South Africa Champions Beat Bangladesh Champions by 88 Runs — Duminy's 89* and Viljoen's Five Seal a Perfect League

A perfect league record is a strange thing to watch being completed, because most of the drama has already drained out of it. South Africa Champions came to the Sharjah evening game having qualified the night before, against a Bangladesh Champions side already out of the running, and for a few overs it had the feel of an exhibition. Then JP Duminy started hitting, Colin Ingram joined him, and the last eight overs of the innings produced 102 runs without a wicket. After that, Hardus Viljoen hit the stumps four times and the pad once, and not one of his five wickets needed a fielder.

South Africa Champions made 210 for 3. Bangladesh Champions were 29 for 5 before the seventh over was done and all out for 122 in the 19th, nine wickets down with Abu Jayed unable to bat. South Africa Champions won by 88 runs, their fifth win in five, and go into the semi-finals as top seeds with a net run rate of +2.589 that nobody else in the competition is within two of.

Faf du Plessis and Wayne Parnell opened and gave the innings a quick 42 before Kamrul Islam had the captain caught by Rubel Hossain in the fifth over, and Abu Jayed had Parnell caught by Jahurul Islam eight balls later. At 46 for 2 in the sixth over Bangladesh had done what a side in their position needed to do: taken two early wickets and made the batting side think. Duminy and Morne van Wyk thought for 38 balls, adding 62, van Wyk hitting three sixes in a 30 from 19 before Rubel had him caught by Jahurul at 108 for 3 in the 12th over.

What followed was the innings of the night. Duminy and Ingram added 102 in 8.1 overs, unbroken, which is a rate of twelve and a half an over sustained for nearly half an innings. Duminy went from a steady start to 89 not out from 49 balls with seven fours and five sixes; Ingram's 40 from 25 was the perfect accompaniment. Mahmudullah bowled his own four overs for 53 without a wicket, and Rubel's 3.3 overs went for 47. The scorecard also records that Abu Jayed, after 3.3 overs for 27, left the field; he did not return, and Bangladesh were effectively a bowler short for the finish and a batter short for the chase.

Chasing 211, Bangladesh needed a start. They got the opposite. Parnell bowled Jahurul Islam with the last ball of the first over, Robbie Frylinck had Rony Talukdar caught by Sarel Erwee in the second, and Viljoen bowled Imrul Kayes in the third and Fazle Mahmud in the fifth. When Frylinck had Nasir Hossain caught by Shaun von Berg in the seventh, the score was 29 for 5 and the match, as a contest, was gone.

Mahmudullah and Arafat Sunny then played the cricket Bangladesh will want to remember. Their sixth-wicket stand of 54 in 38 balls was brisk and sensible, the captain hitting two fours and two sixes in a 37 from 26 before von Berg had him caught by Erwee at 83. Sunny went on to 31 from 30 before Viljoen bowled him at 102 in the 17th over, and from there it was a question of whether South Africa would need all twenty overs. They did not. Viljoen trapped Kamrul Islam lbw at 122 and bowled Rubel Hossain next ball, and with Abu Jayed absent hurt the innings closed at 122 for 9 in 18.5 overs. Viljoen's 3.5 overs cost 16 runs for five wickets: four bowled, one lbw. On a night when the side batting first had made 210, the scorecard suggests the ball still did enough to beat the bat early, and that says as much about Bangladesh's technique against the new ball as about the pitch.

Our source does not record a Player of the Match award for this game, so we will not name one. Viljoen's 5 for 16 was the standout performance, a spell that ended the match twice over: once at 29 for 5 and again when he took the last two wickets off consecutive balls. Duminy's 89 not out followed his 76 against England Champions the night before; two innings, 165 runs, and in both the acceleration came after the halfway mark when the fielding side had begun to believe it had a grip on the game. The two players between them set up the total and then closed out the chase, which is about as complete a team performance as a T20 produces.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview — the World Championship of Legends is not part of our prediction model, which is built for current international and franchise cricket. We'll have full analysis for the next encounter.

The league stage is complete. South Africa Champions finish five from five, 10 points, net run rate +2.589, and will be the top seeds for the semi-finals on October 16 in Sharjah. Australia Champions (3-2, 6 points, +0.032), West Indies Champions (3-2, 6 points, -0.489) and England Champions (2-3, 4 points, -0.042) join them; semi-final pairings have not yet been announced. India Champions and Bangladesh Champions both finish 1-4 on two points and go home.

For Bangladesh Champions, debutants in this competition, the tournament ends with one win, by 3 runs over India Champions on October 11, and a net run rate of -1.729 that places them last. The pattern of this match, early wickets and a middle-order rescue that came too late, was not a one-off. But Mahmudullah and Sunny showed that there is batting in this side when it is given time, and that is a reasonable thing to take away from a first appearance. For South Africa, the only question left is whether a side that has not been seriously tested in five games can summon the same intensity when the next loss is the last.