South Africa Wins a Thriller Against the Hosts

It was a very disappointing night for India as South Africa edged past the hosts,winning by three wickets.It was a thriller and the jam packed crowd in the in the orange city of Nagpur were enjoying every bit of the action.Sehwag and Sachin entertained the crowd early on,Steyn bagged five wickets and at the end Robin Petersen grabbed the victory from India under pressure.

India were off to a fiying start with Sehwag and Sachin punishing the bowlers very well.As usual Virender Sehwag started it off with a boundary.Sachin who was more aggressive than before,scored his fifty in just 33 balls.The duo put up a stand of  142 runs and scored 87 runs in the mandatory powerplay ,which is the highest in this world cup so far.Sehwag got out when he was on 77.Sachin was not bothered about it and put up a good partnership with Gautam Gambhir.

The 'Master Blaster' after hitting his 6th world cup ton,which
is a world record

The crowd went mad when the 'Master Blaster' scored his 6th world cup ton(which is a world record) and 48th of his carrier.He extended his record for the most centuries in world cup's  who is playing his 6th World cup which itself is a world record(Javed Miandad has also participated in six world cups).The very next ball Gambhir got to his fifty.At that point India were well sure of going past the 350 line mark.

India took the batting powerplay in the 39th over and that made all the differences.Sachin,Gambhir,Yusuf Pathan and Yuvraj lost their wickets and at the end of the batting powerplay the score was 286/6 which at one stage was 267/1.Then it was a precession as the Indian batsmen came to the crease and returned back to    
the dressing room cheaply.Steyn took 5/50 and was awarded the man of the match,restricting India for just 296 runs.It is a fact that the strongest batting in the tournament lost 9 wickets in the race for 29 runs.

In response South Africa started decently.As usual Zaheer Khan got rid of Smith but Amla(61) and Kallis(69)    made half centuries.Their partnership was broken by Harbhajan Singh who took 3/53.Then they lost wickets in quick successions.Zaheer and Munaf Patel bowled their 10 overs and only Harbhajan and Nehra were the specialists left to bowl the last over.After some discussion he chose the seamer.They needed 13 to win from the last over and luck was with Robin Petersen who was on strike,got an inside edge which went for four.He kept his cool and smashed the next ball  for a six and he took away the victory from India hitting another boundary while the Indian supporters were witnessing a drama.

Steyn who thrashed India receives the the man of the match award.
He took 5/50

After the match talking about their bad display of batting in the crucial powerplay overs Dhoni said,"Don't play for the crowd,play for your country.If we would have batted normally for 50 overs we could have scored at least 20 more runs but at times when you go for twenty more runs you could end up getting forty less runs because you loose too many wickets".And that's what happened to the Indians.