SA vs IRE 1st T20 Match Highlight:

South Africa goes 1-0 up in the series with a 21-run victory over Ireland, as Reeza Hendricks capped his fourth consecutive half-century in the Twenty20 format where he scored 74 of 53 balls, hitting ten fours and a six. Markram also scored a fantastic 56 from 27 balls after hitting five sixes and two fours. Let us dive into more details at SA vs IRE 1st T20 Match Highlight.

Hendricks was riding his top form, where he scored his third half-centuries against the England side recently and now he scored his fourth consecutive Half-century in the T20 format.

After setting up the target of 211 for 5 in 20 overs, Ireland batsman Lorcan Tucker scored 78 of 38 balls and George Dockrell scored 43 from 28 balls keeping the hopes alive for the Irish side to win the game but as the innings progressed both of them were dismissed off successive balls and the Irish fell short of 21 runs. It is yet another match where the Irish have come close to winning but failed to cross the line.

Ireland have now faced their seventh successive loss in the Twenty20 format after facing India, New Zealand, and now South Africa this season. Maharaj, Parnell, and Shamsi took 2 wickets each, which made the Irish batsman struggle to chase down the target.

In the post-match interview, Man of the Match Reeza Hendricks Stated that “I have been working hard for the last couple of months, a bit of momentum is behind me, hoping to ride it longer. Unfortunately, we lost Quinton early and Aiden played fantastic innings along with me in that partnership which helped us to set up a total. There is a competition going on for places which is always good and there is a lot of quality on the side as well.”

When asked Andy Balbrinie the Ireland captain regarding 211 being a little too much, Andy stated that “No I don’t think so, in T20s currently, the pitches are pretty good, thought we were in it for most of the chase but the two wickets in two balls of the set batters cost us. That’s the turning point of the game. It’s smaller than the other grounds, but we had good phases in both batting and bowling, hopefully, we could change things on Friday. It is, playing an expensive game, but there are so many times we can be happy with our performance, we need to get the results as well. We are looking for a complete performance on Friday.

The second T20 will take place on Friday at 11 pm IST at the County ground, where the Irish will have a chance to level the series.

Man of the Match – Reeza Hendricks