South Africa Under-19s booked their place in the semi-finals of the Under-19 World Cup with a comfortable 103-run win over England in Townsville.
They lost the toss and were asked to bat by England captain Adam Ball, and were dealt an early blow when Jamie Overton had the prolific Quinton de Kock caught behind for just seven.
However, Chad Bowes and Gihahn Cloete began the recovery with a stand of 65 for the second-wicket, while Theunis de Bruyn and Murray Coetzee both hit half-centuries and added a further 96 for the fourth-wicket. Reece Topley took three late wickets to continue his impressive tournament and South Africa were bowled out for 244 from the final ball of their innings.
Daniel Bell-Drummond again departed early in the England reply, but Alex Davies and Ben Foakes both hit 54 and put on exactly 100 for the second-wicket. Unfortunately, Foakes’ dismissal to Prenelan Subrayen triggered a dramatic collapse and they were all out for just 141. The off-spinner ended with four for 24, while Lizaad Williams added the wicket of Aneesh Kapil to his earlier dismissal of Bell-Drummond and ended with two for 23. Australia’s all-round excellence proved too much for Bangladesh in the second quarter-final in Townsville. Soumya Sarkar hit 73 at the top of the Bangladesh batting order, but only three other batsmen made double figures and they were all out for just 171 with seven overs of their innings unused, as Travis Head (three for 30), Joel Paris (two for 38) and Ashton Turner (two for 22) all starred. In reply, Australia slipped to 11 for three and 33 for four courtesy of a brace apiece from opening bowlers Taskin Ahmed and Abu Jayed. However, captain Will Bosisto ended with 71 off 134 balls and his side got home by five wickets in the 46th over.
Bosisto said afterwards, “I think I played my role in the middle order and got us over the line, but we made it hard for ourselves losing a few early wickets, so that is something we will be working on for our next match. We just managed to nudge the runs around as [well as] we could and eventually we got on top of them.”
Papua New Guinea captain Christopher Kent hit an unbeaten 105 to help his side to a promising 239 for five from their 50 overs against Afghanistan in Brisbane. Nigel Boge added a cameo of 55 from 56 balls at number seven, but they were outdone by the consistency of the Afghan batsmen. While only three of the Papua New Guinea batsmen reached double figures, seven of the Afghanistan ones did and they overcame some alarms to win by four wickets with an over to spare.