In the first match of the Road Safety World Series, India Legends, captained by Sachin Tendulkar, showed a one-sided game and started with a win.
India Legends makes a winning start (Pic Credit RSWS Twitter)
India Legends started the Road Safety World Series with a win and defeated South Africa Legends by 61 runs in their first match. Batting first, India Legends scored a mammoth score of 217 runs for the loss of four wickets in the match played at the Greenpark Stadium in Kanpur. In front of this mountain-like score, South Africa’s team could score only 156 runs for the loss of nine wickets. Stuart Binny played an unbeaten 81 for India Legends.
No batsman of South Africa Legends could score even a half-century. His captain Jonty Rhodes scored the most runs for him. He played an innings of 38 not out. Rahul Sharma, who recently said goodbye to international cricket for India Legends, took three wickets in his name.
Good start for South Africa
Chasing the target of 218 runs, South Africa’s team got off to a good start. The pair of Andrew Putick and Morne Van Wyck added 43 runs for the first wicket. Rahul got the team the first success by dismissing Vyak. Putik is dismissed by Pragyan Ojha. Vyak scored 26 and Putik scored 23 runs. Ojha then showed Alvaro Pietersen the way to the pavilion. Henry David could only score six runs. Jack Rudolph also could not take his innings beyond 16 runs. Munaf Patel gave the sixth blow to South Africa by sending Johan Botha to the pavilion for eight runs. After that there was a flurry of wickets. However, Rhodes persisted and continued to bat in his own style. But from the other end, Johan van der Wath (0), Eddie Lei (0), Makhaya Ntini (6) returned to the pavilion and South Africa Legends had to face defeat.
Binny’s best innings
On behalf of India Legends, everyone expected that Sachin Tendulkar’s bat would run but he could score only 16 runs. Naman Ojha, who opened the innings with him, scored 21 runs. Both the batsmen had returned till the total score of 52 runs. Then Binny and Suresh Raina took over the team and scored fast. Both of them took the team’s score to 116. Raina scored 33 runs in 22 balls with the help of four fours and a six. He got out. Yusuf Pathan, who came after him, played a stormy innings. He scored 35 not out off 15 balls. In this innings, he hit one four and four sixes.