Twelve Fours in Thirty-One Balls: Anneke Bosch Sets Up a 64-Run Win in Bulawayo

Anneke Bosch hit twelve fours in an innings of 65 and did not clear the rope once. In a format that has spent a decade teaching batters that the six is the unit of currency, there is something quietly satisfying about an opener who simply finds the gap, every time, for half an hour.

That was the innings that broke the second T20I at Queens Sports Club open, and by the time Zimbabwe had a chance to reply the equation was 194 and the surface had done nothing to suggest it was available. South Africa won by 64 runs and lead the five-match series 2-0.

Laura Wolvaardt fell lbw for 10 and South Africa were 35 for 1, which for most of the next eight overs looked like the only thing that would go Zimbabwe's way. Bosch and Nondumiso Shangase added 64 in 41 balls, and Bosch's dismissal at 99 for 2 in the eleventh over came only after she had taken the innings past a run a ball with room to spare.

South Africa were then 105 for 3 in the twelfth, and this is where the innings could have stalled. It did the opposite. Faye Tunnicliffe and Anneke Dercksen put on 88 from fifty balls for the fourth wicket — Tunnicliffe unbeaten on 52 from 34 with four sixes, Dercksen 36 not out from 20 with two — and South Africa scored 88 from their last eight overs without losing a wicket.

Zimbabwe used eight bowlers. None conceded fewer than four an over across a full spell, and L Mabhero's four overs cost 40. Spreading the load is a reasonable response to not having an obvious answer; it is not, in itself, an answer.

S Mayers was bowled by the third ball of the reply and Zimbabwe never got close to the required rate of 9.7. They were 51 for 5 in the ninth over. Seshnie Naidu took 3 for 26 with leg-spin through the middle; Anneke Bosch, who had already made 65, came on for two overs and conceded five runs while taking two wickets, which is the sort of all-round afternoon that wins a player-of-the-match award before the twelfth over.

What followed was better than it sounds. C Mutasa made an unbeaten 30 from 26 and N Sibanda 15 not out from 17, and their unbroken eighth-wicket stand of 45 in 37 balls took Zimbabwe past 100 and denied South Africa the second-innings collapse the scoreboard had been promising. A 64-run defeat is a heavy one. A 100-run defeat would have been heavier, and the difference was two players who refused the easy dismissal.

Queens Sports Club produced a straightforward batting surface in the afternoon and stayed one: 322 runs came in forty overs, and only one bowler in the match — Eliz-Mari Marx — managed a maiden. The difference between the sides was not in how the pitch behaved but in what each middle order did with the last eight overs. South Africa scored 88 for none; Zimbabwe scored 51 for two.

This match did not carry a CricIntel preview — we published one for the first T20I and have one scheduled for the third. So there is no call to grade here, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What we will note is that our first-T20I preview flagged South Africa's batting depth as the decisive factor in this series, and an unbroken 88 for the fourth wicket is that argument in its clearest form.

South Africa lead 2-0 with three T20Is left, on the 15th, 17th and 19th. Zimbabwe's task is narrower than the scoreline suggests: their bowling conceded 193 on a good pitch, but their batting problem is the top five, who have now twice failed to give Mutasa and the lower order anything to build from.

For South Africa, Tunnicliffe's unbeaten fifty at No. 4 is the most useful development of the tour so far. A side that already has Wolvaardt and Bosch at the top and Dercksen finishing does not need much more; it needs exactly the player who can bat between them.