BENONI, South Africa, (Reuters) – AB de Villiers survived being dropped early to smash a series-winning unbeaten 95 for South Africa who beat Pakistan by six wickets in the deciding match of their one-day international series yesterday.
De Villiers offered a routine opportunity to Younus Khan at slip when he had just one and made Pakistan pay dearly for that miss by guiding his side to a 3-2 series success with six overs to spare.
Pakistan, who won the toss and elected to bat first at Willowmoore Park on a wicket that had variable bounce, had limped to 205 all out.
The home side always looked comfortable in their chase and the win was sealed with an 88-run stand between De Villiers and Farhaan Behardien (35) for the fourth wicket.
Pakistan found life at the crease difficult, unable to cope with the tight line of the home bowlers.
Kamran Akmal was the pick of the visiting batsman with a fluent 48 before he top-edged a Robin Peterson delivery on the sweep to Ryan McLaren at square leg.
Plenty of others got starts, but many lost their wicket as they tried to push up the scoring rate.
Younus (29) became a first one day international wicket for Behardien as the part-time seamer dropped a delivery short outside off stump. Younus smashed the ball towards mid-wicket but picked out Hashim Amla, who took an excellent reaction catch.
Shoaib Malik (28), Misbah-ul-Haq (24) and Junaid Khan (25) also got into the 20s, but all fell before they could make a telling impact.
