Despite the Smith injury after which South Africa lost momentum and the brilliant spell from Tait, South Africa shouldn’t have succumbed the way they did. While Australia had Clarke and Ponting after Hayden was out, South Africa had Kallis - competent batsman but couldn’t hold onto his wicket and play aggressively at the same time.

That was the real difference between two otherwise very evenly matched sides - South Africa had Smith, Australia had Hayden; South Africa had Andrew Hall pegging the run rate in the end, Australia had Tait bowling a superb spell.

The match also shows that Australia will kill you if you give them even the smallest of leeways and why Australia is the best team in the world despite what the ICC rankings will try to tell you.

[Match scorecard]

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 at 3:16 am and is filed under Cricket. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.