Farokh Engineer: India Blew South Africa Away, They Choked Them

Another Sunday, another World Cup win for India, this time over South Africa. I was very happy with the performance.

I think India blew South Africa away, they choked them. South Africa have a tag of "chokers" and they certainly proved that today.

They couldn't do a thing right, right from the moment MS Dhoni won the toss.

What a brilliant innings by Shikhar Dhawan. He ran Rohit Sharma out but he certainly made amends for that and played a magnificent innings with Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane playing superbly. These three really plundered the South African bowling.

Then India's bowlers came to the fore with Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin bowling very well. They were bowling slow, not bowling fast, allowing the ball to turn and grip.

All credit to India. They played like world champions today and if they carry on playing like that, who knows, they could still retain their title.

It was another sound all-round performance, India's fielding was brilliant too. South Africa dropped a couple of catches which is unusual for them. The run outs of AB de Villiers and David Miller were crucial but all in all, this was India's day and a bad one at the office for South Africa.

I think the win against Pakistan has inspired this huge turnaround in India's fortunes. It gave them self-belief and let's not forget they have been playing in Australia for the last three months so it's almost playing on a home ground for them and I would say around 90 per cent of the crowd at the MCG were supporting India today.

They are used to the conditions now and it looked like they were more used to them today than South Africa were.

I don't think that India will fear any team from this point on, not even Australia or New Zealand, who are still the favourites.

Lycamobile ambassador Farokh Engineer was talking to John Pennington

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