India A beat South Africa A by 7 wickets. (Source: Cricket South Africa Twitter)
Shreyas Iyer took charge of a wobbling ship when he came on to bat against South Africa A at LC de Villiers Oval, Pretoria and stood defiantly when the winning runs were scored to take India A to a seven wicket win in the tri-nation series final also involving Afghanistan A. Iyer scored an unbeaten 140 from 131 balls with 11 boundaries and four sixes to his name to take India A over the line. It was almost fitting that Iyer scored the winning runs with a boundary in the 47th over.
Iyer found strong support from Vijay Shankar, 72 runs from 86 balls, with the duo putting together 141 runs for the third wicket in the chase of 268 runs. Following this strong stand, Iyer continued and added 109 runs with skipper Manish Pandey (32 runs from 38 balls).
Earlier, Farhaan Behardien scored a century for South Africa A with 101 runs from 114 balls. Dwaine Pretorius (58 runs from 61 balls) too chipped in with some key runs in the middle order to propel the home side further and take them to 267/7 in the allotted overs. Shardul Thakur picked up three wickets and Siddharth Kaul struck to pick up two wickets.
Shreyas Iyer scored an unbeaten 140 runs. (Source: Cricket South Africa Twitter)
Both India A and South Africa A had registered three wins in the four group stage games to accumulate six points. South Africa A, though, had the better net run rate (+1.524) as against India (+0.801). Afghanistan A failed to pick up even a single win.
BRIEF SCORES: South Africa A: 267/7 (Farhaan Behardien 101*, Dwaine Pretorius 58; Shardul Thakur 3/52, Siddharth Kaul 2/55) lose to India A: 270/3 (Shreyas Iyer 140*, Vijay Shankar 72) by 7 wickets.
