South Africa vs India, 2018: 3rd T20I – Statistical Highlights

India ended a successful tour of South Africa with a thrilling win in the final game in Cape Town to seal the T20I series. Rohit Sharma led the Indian team in place of Virat Kohli, who was ruled out due to a side strain. India posted 172/7 in their 20 overs after losing the toss with Suresh Raina (43) and Shikhar Dhawan’s (47) contributions. JP Duminy steered the chase with a 51 despite a slow start from the home team. Debutant Christiaan Jonker struck a 24-ball 49 to scare India towards the end but fell short of the target by eight runs.

All the stats and numbers that were recorded during India’s T20I series victory:

3 – Only the 4th time a batting first won a T20I game at the Newlands in Cape Town. The teams batting second won 12 out of the 16 T20I matches at this venue.

3 – South Africa won the toss and elected to bowl first in all the three matches in this series. This is only the 3rd time a team won the tosses in all games and elected to bowl in a 3-match bilateral T20I series. England against India and Sri Lanka against South Africa at the start of 2017 are the previous two instances.

5 – India won all the five bilateral series deciders in the T20I format they played so far. Previously, India defeated Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe in 2016, England and New Zealand in 2017 when the series were level at 1-1.

7 – Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s seven wickets in this series are the most by an Indian pacer in a bilateral T20I series. Barinder Sran, Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya took six wickets each in three different series.

11 – Number of fifties for JP Duminy in the T20I format. These are the most number of fifties for a South Africa in this format surpassing AB de Villiers’ ten fifties.

32 – Runs aggregated by Rohit Sharma in this T20I series. These are the fewest Rohit ever scored in a T20I series/tournament where he batted three and more innings. His previous lowest was 56 runs in the home T20I series against Sri Lanka in 2016.

38 – The 38 runs by the Indian captains in this series is the lowest in a T20I series/tournament. (Min: 3 innings) MS Dhoni, who led India in the 2016 Asia Cup, aggregated 42 runs in the four innings. He was unbeaten in all those four innings.

49 – Christiaan Jonker’s 49 in this game is the 3rd highest individual score by a South Africa on T20I debut. Rilee Rossouw scored 78 on his debut in 2014 against Australia while Graeme Smith scored 61 in 2005 against New Zealand.

244.44 – JP Duminy’s batting strike-rate against Axar Patel in the T20Is. Duminy scored 44 runs in 18 balls against Axar in this format with six sixes. He scored 13 off three balls with two sixes against Axar in this match.