NORTH SOUND – West In­dies’ am­bi­tious bid for a third Twen­ty20 World Cup ti­tle end­ed in heart­break in An­tigua on Sun­day night when they were dumped from their home show­piece, fol­low­ing a tense three-wick­et de­feat to South Africa in their fi­nal Su­per Eight match.

Their chances of re­main­ing in the tour­na­ment were slim once they were re­strict­ed to 135 for eight from their 20 overs on a two-paced pitch at the Vi­vian Richards Crick­et Ground, all-rounder Ros­ton Chase the on­ly one to show any re­al en­ter­prise with a top score of 52 off 42 de­liv­er­ies.

Left-han­der Kyle May­ers, in his first match of the tour­na­ment af­ter be­ing called up as an in­jury re­place­ment for Bran­don King, struck 35 from 34 balls but lacked flu­en­cy, and no oth­er bats­man passed 15.

There was dra­ma from the start of the run chase when South Africa slumped to 15 for two af­ter two overs, and rain then halt­ed play for 1-¼ hours, forc­ing a re­vised tar­get of 123 from 17 overs, and a restart to the con­test at 11:45 pm.

With both teams bat­tling to re­main in the tour­na­ment, they waged a war of at­tri­tion, Tris­tan Stubbs top-scor­ing with 29 from 27 balls, Hein­rich Klaasen chip­ping in with a 10-ball 22 and Mar­co Jansen pro­duc­ing a nerve­less 14-ball un­beat­en 21 which de­flat­ed the Caribbean side.

Start­ing the fi­nal over from left-arm pac­er Obed Mc­Coy need­ing six runs for vic­to­ry, Jansen cleared the ropes at long on with the very first de­liv­ery to pro­pel his side in­to the se­mi-fi­nals, along with Eng­land from Group 2.

Chase fol­lowed up his fifty with an ex­cel­lent spell of three for 12 from three overs of off-spin while seam­ers An­dre Rus­sell (2-19) and Alzarri Joseph (2-25) chipped in with two wick­ets apiece in sim­i­lar­ly out­stand­ing spells.

“I think when you look on the larg­er pic­ture, it is a dis­ap­point­ing World Cup. We want­ed to win just like any oth­er team, but we weren’t able to win tonight,” said a de­ject­ed cap­tain Rov­man Pow­ell.

“I think as a team we played some good crick­et. We played good crick­et in patch­es and tonight was a night where our bat­ters were 15-20 runs short and a dif­fi­cult wick­et.”

He con­tin­ued: “We are dis­ap­point­ed. We as play­ers are dis­ap­point­ed be­cause we think we had the per­son­nel with­in our room to ac­tu­al­ly win a home World Cup.

“But hav­ing said that we have played good crick­et, we have en­ter­tained [the fans] in patch­es.”

Sent in, West In­dies suf­fered two huge set­backs in­side the first sev­en balls of their in­nings when stroke-mak­ers Shai Hope (0) and Nicholas Pooran (1) per­ished cheap­ly.

Hope sliced the third ball of the game from seam­er Jansen to cov­er point where Stubbs held a sharp catch while Pooran skied to Jansen on the ropes at long off in the next over, hit­ting out against off-spin­ner Aiden Markram.

Not for the first time, Chase then held the in­nings to­geth­er, strik­ing three fours and two six­es while post­ing 81 for the third wick­et with May­ers who notched an iden­ti­cal bound­ary count.

With the run rate stalling, how­ev­er, May­ers holed out in the deep in the 12th over off Man-of-the-Match left-arm spin­ner Tabraiz Sham­si (3-27), trig­ger­ing a de­cline which saw West In­dies lose six wick­ets for 32 runs in the space of 35 balls.

Faced with a straight­for­ward re­quired run rate of near­ly sev­en an over, South Africa were quick­ly in trou­ble when Rus­sell knocked over dan­ger­ous open­ers Reeza Hen­dricks (0) and Quin­ton de Kock (12) in his first over – the sec­ond of the in­nings.

With rain then adding to the ten­sion, Stubbs put on 27 for the third wick­et with cap­tain Aiden Markram (18) af­ter the re­sump­tion, and a fur­ther 35 for the fourth with Klaasen, who whacked three fours and a six – all from left-arm spin­ner Gu­dakesh Motie’s soli­tary over in the sev­enth which leaked 20 runs.

At 92 for four at the end of the 11th over, South Africa ap­peared to have wrest­ed con­trol of the con­test with just 31 runs need­ed from the last six overs, on­ly for Chase to re­move David Miller (4), Stubbs and Ke­shav Ma­haraj (2) in suc­ces­sive overs and hand West In­dies one last sniff.

How­ev­er, Jansen and Kag­iso Raba­da (five not out), who had ear­li­er col­lid­ed on the ropes at long off at­tempt­ing a catch, then col­lab­o­rat­ed to take South Africa over the line.

CMC

Scores:

WEST IN­DIES 135 for eight off 20 overs (Ros­ton Chase 52, Kyle May­ers 35; Tabraiz Sham­si 3-27).

SOUTH AFRICA 124 for sev­en off 16.1 overs (Tris­tan Stubbs 29, Hein­rich Klaasen 22; Ros­ton Chase 3-12, An­dre Rus­sell 2-19, Alzarri Joseph 2-25).

South Africa won by three wick­ets un­der the Duck­worth-Lewis-Stern method.

Play­er of the match: Tabraiz Sham­si (South Africa)