South Africa vs New Zealand, 14th Match, Group E at Bridgetown, May 06 2010 - Match Result

Solid all-round performance from South Africa. There were rarely behind in the game once the top-order gave them a good start. Albie, of course, provided the fireworks that propelled them to a big total, which proved 13 too many for New Zealand. For NZ, none of the top five had strike-rates above 120, which meant the lower order had too much to do. South Africa will be pleased with their bowling unit as well: the decision to bring in Botha paid off and Morne continues to show he can be good at Twenty20s.

Post-match presentation:

Vettori: "de Villiers and Morkel played well, we missed a couple of chances but let them get too much. You needed to be inch-perfect with guys like Morkel hitting at the death, but we were a little off. We need guys at the top to play 40-50 balls to have a chance of chasing down this target."

Smith: "We played smart cricket, Albie made the most of his opportunity, and his partnership with AB could have been the turning point. We controlled the game pretty well, except for some sloppiness in the final five overs. Big game against England coming up."

Alibe is the Man of the Match. "The key for me is to keep my shape, it was a short boundary down the ground and also with the wind, so it worked in my favour."

That's it from us for the first day of the Super Eights. Tomorrow kicks off with a massive match between India and Australia, followed by Sri Lanka v hosts West Indies. Join us then. This is Siddarth Ravindran, saying good night.

Last words of the day will be to Martin: "My previous comment was a bit brilliant but also wasn't worded well so came out nonsense. Explained better SA scored 1 run for every run scored off a boundary NZ follow suit at just under 1 run per run scored of boundary but the 11 6's from SA and only 6 from NZ was where the match was won and lost."

Greg in France: "To Martin from the UK. Merci Mate! I'm off to bed."

Martin from the UK sends in a mail that might be brilliant or nonsense: "in response to marks comment, however in threat of sounding a bit geeky at the time his comment was written new zealand are scoring an average of 1.8 runs between there boundaries and south africa hit 1.9 runs between boundaries. now considering this was before the final four over slog its fair to say its not the singles and twos between boundaries thats knocked them down its the fact their boundaries are 4's and not 6's"