South Africa get it right on the day to eliminate India

South Africa's 112-run win over India in today's semi-final of the ICC Under-19 World Cup at Bert Sutcliffe Oval at Lincoln University ensured Saturday's final will be contested by two teams never to have reached this stage of the tournament before.

The second spot will be decided on Wednesday when Australia play the West Indies.

South Africa produced their best performance of the tournament to secure their spot to eliminate the defending champions. Batting first, all their batsmen showed an understanding of the requirement before them, working the singles initially, building partnerships and then laying a foundation for the middle-order big-hitters to build on knowing they had wickets up their sleeves.

It worked to perfection. Partnerships were worth 52, 53, 42 and 88 and the last, an unbeaten 33 which saw every batsman contribute in a total of 268/5, the last wicket being a sacrificial run out off the last ball of the innings.

Chad Baxter 22, Riel de Kock 32, Greg Smith 61, Hashim Amla 62, Ryan Bailey nine and David Jacobs 69 not out was the South African roll of honour.

They were aided by some poor Indian fielding. Three catches were put down in the first 15 overs, and the ground fielding provided too many errors to allow pressure to be applied at vital stages.

Indian coach Balwinder Sandhu could only reflect on lost chances afterwards.

"We had dropped three catches in the whole tournament, then in this game we dropped three.

"We are disappointed. Potentially we are a good side but South Africa batted very well today. It was a good batting wicket and we were capable of getting these runs," he said.

However, his players were still young and they lacked cricket intelligence and because of that they made silly mistakes at the wrong time, he said.

The side's batting had been its weak point before coming to New Zealand and during the tournament too many players were scoring 20s and 30s and getting out too early, he said.

South Africa was always in a position to apply the pressure when India batted. They knew to expect an onslaught from the openers.

Amla said: "When you put a team under pressure things can go up or go down. We backed ourselves to put the pressure on them."

It was all very well hitting out during the early overs but when there sweepers out it wasn't quite so easy.

"It was a beautiful wicket to bat on and our bowlers did well.

"We wanted to get a good opening partnership and then have the middle-order hold things together.

"I was hoping to get a good score, and I picked the right day as well," Amla said.

South African coach Hylton Ackerman said his side had a very ordinary tournament up until today.

"Our batsmen hit how I'm used to seeing them play today. The difference was we have been off to poor starts. In one game we had one run after five overs and against England one of our openers had 18 off 20 overs," he said.

Ackerman added that at a tournament such as the Under-19 event one of the problems was that players were young and inexperienced and that caused them to sometimes panic very quickly.

"These are young boys, but I think world cricket will benefit from this. There has been some fantastic cricket played here," he said.

India did panic in their run chase. They put on 43 in 10 overs before captain Parthiv Patel was bowled for 20.

But the real breakthrough for South Africa came when Maninder Bisla suffered a case of the speed wobbles. He hit two cracking fours off successive balls and then fell leg before wicket for 37 runs off 41 balls when the score was 81.

From that stage it was a steady procession of Indian batsmen with the highest scorer being Deepak Chougule on 29. The effect of the South African bowlers through the middle stages was significant in tightening the stranglehold on the batsmen.

Left-arm fast bowler Brent Kops, had 10 runs off his first over, but came back strongly to finish with two for 42.

Left-arm spinner Ian Postman backed him up and had two for 19 from seven as the Indians were all out in the 38th over.