South Africa probably got it wrong at the toss, trusting the dew factor to choose chasing. That allowed India to unleash a carnage so brutal that it left South Africa’s bowlers too dazzled to react.

Wrecker-in-chief was Hardik Pandya, hammering a 25-ball 63, adding 105 runs in 44 balls for the fourth wicket with Tilak Varma who anchored the innings with 42-ball 73. Abhishek Sharma set up the innings with a typically quick 21-ball 34 and Sanju Samson — playing instead of the injured Shubman Gill — too played his part with a 22-ball 37 on the eve of India’s selection for the T20 World Cup.

The only exception was once again captain Suryakumar Yadav, failing to go past mid-off against a length ball that he would have easily cleared the boundary on a good day. For a year that hasn’t seen a fifty come off Suryakumar’s bat, there couldn’t have been a more inauspicious dismissal to end it.

Pandya had no such problems though, promptly dispatching the first ball he faced—from Corbin Bosch—over mid-off for a flat six, hitting a cameraman flush on his left arm.

It was that kind of a day when India’s batting took no prisoners, with even umpire Rohan Pandit left grimacing in pain when Samson’s straight hit had burst through Donovan Ferreira’s hands to crash into his knee. For pretty much the rest of the innings, South Africa’s fielders kept their bodies out of harm’s way.

The scorecard at the innings break wasn’t kind towards South Africa, with only Lungi Ngidi escaping with an economy of 7.25 thanks to a mix of cutters and slow bouncers that kept the shots at bay. George Linde was nearly there, conceding just 19 runs in his first three overs to apply brakes on India while dismissing Samson with a brilliant delivery that spun away from him to disturb his stumps. Fourth over, Linde went for 27 runs courtesy a scintillating counterattack from Pandya that saw him clobber him for 4, 6, 6, 4 after Varma lined him up for a massive six over long-on.

That assault helped India get to 150 in the 14th over, potentially opening up the possibility of a 240-plus score. Varma reached his sixth T20 fifty in due time, slicing Ngidi very late for a four to cap a phase where India had scored 51 off just 15 balls.

This is where Marco Jansen intervened, conceding just eight runs but Pandya swung back the momentum with 6,4,6 to reach his fifty off 16 balls, second only to Yuvraj Singh’s epic 12-ball fifty against England in the 2007 T20 World Cup.

Boundaries continued to rain in the second half of the match as well, with de Kock plundering 48 off 27 balls until Shivam Dube plucked a stunning one-handed catch to send Reeza Hendricks back in the seventh over.

With South Africa already raising 67 in the Powerplay to set up the chase, de Kock needed to stay put at one end. Which he was doing till Jasprit Bumrah pulled off a return catch with a yorker length slower ball that de Kock chipped straight back to him.

First ball of the next over, Pandya bounced back from a 19-run hiding to dismiss the dangerous-looking Brevis with a slower short of length ball that he pulled straight to Washington Sundar — who snuck out a superb spell of 4-0-30-0 by the eighth over — at deep midwicket.

Chakravarthy went through a similar phase, conceding three runs in his first over before de Kock and Brevis hammered a six and a four each in a 23-run over.

So persistent, though, is Chakravarthy with his lengths that the rewards are almost assured regardless of the runs he might go for.

Come his third over, Chakravarthy was thwarted by a boundary drilled down the ground by Aiden Markram before he tried to lap him and was promptly struck leg-before. Next ball, Chakravarthy slipped in a googly that hoodwinked Donovan Ferreira to go through the gap between his bat and pad to hit the top of off-stump.

And once Arshdeep Singh induced a high top edge off David Miller that Samson caught without any drama, South Africa’s chances of leveling the series had been completely snuffed out.