World T20: West Indies tried to help but 'choke-masters' South Africa live up to their billing

Coming into the World T20 with so much promise and hope South Africa delivered instantly, posting the daunting target of 230 for England to chase in their first match. As we know this went really badly though, so now against the West Indies in their third match, they were in a ‘must-win’ situation.
These are not good situations for South Africa, and when Quinton de Kock and Hashim Amla chose to look longingly into each other’s eyes in the middle of the pitch in the first over, instead of run a single, the tone was set for more of the same.

1/1 became 13/2, which then went to 20/3… It was vintage Proteas here as they were doing their utmost to wrestle back the choker’s tag from Bangladesh who briefly took it after their last match versus India.

AB de Villiers and Quinton De Kock then managed to bat long enough for us to work out what sort of a pitch we had on our hands. As expected it was pretty low and slow, and hardly a high scorer. But surely it wasn’t as bad as the Proteas were making it look?
46/4, 47/5… What was going on?

Well the Windies weren’t bowling incredibly, this needs to be made clear at this point. They were, however, implementing a rather clever strategy. The Proteas had no doubt prepared for Badree and Benn as the spin threats on this pitch but Chris Gayle had his first bowl in an international T20 since 2012, and returned figures of 2/17 in 3 overs.