Quinton de Kock slammed his third century of the 2023 ODI World Cup as South Africa piled on another mammoth score in their fixture against Bangladesh in Mumbai on Tuesday (October 24). De Kock ended with the second highest World Cup score by a South African batter while Heinrich Klaasen was at his brutal best as well to give the Proteas a whopping finish to the innings. A mind boggling 217 runs came off the last 20 overs of which 144 came in the last 60 deliveries.
Opting to bat, South Africa had a tentative start with the early loss of Reeza Hendricks and Rassie van der Dussen in the first PowerPlay. Bangladesh came out with intent both with the ball and in the field, which meant that it wasn’t easy going in the opening hour or so. However, de Kock and skipper Aiden Markram assessed the situation quite well and went about their job in steady fashion, fully knowing that the Wankhede Stadium is a ground where you can catch up later on. The new ball nipped just a bit and Shoriful Islam made good early use of it to castle Hendricks while van der Dussen played the wrong line against Mehidy Hasan to be trapped LBW.
The in-form de Kock was on song from the get-go and Markram too joined in after a slow start to his innings. As the partnership grew, pressure started to mount on Bangladesh’s bowlers who had no idea on how to stop the run flow. Eventually, skipper Shakib Al Hasan broke the partnership when Markram mistimed a loft down long-off’s throat. But by then, the platform had been laid for the likes of Klaasen to do his thing in the middle. Fresh from his unreal assault against England a few days ago, Klaasen smashed the second ball that he faced off spin for a six and there was no looking back for him. It also ensured that de Kock could smoothly get to his third century of the tournament.
Once he got his ton, de Kock went up a few gears in his onslaught although he was clearly starting to tire with the heat and humidity. It didn’t affect his gameplay though, and Bangladesh’s bowlers were sent on a leather hunt from both sides. Given that de Kock and Klaasen are very different kinds of strokemakers, Shakib could do very little to put a lid on the scoring rate. The conditions at Wankhede also aided boundary-hitting and it just meant that Bangladesh’s bowlers had no real margin for error. To be fair to them, they were very good in the field but the bowling wasn’t consistent enough, particularly at the back end.
By the time de Kock fell, the stage had been set for David Miller to put the final touches to the innings and he duly did that with a rollicking 14-ball 34. Klaasen kept going at his typical rate at the other end and wasn’t far away from smashing successive centuries but a slower bouncer had him mistiming an upper cut to deep backward point. He may not have got the milestone but it was another severely damaging innings from Klaasen who is arguably the most destructive middle order batter at the moment.
Brief scores: South Africa 382/5 in 50 overs (Quinton de Kock 174, Heinrich Klaasen 90, Aiden Markram 60; Hasan Mahmud 2-67) vs Bangladesh