Matthew Breetzke scored a superb 112 to guide South Africa to a 67-run victory over Australia \u200cin the first one-day international in Durban on Thursday, but the tourists will rue the loss of cheap wickets as they \u200cfaltered in their chase.<\/p>\n
South Africa posted 297-8 in their 50 overs and Australia were well \u200bon course after a fast start, until poor shot selection caused their charge to collapse and they finished on 230 all out, losing \u200btheir last nine wickets for 101 runs.<\/p>\n
Australia will welcome the \u200clikely return of captain Pat Cummins for the second match in the three-game series in Johannesburg on Sunday, live on Sky Sports, but \u200bif this series is a fact-finding mission ahead of the 2027 Cricket World Cup in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, there will be much food for thought.<\/p>\n
“I’m pretty \u200bdisappointed,” Australia captain Mitch Marsh said. “South Africa outplayed us. It was \u2060a good game of cricket but we \u2060fell well short.<\/p>\n
“We had our opportunities, I am probably going to sound like a broken record speaking about having partnerships in our \u200cbatting, but we weren’t able to form many tonight.”<\/p>\n
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This content is provided by Twitter, which may be using cookies and other technologies. Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Twitter cookies. Enable Cookies<\/a> Australia won the toss and decided to bowl, strangling the South African run-rate early on.<\/p>\n But when Breetzke came in at number \u200cfour, he played conventional cricket shots to get his innings started, before he found a willing partner in big-hitting Marco Jansen.<\/p>\n Breetzke, who averages over 60 with the bat in his 15 ODIs, scored his 112 from 106 deliveries and Jansen equalled his career best with \u206075 in 59 deliveries.<\/p>\n Australia started their innings in brilliant fashion as Marsh \u200bblasted 60 from 36 balls and put on 90 in \u200b9.2 overs for the first wicket with Travis Head (36 from 37 balls).<\/p>\n But \u200btoo many batters threw their wickets away at the top of the order.<\/p>\n Jansen’s sensational \u2060diving one-handed catch in the outfield to dismiss Matt Renshaw (44) left Australia on 215-7, a position they never recovered from.<\/p>\n Twitter<\/p>\n This content is provided by Twitter, which may be using cookies and other technologies. Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Twitter cookies. Enable Cookies<\/a> South African spinners Keshav Maharaj (4-20 in 9.2 overs) and Bjorn Fortuin (2-34 in \u20608) showed excellent control.<\/p>\n “Very satisfied, all round it \u200bwas a good fight from the batters and bowlers,” South Africa captain Temba \u200bBavuma said.<\/p>\n “Looking at how both innings started, we were under pressure in the first 10 overs in each, but we managed to get \u200ca very competitive score on \u200bthat wicket.”<\/p>\n England vs Sri Lanka results and fixtures<\/p>\n All times UK and Ireland; all games live on Sky Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew Breetzke scored a superb 112 to guide South Africa to a 67-run victory over Australia \u200cin the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-904088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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