It was a record-breaking batting display from South Africa that guided them to a 102-run win over Sri Lanka in their ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 opener. The trio of Quinton de Kock (100), Rassie van der Dussen (108) and Aiden Markram (106) struck individual centuries as South Africa scored men’s World Cup’s biggest ever total of 428.
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Markram’s 100 off 49 balls was the quickest ODI World Cup century.
In reply, Kusal Mendis scored 72 and Charith Asalanka made 79 as Sri Lanka were bowled out for 326.
The passionate celebrations from the South African centurions in the first innings were what grabbed the attention. Markram, the player of the match, shared that it was an instinctive reaction from the players as South Africa made a winning start to their World Cup campaign.
“Yeah, it’s quite strange because you almost get this thing that just takes over your body at certain moments. I think there’s a lot of passion in this team to give our absolute all at this World Cup and see how far it can get us. We’re known to start pretty slowly, be it in a series or maybe world events and things like that, so we put a lot of emphasis on today’s game; to start well and play the same cricket we’ve been playing that’s managed to sneak us into this competition,” Markram said.
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“So I think it’s all of those emotions sort of mixed up and building up. That sort of just comes out and a lot of pride naturally for the three of us as well. When it’s your day, try to cash in and really make it count. So a mixture of quite a lot of things I would say.”
Talking about his record of the quickest ODI World Cup century, Markram expected it to be bettered in the ongoing tournament itself.
“I’m actually not too sure. The way batters are playing nowadays, you wouldn’t be surprised if that record is broken in this competition as well. So it’s nice for us to be able to go through the gears as a unit,” he said.
South Africa skipper Temba Bavuma was also happy to see his team make a winning start and termed his team’s performance as “clinical”.
“Wanted to win the game and that’s exactly what we did. It was a clinical performance and give us good confidence going into the next game. It did seamed a bit under lights, but the ball was coming on nicely and you could see how they (the batters) were able to use the pace nicely. It was all about adjusting to the conditions and we thought it is going to be a bit variable in the second half. If we can take these learnings and we need to adapt whatever is in front of us. Next game I don’t think (the pitch) is going to be too different,” Bavuma said.
Sri Lanka captain Dasun Shanaka rued the lack of execution from his bowlers.
“I expected high scoring game today with the kind of batting line-up South Africa have. We missed our lengths and the execution wasn’t there. We should have kept them to somewhere around 370 and that would have been a bit manageable. We got some batters who were striking it really well, but there was too much to do. Missing those three bowlers (Chameera, Hasaranga and Theekshana) is huge, but that’s the part of the game, we have to move on and it’s an opportunity for others. We need to get our execution right in the next game,” he said.
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