Date-stamped : 14 May94 - 18:28
South Africa vs Australia, 8th one day international.
Played at Springbok Park, Bloemfontein, 8 April 1994.

Australia won by 1 run.

It was perhaps fitting that two teams that have  been  so  evenly
matched  throughout  this summer produced a game that was decided
on the very last ball of the match. South Africa brought  in  Tim
Shaw for Peter Kirsten while Australia dropped Matthew Hayden and
Dean Jones and replaced them with Mark Taylor and Damien Fleming.
Allan  Border  won the toss again and decided to bat first. Craig
Matthews struck early and had Mark Taylor caught at 1st slip with
the score on 7 and Mark Waugh fell soon after for 13. South Afri-
can spectators were then treated to the sight of  the  Australian
batting  being tied down by a spinner as Tim Shaw bowled 10 overs
of very accurate left-arm spin and took 1 for 30. The  wicket  he
took  was  that of Michael Slater who advanced out of his crease,
missed the ball, and was well stumped by  Richardson.  With  Shaw
and,  to a lesser extent, Simons out of the way, Australia picked
up their scoring rate as David Boon, Steve Waugh  and  Ian  Healy
all  got into the forties. Healy played another valuable innings,
scoring at better than a run a ball. Eric Simons bowled  extemely
well   in   his   10  overs as did Craig Matthews.  Fanie de Vil-
liers wasn't as sharp as we know he can be.

Needing 204 to win South Africa got just the  start  they  wanted
with  Wessels and Hudson putting on 83 for the 1st wicket. For 40
of their 50 overs South Africa were well in control and seemed to
be  cruising  to  victory.  However,  with 10 overs remaining and
needing just 60 runs with 7 wickets in hand, things started going
wrong.  Rhodes gave a bat/pad chance to Steve Waugh at a close in
cover and that seemed to signal the slide. Kuiper never seemed at
ease  against Warne and was out when he tried to belt him through
the covers but didn't keep it down  and  was  caught.  Four  runs
later  South  Africa  lost the one wicket they couldn't afford to
lose, that of Hudson. As long as he was there South Africa looked
like winning but he gave a fairly tame catch to Border and all of
a sudden Australia sensed victory. McMillan  was  run  out  in  a
fluke   fashion.   He  played  a  defensive stroke to a ball from
Warne and the ball rolled out on the  off  side.  Healy  ran  ran
after   it  and  flicked   it  backwards  without looking and the
ball hit the stumps! Eric Simons almost saw South Africa  through
to  victory but  was  bowled  by  Steve  Waugh  just  after  hit-
ting him over midwicket for 6. So, the last over  arrived,  South
needed   6   runs to win and Damien Fleming had to bowl the over.
He was playing in only his 2nd limited overs  international   but
what  an  over  he bowled!  A  single was taken off the first and
third balls, balls 2, 4 and 5 were dot balls. It all came down to
the  last  ball  with  South   Africa  needing  4 runs to win and
Richardson was facing. He made contact and hit the ball  down  to
long  off  but   there  was  a fielder  there  so  Richardson and
Shaw just had to take as many runs as they could and hope  for  a
misfield. The pickup was clean, the  throw  was good and Richard-
son was run out going for the 3rd run which would have  tied  the
scores.

So, the limited overs series ended level  at  4-4  and  the  test
series  ended  level  at 1-1. Although it would have been nice to
see an outright winner, I think the series results are a fair re-
flection  of  the  relative  strengths of the teams on this tour.
Australia had greater depth in batting while South Africa had the
edge  in  the  fast  bowling department and in the end both teams
were very evenly matched.

<END> Contributed by Frank.Sokolic (sokolic@*.und.ac.za)