." He apologised to Simon Doull for only getting a single when he got to his fifty!
AB de Villiers: "There's a few things we can learn, but overall I was very happy with keeping them to 170 with the short boundaries. Botha has very good plans and he keeps the batsmen under pressure. I was trying to tell Richard to get off strike once we were at 10 an over but he just kept sending them flying. He's been fed a bit of biltong back home, but he has done this before so it's not a one-off. We go to Auckland with momentum now, very happy."
Brendon McCullum: "We thought we had a chance with 173, we would have liked 190-200 but when someone plays like that, there's not too much we can do. Richard played an absolutely unbelievable innings, he was too good tonight and didn't allow us to bowl well. We just have to forget this quickly, this was a night off for the bowlers so they should come back well in the next game. We wanted early wickets but now we need to pick ourselves up, hope for a great crowd in Auckland."
Levi has smashed many records tonight - most sixes, equal-highest score, fastest hundred. But most of all he smashed New Zealand's spirit, and looted all the bowlers like a pickpocket with the gun to back up his audacious heists. New Zealand needed at least 200 - the way Levi was going, even 220 wouldn't have been safe. The boundaries may have been small, but most of his strokes would have been far too good on any outfield.