South Africa A lost their third successive game on tour on Wednesday as Australia A beat them by a whopping 108 runs in Chennai.
The tour of misery continued as Dean Elgar and his men failed to get even close to Australia’s target of 273. South Africa fell well short, only managing 164 as they were bowled out in 37.1 overs.
Elgar top scored with 64 with Khaya Zondo (47) the only other batsman to show any kind of resistance. At 37-3 the writing was pretty much on the wall as it would have taken a special innings to reach 273 from there. South Africa never recovered as Cameron Boyce (3-48) and Ashton Agar (3-41), who has just been included in Australia’s ODI squad for the coming series against England, combined to book Australia’s place in the final of the triangular series against India A.
Matthew Wade won the toss and proceeded to top score with 130 off 106 balls. Peter Handscomb chipped in with 52 to secure a competitive total for the Australians.
Lonwabo Tsotsobe (3-50) was the pick of the bowlers, while Hardus Viljoen (2-57), Beuran Hendricks (2-51) and Dean Elgar (2-45) also made valuable contributions.
South Africa A had to recover from food poisoning they suffered from over the weekend when as many as 10 players were affected and had to be taken to hospital.
Quinton de Kock was one of those players, even though he scored a hundred in the previous game. He was, however, left out of the team on Wednesday which means he probably didn’t recover properly in time to be considered.
Wednesday’s game was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but the BCCI granted the South Africans more time to fully recover from the food poisoning ordeal.
They will play India A in their last game on Thursday.
Picture credit: K Sivaraman
