Mumbai, Oct 25: A rampaging South Africa clinched the one-day cricket series with a 3-2 margin after India slumped to a humiliating 214-run defeat in a completely lopsided series decider here on Sunday.
3 'Ds' make a mockery of Indian bowling
Opener de Kock's 87-ball knock was laced with 17 fours and a six -- his eighth century overall and fifth against India.
(Anushka Sharma again targetted on Twitter for Virat Kohli's dismissal in 5th ODI)
Du Plessis's 115-ball stay at the crease was punctuated by 9 fours and 6 sixes while De Villiers, who hit his third ton of the series, hit 3 fours and 11 sixes in his 61-ball knock to completely demoralised the hosts.
Shell-shocked hosts had monumental task at hand
Shell-shocked, the home team batsmen could not deal with the herculean task of scoring at 8.78 runs an over and down without much fight to leave the capacity crowd thoroughly disappointed with their lacklustre display that came as an anti-climax at the end of a well-fought series.
Barring Dhawan-Rahane, no resistance shown by hosts
Out-of-touch opener Shikhar Dhawan made 60 in 59 balls, while Ajinkya Rahane showed how good he was on top of the order while making a quick fire 87 in 58 balls with 3 sixes and 9 fours before falling to Dale Steyn.
Among the other leading batsmen, Rohit Sharma (16) and Suresh Raina (12) got starts before departing while last match centurion Virat Kohli flopped and skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni was ninth out for 27. (5th ODI: Records tumbled at Wankhede Stadium)
Proteas pacers' impressive show continued
Pace spearhead Dale Steyn took 3 for 38 while youngster Kagiso Rabada impressed again with figures of 4 for 41. (SA score 438 in 5th ODI: Twitterati mock 'centurion' Bhuvneshwar Kumar)
Leg spinner Imran Tahir (2 for 50) and Kyle Abbott (1 for 39) were the other successful bowlers. The visitors, thus, clinched the best-of-five series, having won the first (in Kanpur), third (Rajkot) and the decider here while India kept themselves in the hunt with victories in the second (Indore) and fourth (Chennai) games.
SA win first ever bilateral series in India
This was also the visitors' first-ever win at this ground after three straight losses earlier to the hosts. The visitors thus won their first ODI bilateral rubber in India, after having lost three (in 1991-92, 1999-2000 and 2009-10), and drawn the other (2005-06) in previous attempts.
They won the preceding best-of-three T20 series 2-0 (one game was washed out). The two teams now will fight it out in the four-Test series to follow from November 5 in Mohali.
PTI