New \u2060Zealand stormed into the Twenty20 World Cup final \u2060with a nine-wicket demolition\u00a0of South Africa in \u2060the first semifinal at the Eden Gardens.<\/p>\n
Put into bat, South Africa recovered \u200cfrom a precarious 77-5 to post a competitive 169-8 after Marco Jansen led their recovery with a belligerent 55 not \u2060out.<\/p>\n
Finn Allen smashed an \u2060unbeaten 100 off 33 balls, however, and shared a 117-run \u2060opening stand with Tim Seifert (58) as \u2060New Zealand romped \u2060to their target in only 12.5 overs.<\/p>\n
Allen\u2019s achievement was the fastest century scored at a T20 cricket World Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to start well and put them on the back foot early,\u201d Allen said. \u201cIt is easy for me when Tim [Seifert] is going like that. The way he batted got us off to an absolute flyer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is easy in semifinals to stay up for the fight, and with Tim [Seifert] we keep each other in it, and we enjoy it out there together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier, Jansen\u2019s fifty came in response to the Kiwis\u2019 spinners Rachin Ravindra and Cole McConchie taking two wickets each before Tristan Stubbs and Jansen put on 73 to rescue the innings at Kolkata, India\u2019s Eden Gardens.<\/p>\n
Stubbs (29) and Jansen, who hit two fours and five sixes in his 30-ball knock, helped set New Zealand a target of 170 to reach the final.<\/p>\n
India successfully chased 196 against the West Indies on Sunday on the same ground.<\/p>\n
South Africa were the only unbeaten team in the tournament, while New Zealand had edged into the semifinals on net run rate.<\/p>\n
McConchie struck first in the second over with his off-spin to send back Quinton de Kock for 10 and Ryan Rickelton next ball, but Dewald Brevis avoided the hat-trick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New \u2060Zealand stormed into the Twenty20 World Cup final \u2060with a nine-wicket demolition\u00a0of South Africa in \u2060the first<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2264765962-1772642415.webp",770,513,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2264765962-1772642415-150x150.webp",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2264765962-1772642415-300x200.webp",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2264765962-1772642415-768x512.webp",640,427,true],"large":["https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2264765962-1772642415.webp",640,426,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2264765962-1772642415.webp",770,513,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2264765962-1772642415.webp",770,513,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2264765962-1772642415.webp",770,513,false],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2264765962-1772642415-590x410.webp",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"Sports<\/a>","tag_info":"Sports","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions\/724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voiceofrussia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}