India: 283/1 (Tilak 120*, 109*, Sipamla 1/58)
South Africa: 148 all out (Stubbs 43, Miller 36, Singh 3/20, Chakravarthy 2/42)
India won by 135 runs, win series 3-1
Kevin Pietersen once termed T20 cricket: “It’s a silly game, play silly shots!”
Now Pietersen was infamous for suffering from foot-in-mouth disease, but even the former England maverick would have marvelled at the batting bonanza India served up last night at a frenzied Bullring.
Cricket as we once knew no longer exists. If AB de Villiers, dressed in pretty pink, changed the art of what was possible in ODI’s at this very ground one Sunday afternoon here almost a decade ago, then Tilak Varma (120 not out, 47 balls, 9x4, 10x6) and Sanju Samson (109 not out, 6x4, 9x6) have officially transformed T20 batting into a freak show.
The complete fearlessness and clarity of mind-from-ball one was simply astonishing. And then the insatiable hunger to keep going was even more splendid.
It was an exhibition that would have had anyone that was part of the sold out Wanderers crowd feeling privileged that they were there to witness it all.
It was indeed a harrowing experience for the Proteas bowlers, conceding the highest-ever T20I score at the Bullring, surpassing Sri Lanka’s 260/6 in the inaugural T20 World Cup, but Tilak and Samson were simply on a different stratosphere.
The bare numbers of their record 210-run partnership is outlandish. It only utilised legal 86 deliveries, with the ball racing to the boundary for 13 fours in addition to 17 sixes that sailed high and handsome in the perfect Joburg night sky.
That’s a cumulative total of 154 runs in boundaries - a staggering 73.3%.
In the process, Samson and Tilak smashed their way to their second centuries of the series. For Samson, it followed two consecutive ducks after his series-opening ton in Kingsmead and ensured that he remains very much part of the discussion when the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubmam Gill return.
Tilak, meanwhile, has been the find of this tour for the T20 world champions. The dynamic left-hander had pressed his captain Suryakumar Yadav for a promotion to No 3 - ironically in place of Yadav himself - and repaid his skipper with two outstanding back-to-back centuries.
The duo never allowed the Proteas bowlers to settle into any form of rhythm. And they were equally brutal against both pace and spin with no Proteas bowler spared the brutality of the flowing blades.
Such was their onslaught that Abishek Sharma’s 18-ball 36 at a strike rate of 200 that kick-started the Indian innings is reduced to a mere footnote.
At the dinner break, there were murmurs that this could possibly be the T20 remake of the famous “438” game.
But such talk was more in desperate hope than anything else, and soon proved terribly foolhardy with the Proteas’ run-chase done and dusted just 18 balls in.
Where the Proteas bowlers neither swung or seamed a single delivery all afternoon, the Indian opening pair of Hardik Pandya and Arshdeep Singh (3/20) had the white ball on a string under the floodlights.
It led to the demise of Ryan Rickelton, Reeza Hendricks, captain Aiden Markram and Heinrich Klaasen - and ultimately the Proteas’ chances of levelling the series.
There was no coming back from 10/4, especially when in pursuit of a record 284 for victory, with the remainder of the innings only being a tame attempt to avoid a record defeat.
Even that could not be achieved despite an 86-run partnership between Tristan Stubbs (43 off 29 balls) and David Miller (36 off 27 balls) as they too fell within two balls of each other.
The series defeat - and particularly its despairing manner - will leave Proteas white-ball coach with plenty to ponder over as the search continues for a first-ever T20I series victory.