South Africa’s Faf du Plessis’ unbeaten 79 steered his team to set a 149-run target for Bangladesh in the first Twenty20 International of a two-match series at Shere Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Dhaka on Sunday. The visitors scored 148 runs for 4 wickets in 20 overs after they won the toss and chose to bat first. However, Bangladesh struck early as Protea captain AB de Villiers (2) came to open the bat and was caught by Bangladesh skipper Mashrafe Mortaza in the 6th delivery of the innings bowled by left-arm spinner Arafat Sunny. Nasir Hossain then struck and made Quinton De Kock (12) caught by Litton Das in the last delivery of 4th over. South Africa lost the openers for 31 runs in 4 overs. Faf Du Plessis and JP Duminy then added 46 runs off 44 balls in the third wicket partnership. Sunny again struck in the 12th over and got Duminy (18) caught by Nasir. Bangladesh ace all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan got David Miller (1) LBW cheaply in the 14th over. South Africa lost their fourth wicket for 90 runs. From there on du Plessis and Rilee Rossouw made an unbeaten 58-run partnership off 40 balls to finish for 148 for 4 in 20 overs. Plessis was unbeaten on 79 runs off 61 balls with 8 fours while Rossouw on 31 off 21 balls with 2 boundaries and same number of over boundaries. Bangladesh spinner Arafat Sunny claimed 2 wickets for 19 runs in 3 overs while Shakib Al Hasan and Nasir Hossain got one wicket each for 24 and 37 runs respectively. Bangladesh have left out Rony Talukdar, Jubair Hossain and Rubel Hossain while Chris Morris, Beuran Hendricks and Eddie Leie are not playing for South Africa. Bangladesh: 1 Tamim Iqbal, 2 Soumya Sarkar, 3 Shakib Al Hasan, 4 Mushfiqur Rahim (wk), 5 Sabbir Rahman, 6 Litton Das, 7 Nasir Hossain, 8 Mashrafe Mortaza (capt), 9 Arafat Sunny, 10 Sohag Gazi, 11 Mustafizur Rahman. South Africa: 1 Quinton de Kock (wk), 2 Rilee Rossouw, 3 AB de Villiers, 4 Faf du Plessis (capt), 5 JP Duminy, 6 David Miller, 7 Wayne Parnell, 8 Aaron Phangiso, 9 Kagiso Rabada, 10 David Wiese, 11 Kyle Abbott.
