Dhawan and Bhuvneshwar star as India beat South Africa to take 1-0 lead

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India are a team brimming with confidence and they showed it once again in Johannesburg as they deservedly beat South Africa by 28 runs in the first T20I. While the whole side contributed, Shikhar Dhawan and Bhuvneshwar Kumar provided the stand-out performances which made the difference.

Dhawan smashed 72 from 39 balls to help India post 203/5 – their highest-ever T20I score against South Africa – before Bhuvneshwar put on a T20 bowling clinic to claim his best figures in the format of 5/24 as South Africa finished well short on 175/9.

The away side, as they had for much of the preceding ODI series, completely outplayed their hosts in all aspects, with aggressive batting, clever bowling and sharp fielding characterising their performance. In contrast, South Africa's inexperienced bowling line-up erred on the short side, while they were also guilty of dropping chances before their experienced batsmen failed to contribute.

Having been put into bat on a firm, bouncy Wanderers wicket, India got off to a flying start. Rohit Sharma (21 off 9) set the tone by smashing two sixes off Dane Paterson's opening over. He soon edged Junior Dala (2/47) behind to give the seamer his maiden T20I wicket on debut, but his brief stay gave the sense a big score was on the cards.

Dala soon saw off Suresh Raina (15 off 7) but despite the two early wickets the runs kept flowing. Dhawan peppered the leg-side in particular, with 52 of his 72 runs coming in boundaries. He latched onto anything short, flaying hooks and cuts, while he also used his feet to find the mid-wicket boundary with regularity.

For once on this tour Virat Kohli (26 off 20) fell early, lbw to Tabraiz Shamsi, and although South Africa slowed the run rate somewhat towards the back-end of the innings, Manish Pandey (29), MS Dhoni (16) and Hardik Pandya (13*) ensured they got over the 200-mark.

South Africa knew they needed a good start and JJ Smuts and Reeza Hendricks gave them just that before Bhuvneshwar's knuckle ball did for the former. Stand-in captain JP Duminy fell in similar fashion with an excellent catch from Raina and David Miller miscued a slower ball from Pandya to leave South Africa struggling on 48/3.

Hendricks (70 from 50) batted well, finding the boundary with regularity, and he shared a stand of 81 with Farhaan Behardien (39 from 27), but it always seemed like an uphill battle as India tightened the screw.

Once Behardien had been caught off Yuzvendra Chahal's final ball, the match slipped quickly away from the hosts. Hendricks perished to a Bhuvneshwar slower ball and three of his teammates departed in the same over. Heinrich Klaasen and Chris Morris picked out Raina on the long-on boundary before Paterson ran himself out to give India a team hat-trick.

South Africa faded away to finish 28 runs short and hand yet more momentum to India on this tour, whose only negative was an injury to captain Kohli, who spent most of the second innings off the field with an injury to his glute.