Nathan Bracken in Basseterre on Saturday

Basseterre: A wonderful piece of ground fielding by Shane Watson turned an evenly poised game Australia’s way in their final World Cup Group A match against South Africa on Saturday.

AB de Villiers was batting beautifully at the time and, with captain Graeme Smith, had taken his team to 160 without loss chasing a daunting target of 378.

De Villiers had reached 92 from only 70 balls when he turned a delivery from Andrew Symonds to leg. Watson raced after the ball, saved the boundary then hit the stumps at the batsman’s end with a low flat throw which left de Villiers scrambling in vain to make his ground.

South Africa lost their momentum and eventually lost the match by 83 runs.

“The runout by Shane Watson probably had as much to do with the course of the game as anything else,” Australia captain Ricky Ponting said.

“I think the way we executed everything after that first breakthrough was terrific. The fielding was good and once we got a bit of a sniff we were all over them.

“Whenever a side is chasing a total like that, one little slip-up, one piece of great fielding from the opposition side, can put you on the back foot pretty quickly. That’s what happened today.”

Ponting said he had fully expected the South Africans to go immediately on to the attack. “I have been confident all week that our batters would do a good job today,” he said. “I knew we’d make a big score out there.

“I knew we’d post a big total and when we did they had only one option and that was to come out and play that way.

“They did play very well, AB de Villiers today, that’s as good as I’ve ever seen him bat.”

South Africa captain Graeme Smith said his team remained confident despite the loss.

“A victory would have been terrific, but there’s still so much cricket to be played in the tournament,” Smith said. “The key is to win enough games to get yourself into the semi-finals and we know what we need to do.”

“A total of 350 would probably have been a gettable total, maybe 378 was a few too many to chase. We were right in there up until the 35th over, maybe we left ourselves too much to do in the last 10 overs.

“The turning point for me was that AB and I theoretically got out at about the same time. I’ve never had cramp as badly as that before.”

Smith was satisfied his team had put up a competitive performance. “We certainly had opportunities to win. We lost wickets at crucial times, they bowled well in the last 10 overs and they had 20 runs too many.” (Reuters)