Pretorius Falls Six Short and It Barely Registers — South Africa Take Zimbabwe Apart in Windhoek

Ninety-four from fifty-one balls, twelve fours, three sixes, and out with two balls of the nineteenth over remaining. Lhuan-dre Pretorius will have gone to bed thinking about the six runs he did not get, because that is what batters do, and he will be entirely wrong to. This was as close to a complete T20 innings as anyone has played in this tri-series: he was there from the first ball, he was there for eighteen and a bit overs, and South Africa's other ten batters between them contributed 80.

What made it a rout rather than merely a win was the first eight overs of Zimbabwe's reply. Four down in the powerplay. Six down by 51 in the eighth. There are collapses that come from good bowling and collapses that come from a chase realising too early that it is impossible; this had elements of both, and by the time Sikandar Raza was the last recognised batter standing, the arithmetic had gone.

Fifty from twenty-seven balls with seven fours and a six. South Africa were fifty in 5.1 overs and a hundred inside eleven. The first-wicket stand with Jordan Hermann produced 68 in 7.4 overs; the second, with Dewald Brevis, produced 86 in a shade over seven. At 154 for 1 in the sixteenth over South Africa were on for something well past 200.

They did not get there, and the reason is worth noting because it is the one genuine positive Zimbabwe can take from the night. Wessly Madhevere bowled three overs of gentle medium pace for 20 and took three wickets — Brevis's replacement Connor Esterhuizen, Rubin Hermann and Eathan Bosch, all caught, all in the space of the seventeenth and eighteenth overs. South Africa lost 6 for 31 from 154. Pretorius, who had farmed the strike beautifully to that point, was bowled by Brad Evans off the last ball of the nineteenth, and the innings closed on 185 rather than the 205 it had been threatening.

Zimbabwe were 20 for 0 after 1.5 overs. They were 51 for 6 after 7.2. Between those two moments the innings did not so much fall apart as evaporate.

Bjorn Fortuin, South Africa's captain, bowled 3.4 overs, one of them a maiden, and took four for 24. Two of his wickets came in that powerplay burst — Brian Bennett caught by Pretorius, Wessly Madhevere caught by Bosch for a two-ball duck — and the other two closed the innings out at the death. His third was the important one: Sikandar Raza, stumped by Connor Esterhuizen for 45 in the fourteenth over, which ended the only partnership Zimbabwe managed to build.

Duan Jansen was the other half of it: four overs, 21 runs, three wickets, and a spell in the middle of the powerplay in which he bowled Innocent Kaia, had Ryan Burl caught and bowled, and trapped Tadiwanashe Marumani lbw first ball. Three wickets in the space of 5.5 to 7.2 overs. Zimbabwe went from 43 for 3 to 51 for 6.

Raza's 45 from 33 was the innings of a captain doing the only thing left available to him, and Newman Nyamhuri's 27 from 25 at the bottom of the order was more useful than the scorecard suggests — it dragged the margin from something humiliating to something merely heavy. Zimbabwe were all out in the eighteenth over.

The Namibia Cricket Ground has been a good batting surface all series, and 185 was probably a par-plus score rather than a match-winning one. What decided the game was not the pitch but the response to it: South Africa's spinners bowled 5.4 overs between them for 46 and took five wickets, while Zimbabwe's took seven overs for 56 and took three.

The one thing the surface did do was reward bowlers who took pace off. Fortuin's economy of 6.54 and Jansen's 5.25 came on a night when the two quickest bowlers on either side, Kwena Maphaka and Kundai Matigimu, went at 8.25 and 14.50. On a ground where the ball comes on, the slower, straighter option was the one that worked — and South Africa had two of them and Zimbabwe, once Madhevere's three overs were done, had none.

This match did not have a CricIntel preview, so there is nothing of ours to grade. We wrote after Zimbabwe's five-run win over Namibia on August 31 that their batting depth was the question the tri-series would eventually ask of them; it asked on Tuesday, and the answer was 51 for 6. Full preview to come for the next fixture.

South Africa go top with four points from three matches and a net run rate of 1.386, having now beaten Zimbabwe twice since losing their opener to Namibia. Pretorius and Brevis at the top is a combination that will trouble anyone in these conditions, and Fortuin has quietly become the most important bowler in the side — four wickets, a maiden, and the wicket of the opposition captain.

Zimbabwe sit third on two points with a net run rate of -1.691, which after a defeat by 43 runs is now a genuine problem rather than a footnote. They meet Namibia next and will need not just a win but a substantial one. The batting has produced one score above 150 in three attempts, and Raza cannot keep being both the top scorer and the only recognised batter to reach 30.