JO­HAN­NES­BURG – West In­dies held their nerves to en­sure they end­ed their three-match T20I se­ries against South Africa on a win­ning note, with a thrilling six-run win via the Duck­worth/Lewis/Stern method in South Africa on Sat­ur­day.

In a match that was first re­duced to 16 overs and then 10 be­cause of light­ning strikes, the West In­dies’ top or­der came out fir­ing on their way to post­ing 114 for three af­ter be­ing sent in to bat for the third suc­ces­sive time in the se­ries.

South Africa seemed out of the con­test be­fore stag­ing a late fight­back, but even­tu­al­ly fell short of their re­vised to­tal of 125, fin­ish­ing on 118 for six.

The match was de­layed by 75 min­utes af­ter light­ning strikes were spot­ted by the pi­lot in the fly­over just be­fore the start of play, re­sult­ing in it be­ing re­duced to 16 overs.

West In­dies suf­fered a set­back ear­ly on when they lost John­son Charles for a duck with just five runs on the board, but cap­tain Shai Hope and Shim­ron Het­my­er pow­ered them to 66 for one af­ter six overs, be­fore light­ning forced the play­ers off the field.

With on­ly four more overs avail­able af­ter the restart, the Windies start­ed slow­ly, scor­ing just six runs from Corbin Bosch’s sev­enth over.

Het­my­er and Hope then com­bined to hit Ke­shav Ma­haraj for three six­es off the first four balls in the en­su­ing over, un­til Shope at­tempt­ed to hit the spin­ner’s next ball out of the ground and was caught at long off for 48 off 25 balls.

Rov­man Pow­ell clob­bered Kwe­na Mapha­ka for two six­es in the penul­ti­mate over be­fore falling for 13 off sev­en balls and Het­my­er brought the cur­tain down on the in­nings by hit­ting Bosch’s last ball over mid­wick­et for six.

He end­ed un­beat­en on 48 off 22 balls with six six­es and one four.

Set a re­vised tar­get of 125 by the DLS, South Africa start­ed bright­ly by thump­ing 19 runs off Ja­son Hold­er’s open­ing over of the in­nings.

Akeal Ho­sein struck by hav­ing skip­per Aiden Markram caught and bowled for two, and when Gu­dakesh Motie snared the wick­ets of Quin­ton de Kock for 28, Ryan Rick­el­ton for 15 and De­wald Bre­vis for 17, South Africa had slumped to 63 for four af­ter six overs.

The home side looked down and out with the re­quired run rate over 15, but George Linde and Ja­son Smith smashed 14 runs from Joseph’s next over and 21 runs from the eighth over bowled by Ho­sein to re­duce the equa­tion to 27 from 12 balls.

Hold­er dis­missed Linde in the penul­ti­mate over that went for 11 runs. leav­ing South Africa need­ing 16 runs from the last over.

Joseph con­ced­ed a bound­ary with his third de­liv­ery, but re­bound­ed to bowl Smith with the next ball, be­fore end­ing the over in fine fash­ion by con­ced­ing just two more runs.

Play­er-of-the-Match Motie end­ed with 3-17 from his two overs.

CMC

Sum­marised scores

WEST IN­DIES 114-3 in 10 overs (Shim­ron Het­my­er 48 not out, Shai Hope 48, Rov­man Pow­ell 13).

SOUTH AFRICA 118-6 in 10 overs (Quin­ton de Kock 28, Ja­son Smith 26, George Linde 17, De­wald Bre­vis 17, Ryan Rick­el­ton 15, Tris­tan Stubbs 10 not out; Gu­dakesh Motie 3-17).

Re­sult: West In­dies won by six runs via the Duck­worth/Lewis/Stern method.

Toss: South Africa elect­ed to field.

Play­er-of-the-Match: Gu­dakesh Motie.

Um­pires: Arno Ja­cobs, Bon­gani Jele.

TV Um­pire: Stephen Har­ris.

Re­serve Um­pire: Lau­ren Agen­bag.

Match Ref­er­ee: Shaid Wad­val­la.