Australia won the toss and chose to bowl first and the South Africa cricket team scored 311 runs after 7 wickets. 

Quinton de Kock and team’s T20I captain Aiden Markram scored 109 and 56 runs off 106 and 44 deliveries. Quinton de Kock smashed 8 fours and 5 sixes to become the Player of the match.

Australia failed to chase the target and lost quick wickets to ultimately lose their second match of the tournament. Marnus Lambuchagne became the highest scorer for the team and scored 46 runs off 74 balls. Currently Australia stands on the ninth position of the points table which is the one of the most poor performance by the team in the tournament.
India beat Australia by 6 wickets in first match of ICC Cricket World Cup 2023

Pat Cummins on Australia’s poor performance against South Africa 

“I thought Quinton (de Kock) batted really well, couldn’t get a breakthrough. From where they were, we were quite happy with 310, thought it was chaseable. Looked like hard work out there tonight, their bowlers bowled really well, think it nipped around a bit more under lights. (On if it would’ve been easier to bat first) Really hard to say, if we want to be challenging in this tournament we need to find ways of performing regardless of batting first or second. Don’t think much needs to be said tonight, everyone’s hurting, we’ll try and take a couple of days off and then make amends to come back stronger in the next one. There’s a few things we need to tidy up”, said Pat Cummins in the post match ceremony.  

Before the mini-auction, Sunrisers Hyderabad dropped their key player and former captain Kane Williamson from the team. After a disappointing performance last season, Hyderabad took such a drastic decision. The captaincy of the group fell vacant after Williamson.

In the mini-auction, Hyderabad bought Punjab Kings captain Mayank Agarwal to strengthen the batting department of the team. Although there were rumors of Mayank Agarwal being given the command of the team, but finally putting an end to all the speculations, the Hyderabad team has handed over the big responsibility to Markram.

Markram was bought by SRH during the IPL 2022 mega auction for INR 2.60 Crore. Last season, he was impressed with the bat, scoring 381 runs in 12 innings at an average of 47.63, and a strike rate of 139.05 including three half-centuries.

This Year, Markram has captained SRH’s associate franchise, Sunrisers Eastern Cape. With his outstanding contribution Sunrisers was crowned champions in the first edition of the SA T20.

He played 14 matches for SRH this season and scored 381 runs. He scored a wonderful century against Joburg Superkings in the semi-finals & helped his team to enter the finals and later won the title by defeating Pretoria Capitals in the finals.