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It was a miserable evening for the English cricket team, as they suffered another humiliating loss in the limited overs at Southampton. After inviting Proteas to bat first, England had a dream start with David Willey breaching the defence of Quinton de Kock. However, Rilee Rossouw and Reeza Hendricks continued their blistering form to provide fire to the team’s innings.
In addition, the masterclass from Aiden Markram and the late blitz from David Miller helped South Africa to post 191. In the second half, Jason Roy and Jos Buttler were positive with their approach, in a tough chase. However, Keshav Maharaj provided a breakthrough to the Proteas in form of Buttler (14). Then, Roy (17) and David Malan (7) could not provide notable contributions as well.
In the tenth over, Markram bowled a good-length ball to Moeen Ali, which took a sharp turn, and the thick edge of the willow was brilliantly caught by the youngster Tristan Stubbs. He covered much ground to make a tough chance look quite easy, which proved to be another setback for the Three Lions. It is evident that Stubbs had hit a sensational 72 off 28 earlier in the 1st T20I, and has been a great addition to the XI.
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Afterwards, Tabraiz Shamsi strangled the English batters with his proficient line lengths, and single-handedly took the wickets of the middle and lower middle-order of England. The likes of Liam Livingstone and Sam Curran again failed to provide contributions to the team. It was Jonny Bairstow (27), who was the last wicket to fall for the home team after scoring 27 off 30 deliveries.
Shamsi finished with career-best figures of 5/24 off four overs, and England were all-out for 101 and faced a 90-run loss. With this win, South Africa sealed a T20I series victory for the first time against England after 2016.
