Rohit comes to party

Hits 53 as India win T20 by 21 runs; van Wyk,unsold at IPL auction,scores 67 off 39

Had this been a baseball park instead of a football stadium,Morne van Wyk would’ve put a few home-run hitters to shame. Gripping his cricket bat like a baseball mace high over his head for a stance,van Wyk infused the art-forms of bat sports across oceans to smash as many sixes as the entire Indian side put together.

But as more people watched a cricket match in a stadium (a football one,lest we forget) in South Africa,the hosts choked collectively during Sunday’s T20 against India. And somehow,van Wyk’s marvellous spell of batting was for the losing side.

Chasing 169 for victory,van Wyk,unsold at the IPL auction,rattled the Indians with a 39-ball 67,smashing five sixes and as many fours into the oval boundaries of the Moses Mabhida. Playing a cricket match in a football stadium has its short-fence perks square of the wicket,but the way van Wyk clobbered it,the shots would have been sixes in the biggest cricket stadiums around the world.

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After putting SA well on their way by the half-way stage,van Wyk was dismissed by Praveen Kumar,and his side eventually fell 21 runs short. Those in the know claimed that the rightful heir to Mark Boucher’s gloves was van Wyk a 31-year old keeper from Bloemfontein. On Sunday in Durban,in just his third T20I match,he showed just why. But that had to wait until the Indian first innings,and a few football ritual and customs.

Waiting with children at their feet,both the Indian and the South African cricketers stood in the tunnel like footballers do. They lined up shoulder-to-shoulder when the announcer called them out,and a few seconds later,Makhaya Ntini playing his farewell match joined them for the national anthems after his lap-of-honour.

MS Dhoni won his second straight toss of the year and created a personal coin-call record,before underplaying his achievement by saying a toss on this football pitch doesn’t matter. The Indian openers Virat Kohli and Murali Vijay proved otherwise,rocketing the ball to all parts of the field. India got off to a flier by scoring 26 runs from Ntinis first two overs.

Skipper Johan Botha introduced his off-spin into the attack to replace Ntini,and reaped rewards almost instantly by shattering Kohli’s stumps for 28 to leave India at 67/2. The Kohli-Rohit stand of 49 was broken,but the latter took off from where his partner had left,propelling the team score to 81 at the half-way stage.

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Rohit brought up his fifty in 32 balls,with five fours and two sixes. Ntini latched onto a catch at the mid-wicket boundary to put an end to 53 glorious runs. After Yuvraj was run-out more by Yusuf Pathan than the opposition for 12,Suresh Raina found the touch he had lost during the Test series. Forty-one fantastic runs later,India posted 168/4 in 20 overs.

But the fireworks didn’t stop thanks to van Wyk’s bat. Hoisting Munaf Patel over the midwicket fence for his first six in the third over,opener van Wyk pasted the next two deliveries through covers and the never-ending straight boundary. Ashish Nehra and R Ashwin were the next to face his music,as he bludgeoned them into the furthest stands about 100 metres away from the pitch. At 87/2 at nearly 10 runs an over,AB de Villiers and van Wyk were well on course to begin the Bollywood proceedings earlier than expected,but wickets suddenly fell in a heap. And SA did what the hate most they choked.