The South African team has been in formidable form at the ongoing ICC Cricket World Cup. Opener Quinton de Kock has marked his ODI swansong with three centuries, while the middle-order trio of Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen, and David Miller has been finishing innings with a level of precision not seen in quite some time. Their performance reflects the typical Proteas style – brutal and merciless.
With the pace battery consisting of Kagiso Rabada, Marco Jansen, and Gerald Coetzee troubling the opposition with their sheer speed, yorkers, and accuracy, and spinners Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi bamboozling batters, there is very little going wrong going for Proteas at the moment. They did register a loss to the Netherlands in a shocker, but after that, they came back with a vengeance, unleashing their wrath on defending champions England and Bangladesh.
SA is in second place with four big wins and a loss, and a total of eight points. Halfway through this tournament, a key trait of the Proteas’ campaign is the brutality they have shown to their opponents in overs 41–50 with the bat. Quinton and the middle-order trio of Markram, Klaasen, and Miller have smashed their opponents all over the park in this phase. Their form is a dangerous omen for all other teams, specially hosts India.
In the phase of overs 41-50 across all their games in the tournament so far, South Africa has smashed a total of 526 runs in just 257 balls. Their run-rate in the ‘death overs’ batting is 12.28, the highest than any other team. This has made the Proteas the most feared team in the World Cup right now.
In distant second place is New Zealand, which has smashed 268 runs in 197 balls during this phase with a run rate of 8.16.
The undefeated hosts, India, is at number four, having smashed 80 runs in 65 balls faced in the death overs phase with a run rate of 7.38. India has not had many chances to showcase their death-over performances, as Indian batters have finished the games quite quickly so far.
