Ireland v South Africa

The Proteas Takes On the Minnows
In the super eight round match on Tuesday the Protease was fighting it out against the surprise package of this world cup. Although not much was anticipated from this match but considering the kind of upsets this world cup has witnessed this match aroused interest. Moreover this match was essential for South Africa to book their berth at the semi finals of this tournament. Weather as usual was looming its grim face on this match and was expected to affect its fate.

Coin favored the Protease
The pitch was hard and even and thus expected to favor the batsmen. But after winning the toss South African skipper Graeme Smith decided to field first. His decision was influenced by good amount of grass on the pitch that would help in producing bounce with the ball. Thus the South African team went ahead with reliance on their successful pace battery. The idea was to make incision through the top order in the early hours of the match making good use of the pace and bounce of the pitch.

Shaky Start
Ireland as expected started very vulnerably against one of the best pace attacks in the world. In the third over of the match they lost their first wicket when the scorecard read zero for Ireland. Opener Bray fell for a golden duck after facing 9 balls. The Irish batting line up then held their wicket till the 13th over of the innings and added 31 runs to the scoreboard. Then to go was the other opener Portefield who scored 14 runs from 33 balls. The wickets kept on falling at regular interval and they had no chance to resurrect their team. The other successful batsmen of the side were EJG Morgan who scored 28 runs from 50 balls, NJ O’Brian with 25 runs from 37 balls, and AR White scoring 30 runs from 30 balls. The match as anticipated was affected by the heavy rain. The game was stalled for 2 hours with the weather condition not favoring play.