EAST MEAD­OW – South Africa all but qual­i­fied for the Su­per Eight quar­ter­fi­nal stage of the ICC Men’s Twen­ty20 World Cup af­ter left-arm spin­ner Ke­shav Ma­haraj held his nerve to de­fend 11 in the fi­nal over and se­cure a four-run win against Bangladesh in New York on Mon­day.

Chas­ing a mod­est 114 to win in the Group D match on the no­to­ri­ous­ly un­trust­wor­thy Nas­sau Coun­ty Sta­di­um pitch, the Bangladeshis got to with­in reach of their sec­ond win in the tour­na­ment, but they lost two wick­ets in the fi­nal over from Ma­haraj try­ing to get over the fin­ish line.

Ma­haraj con­ced­ed a wide, a sin­gle, and a deuce to start the over then got Jak­er Ali caught in­side the long-on bound­ary for eight with the third ball be­fore a leg bye off the fourth ball was fol­lowed by Mah­mudul­lah al­so be­ing caught at long-on for 20.

A six was re­quired off the last ball of the match, but new bats­man Taskin Ahmed could on­ly bunt a full toss from Ma­haraj to mid-wick­et and get one run to en­able the South Africans to es­cape with their third win in as many match­es.

Ma­haraj was the most suc­cess­ful South African bowler, end­ing with three for 27 from his al­lot­ted four overs, but front­line pac­ers An­rich Nort­je and Kag­iso Raba­da had set up the tense fin­ish with spells of two for 17 and two for 19 re­spec­tive­ly, from their four overs.

The re­sult meant the Pro­teas top the five-team group ta­ble with six points, but they are the on­ly team to have com­plet­ed three match­es so far.

The Bangladeshis are sec­ond on two points thanks to a su­pe­ri­or net run rate to The Nether­lands, third on the same num­ber of points, and both hav­ing played twice.

Fourth Nepal has played on­ly one match and lost, while rock-bot­tom Sri Lan­ka has played twice and lost both match­es.

A T20 World Cup record 79-run, fifth wick­et stand be­tween Hein­rich Klaasen and David Miller res­cued South Africa and en­abled them to reach 113 for six from their al­lo­ca­tion of 20 overs af­ter they won the toss and de­cid­ed to bat.

Pac­er Tanz­im Hasan Sak­ib bagged three for 18 from his al­lot­ted four overs and trig­gered a South African top or­der col­lapse that had them reel­ing on 25 for four at the close of the Pow­er Play af­ter the first six overs.

But Klaasen hit the top score of 46 to earn the Play­er-of-the-Match award, and Miller sup­port­ed with 29, and they ush­ered the Pro­teas past 100 with their high­est fifth-wick­et part­ner­ship in a T20 World Cup against dis­ci­plined, if not men­ac­ing Bangladesh bowl­ing.

“I think all the bat­ters are keen to get out of this place, to be fair,” Klaasen told re­porters at a post-play news con­fer­ence. “The bowlers would love to stay here.

“But, no, we’ve done our job – that was the goal – to win three out of three (in the Unit­ed States). Ob­vi­ous­ly, it was a lit­tle bit hard­er than we thought, but that’s al­so good prepa­ra­tion for go­ing in­to the next phase of this com­pe­ti­tion.

“We’ve dealt with pres­sure very well in these three games, and it’s al­ways good ex­pe­ri­ence and you can put it in a note­book and al­ways go back when the tough times are there again.”

The Bangladeshis too, found it dif­fi­cult to score freely against mean, pur­pose­ful bowl­ing from South Africa, but a 44-run, fifth-wick­et stand be­tween Towhid Hri­doy and Mah­mudul­lah ap­peared to put them on track for vic­to­ry.

A suc­cess­ful fin­ish for Bangladesh be­gan to look murky when Hri­doy was lbw to Raba­da for the top score of 37, and they need­ed 20 from the last 17 balls of the match for their first win against the South Africans in nine tries.

“We all know this is a slight­ly tricky (pitch),” Hri­doy told re­porters at a post-play news con­fer­ence. “I think every match will be a low-scor­ing game. I think we have to adapt to the sit­u­a­tion as soon as pos­si­ble.

“We lost a lot of con­fi­dence [in chas­ing] that score… I should have fin­ished the match. It’s dif­fi­cult for new bats­men to ad­just to the con­di­tions.

“The out­field is al­so slow. I think if we show the in­tent from a bat­ting point of view, it will be bet­ter. If you saw the last cou­ple of match­es, it’s al­ways low scor­ing, and I think it’s a bit chal­leng­ing for bats­men, every bats­man is strug­gling a bit here.”

Group D con­tin­ues when Nepal and Sri Lan­ka search for their first win on Tues­day un­der the lights at the Broward Coun­ty Re­gion­al Park in the Amer­i­can city of Lauder­hill in the state of Flori­da.

Bangladesh meets The Nether­lands in their next match on Thurs­day at the Arnos Vale Crick­et Ground in St Vin­cent, where South Africa faces the Nepalese un­der the lights on Fri­day for theirs.

CMC

Scores:

SOUTH AFRICA 113 for six off 20 overs (Hein­rich Klaasen 46, David Miller 29; Tanz­im Hasan Sak­ib 3-18, Taskin Ahmed 2-19y).

BANGLADESH 109 for sev­en off 20 overs (Towhid Hri­doy 37, Mah­mudul­lah 20; Ke­shav Ma­haraj 3-27, An­rich Nort­je 2-17, Kag­iso Raba­da 2-19).

South Africa won by four runs.

Play­er of the Match: Hein­rich Klaasen (South Africa)