SA vs AUS WTC Final: South Africa has won the World Test Championship (WTC). The team defeated defending champions Australia by 5 wickets on Saturday. South Africa has become the world champion for the first time in any format of cricket. Not only this, the team has won an ICC tournament after 27 years. The team won the Champions Trophy in 1998.
Before lunch on the fourth day of the match at Lord’s Stadium in London, South Africa achieved the target of 282 runs by losing 5 wickets. Aiden Markram scored 136 runs, while Temba Bavuma played an innings of 66 runs.
Kyle Varian took a single against Mitchell Starc in the 84th over and gave his team a historic victory. He remained unbeaten on 4 runs along with David Bedingham (21 runs). Aiden Markram was the Player of the Match.
Australia scored 218 runs in the second innings and gave South Africa a target of 282 runs. In the first innings, Australia scored 212 and South Africa scored 138 runs. Here the Kangaroo team got a lead of 74 runs.
3 factors of South Africa’s victory
1. How the weather was favorable to the African batsmen
In the first two days of the match, the sky of London was cloudy and windy. In such a situation, the ball was swinging more. On the third day, Friday, the sun shone from the morning. This reduced the swing and batting became easier. There was sunshine on the last day as well. In such a situation, the African batsmen achieved the set target easily.
2. Steve Smith’s catch dropped, Temba Bavuma
Temba Bavuma got a lifeline In the 20th over of South Africa’s second innings, captain Temba Bavuma got a lifeline. Steve Smith dropped Bavuma’s catch (on the score of 2 runs) on Starc’s back of length ball. At that time South Africa’s score was 76 runs and the team had lost the second wicket on 70 runs. If Smith had caught this catch, South Africa would not have got a chance to recover.
3. The behaviour of the pitch changed, the bowlers did not get any help
The behaviour of the pitch changed on the third and fourth day of the match. The effect of grass was visible on the pitch for the first two days. But in the last two days, the pitch became completely flat. The Australian bowlers did not get any help on it. This made South Africa’s run chase easy.
3 match winners from South Africa
Aiden Markram
- Runs: 136
- Balls: 207
- Strike Rate: 65.70
- Fours/Sixes: 14/0
Temba Bavuma
- Runs: 66
- Balls: 134
- Strike Rate: 49.25
- Fours/Sixes: 5/0
Kagiso Rabada
- Overs: 15.4
- Runs Conceded: 51
- Wickets: 5
- Economy Rate: 3.30
Player pf the Match
Captains talk
Temba Bavuma said – special moment for the country
The last 2 days have been special, for a while it felt like we were playing on home ground. This is a special moment for our country. On many occasions luck and eather were not with us, but this time we got the support of the sun.
Pat Cummins said- they deserved to win
We did not do some things right. Despite a good lead in the first innings, we could not score big. We need to improve in the top-7 batting. South Africa showed why they have reached the final. They deserve this victory.
South Africa: The world champions of Test 2025
Playing-11: Temba Bavuma (captain), Ryan Rickelton, Aiden Markram, Vian Mulder, Tristan Stubbs, David Bedingham, Kyle Varian (wicketkeeper), Marco Jansen, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi.
Extras- Tony De Georgi, Dan Paterson, Senuran Muthusamy and Corbin Bosch.
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