Miller mayhem not enough to earn SA Valentine victory

Until Saturday, all David Miller and Al Capone shared was that they both swung a bat left-handed - Miller for the fences, Capone for the skulls of those he thought had crossed him. Now both are implicated in Valentine's Day massacres separated by 11,640 kilometres and 92 years.

Number 2,122 North Clark Street on Chicago's north side is a long way from Block E2 in Hafeez Kardar Road in Lahore's Gulberg III district in every sense. At 10.30am on February 14, 1929, four men associated with Capone put seven members of a rival gang against a garage wall and machine-gunned them to death. The headline in the papers wrote itself: "The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre". On a cool, misty evening at Gaddafi Stadium on Saturday, Pakistan's bowlers employed far more skill than mafia murderers to mow down South Africa's plodding batters more or less where they stood. But that wasn't Saturday's happily bloodless massacre.

South Africa were 46/4 when Miller arrived at the scene of what was fast coagulating into a crime against batting. Twenty-five balls later they were 65/7. The Pakistanis had bowled with precision and penetration on a turning pitch, but the South Africans looked less like cricketers and more like clumsily bludgeoning mobsters as they lurched into ill-thought, ill-played, ill-fated strokes. Having kept the series alive by winning on Friday - their first success of the tour in the wake of losses in both Tests and the first T20I - they seemed to be going gently into that good night.

Miller had gone a dozen innings in the format, eight of them completed, without reaching 50. Before the series he had spoken of making his seniority - his 78 T20I caps were almost three times as many as anyone else in the squad - count for something against opponents widely written up as superior. This was his chance to make good on that hope. It's one thing to be given an opportunity, another to take it. To Miller's credit, he did.

He faced three balls for two runs before he hit Usman Qadir through backward square leg for four. There were four more were that came from, along with seven sixes. His unbeaten 85 came off 45 balls and was the closest he has yet ventured to a second century in the format. There was more than a touch of Capone's intent in the last over of the innings, when Miller launched four sixes off Faheem Ashraf. Of the 58 runs scored in the unbroken stand, Miller owned 47. The last four overs yielded 54. Forty-five were Miller's. And yet, as he walked off with Lutho Sipamla's arm garlanding his shoulders, he was muttering sternly - presumably about the three deliveries in the final over, one a wide, that he had not punished.

Thus were South Africa batted back into the game. If you're Pakistan, make that battered. Babar Azam had won the toss for the first time in the series, and so was able to give his bowlers the chance to utilise a ball drier than it would be later in the game when the fog thickened. Until Miller's assault, it seemed the attack's excellence - particularly that of debutant leg spinner Zahid Mahmood, who took 3/40 - had won the day and the series. But, suddenly, Pakistan had serious batting to do. Even so, only once in the seven day-night T20Is at this ground that had been won by the team batting first had they scored fewer than South Africa's 164/8.

Babar opened with Mohammad Rizwan in the first two games and was dismissed for nought and five in the first and second overs. Did that influence his decision to come in at first drop on Saturday? That proved the right thing to do, and not only because Rizwan and Haider Ali gave Pakistan stability in a first-wicket stand of 51. On top of that, Babar made 44 and was able to marshall the innings until the 14th over.

While that was happening Tabraiz Shamsi was counterpunching for all his worth. His first delivery of the match, to Haider in the seventh over, pitched outside off stump and jagged so sharply it hit the top of leg. His next over brought Rizwan's wicket, trapped in front for 42. The downfalls of Hussain Talat and Asif Ali would complete Shamsi's career-best haul of 4/25.

Pakistan needed 40 off 30 when Shamsi had completed his four overs, and 28 off 18 after Bjorn Fortuin had bowled the last over of spin seen in the match. So the home side were, by then, favourites to win. But South Africa's seamers allowed whatever needle there was left in the contest to escape. Dwaine Pretorius - Saturday's hero for his 5/17 - went for 12 in an over and Andile Phehlukwayo looked like he was bowling to an armed and dangerous Capone himself in what became the last over, which bled 20 runs.

Pakistan's victory made them the first team to win 100 T20Is, which they achieved in their 163rd game in the format. South Africa slipped to their first defeat in seven bilateral T20I series in Asia and the United Arab Emirates, but their fourth successive series loss in the format.

Miller took South Africa closer than they should have come to pulling the series out of the fire, and they will hold up their performance on Friday as a model for the future. So Mark Boucher and his staff will return home happier than they would have been after the Tests. But there is work to do. As Boucher told an online press conference: "We didn't come here to lose, and that's tough."

Not a lot of cricket is played in the mean streets of Chicago, but Boucher's message would be understood there, too.