END OF OVER:20 | 13 Runs | SA: 201/8 (31 runs required, RR: 10.05)
- Corbin Bosch17 (15b)
- Lungi Ngidi7 (9b)
- Abhishek Sharma1-0-13-0
- Jasprit Bumrah4-0-17-2
Thanks for joining us. Look forward to a lot more cricket. Take care and happy new year.
Suryakumar Yadav: "Brand of cricket we wanted to play was the same, result is in front of us. This [intent-laden effort] was missing, glad we were able to replicate. Wanted to bowl Bumrah one over in PP, one in middle post-drinks and then in the end. We were challenged, but this game is about how you come back. Good challenging series, we did what we could. Only thing is we couldn't find Surya the batter, I think he's missing somewhere. But he'll come back strong. As a leader, very pleased with how the series went."
Hardik Pandya is the PoM for his 25-ball 63.
Varun Chakravarthy is the Player of the series for his 10 wickets
Aiden Markram: 230 was always gonna require a near-to-perfect chase. Top three set it up, middle order couldn't take it forward. But these lessons could prove to be very valuable looking ahead to WC. We wanted to expose Brewis against spin, he makes six hitting easy. We went with out gut feel [Brewis batting ahead of him]. Got asked some tough questions in this series. Nice to experience it, we know what we gotta do.
Tilak Varma: "I know how the Ahmedabad wicket goes (plays) here. The way Abhishek and Sanju bhai played at the start of the game, I knew that the wicket was good. Just wanted to maintain that strike rate and I just wanted to show that intent. It was incredible batting by Hardik bhai. It was a treat to watch from the non-striker's end. The way he was hitting was very clean and he was fantastic to watch."
Here's Sidharth Monga on our Live Report:
"India's win margin is way bigger than how close-run a thing this was. I don't think India breathed easy until Marco Jansen fell, the eighth wicket. In the end, Jasprit Bumrah's four overs proved to be the difference, and so did Hardik Pandya's innings. He was the first one who made the statement they can't be happy with 210. Tilak Varma joined him. And those extra 20 runs or so gave India an even hand at the end of 10 overs of the chase when South Africa were 118 for 1. Happy New Year."
11pm India cruised home in the end, though it hardly felt that way when Quinton de Kock was going hammer and tongs. The chase tilted decisively only after the halfway mark, when Jasprit Bumrah and Varun Chakravarthy were introduced and wrested back control at a moment South Africa appeared to have the upper hand.
The win sealed India's eighth consecutive T20I series triumph, a streak that began in December 2023.
On a night when more than 400 runs were scored, Bumrah's 2 for 17 seems illegal. They were, needless to say, the difference between the two sides. Both wickets - of de Kock and Marco Jansen - came via the slower ball.

