Brilliant Lungi Ngidi gets Proteas off the mark at T20 World Cup

South Africa having earlier set the Canadians a target of 214 for the win, Ngidi struck with the very first ball of the second innings on his way to an impressive 4/31 in his four overs. He says the wicket did play exactly how they had predicted, and believes their recent tour of India had a positive impact on their preparations.

"Ja, we did play the way we thought it would. Obviously, we played a series against India before, and the ball did did do quite a bit, so we knew that it was going to be tough upfront for the new guys. They came out and said that . Then, in the middle they had strung together a few good overs and that's T20 cricket – you have to absorb the pressure and transfer when you can. That's exactly what the guys did," said Ngidi

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Ngidi says the pitch at the Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad was a batting one, and thought 180 plus would have also been a good score to defend for them. He added that their opponents also had some good moments with the willow, which proves that bowlers still had quite a bit to do.

He gave praise to Canada for the way they played, and for actually batting out their allotted 20 overs as they posted 158/8. He says they put them under pressure and can be proud of that.

Despite finding it relatively easy against Canada, Ngidi says he didn’t know too much about who they’ll be facing and even had to look at old World Cup footage to get an idea of their opponents.

"It was a bit difficult we've never played them and haven't seen much of them . I was able to watch a few of the warm-up games that they played even looked at the 2024 World Cup so that is pretty much the information we had."