Glenn Maxwell scored an unbeaten 62 from 36 balls to help Australia beat South Africa by two wickets in the decider and win the three-match T20 series 2-1.<\/p>\n
The hosts were struggling at 122-6 in the 14th over while chasing a target of 173 when the 36-year-old hit his first T20I half-century in 11 innings.<\/p>\n
His half-century left Australia needing 12 runs from two overs but South Africa all-rounder Corbin Bosch dismissed Ben Dwarshuis and Nathan Ellis with consecutive deliveries in the penultimate over as momentum swung in favour of the tourists.<\/p>\n
Maxwell, however, hit two boundaries off Lungi Ngidi in the final over to guide Australia to a series win with a ball to spare.<\/p>\n
“It was a little bit nerve-wracking,” Maxwell said. <\/p>\n
“I probably had to do the majority of the striking but, yeah, it was nice to get a couple out of the middle right near the end.”<\/p>\n
Earlier, Dewald Brevis’ 26-ball 53 and Rassie van der Dussen’s 38 not out had taken South Africa to 172-7 after Australia sent them out to bat first. <\/p>\n
“Without [Maxwell] playing a blinding innings, I wouldn’t be standing up here, so there’s been contributions from everyone in our team throughout this series and we’ve had so much fun,” said player of the series Tim David.<\/p>\n
David had hit a 52-ball 83 as Australia won the first T20 in Darwin by 17 runs, before South Africa levelled the series with a 53-run victory at the same venue this week.<\/p>\n
The teams will remain in Cairns to play the first of three one-day internationals on Tuesday before the final two games at The Great Barrier Reef Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Glenn Maxwell scored an unbeaten 62 from 36 balls to help Australia beat South Africa by two wickets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-72140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}