• South Africa recorded the fourth win by ten wickets in World Cup matches. India had beaten East Africa at Leeds in 1975 and West Indies had beaten Zimbabwe at Birmingham in 1983 and Pakistan at Melbourne in 1992 by ten wickets.
• The unbroken partnership of 142 runs between Herschelle Gibss and Gary Kirsten was the third century partnership for the opening wicket by this pair – maximum in World Cup cricket. West Indian openers Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes were involved in two century partnerships.
• Gibbs and Kirsten have now equalled the World Cup record of most century partnerships by a pair for any wicket. Sri Lanka’s Asanka Gurusinha & Aravinda de Silva and Pakistan’s Rameez Raja & Javed Miandad had also posted three century partnerships – both for third wicket.
• This was the eighth century partnership for first wicket for South Africa involving Gibbs and Kirsten. This pair has now come at level with Australia’s Mark Waugh and Adam Gilchrist. Now only India’s Saurav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar (16) and West Indies’ Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes (15) are ahead of Gibbs and Kirsten.
• Gibbs and Kirsten have now aggregated 665 runs in 11 matches in which they have opened the innings together – most by any pair for any wicket in World Cup matches. This pair surpassed Sri Lankans Asanka Gurusinha and Aravinda de Silva’s run-aggregate of 614 runs in eight innings for the third wicket. Incidentally the previous record aggregate for the first wicket was 592 by Australians David Boon and Geoff Marsh in 10 innings.
• Gibbs scored 72 of his runs only in the boundaries – 12 fours and four sixes. This gave him a boundary percentage of 86.74, which is the highest for any batsman in World Cup (scoring atleast 50 runs in an innings). The previous record was on the name of Sanath Jayasuriya who made 85.36 % of his runs in boundaries during his innings of 82 against England at Faisalabad in 1996.
• South Africa’s win with 172 balls to spare in the match is their biggest in terms of margin of balls. They had beaten New Zealand at Faisalabad in 1996 with 75 balls to spare.
• Lance Klusener (4-16) achieved his first four wicket haul in ODIs. Interestingly he has taken six wickets in a match once and five wickets in a match on as many as five occasions without ever taking a four wicket haul.
• Klusener won his fifth Man of the Match award in World Cup. With this he has equalled the tally of West Indian Viv Richards, England’s Graham Gooch and India’s Sachin Tendulkar. What is remarkable with Klusener’s feat is that he has played only 11 matches while all others have appeared in more than 20 matches.

(Article: Copyright © 2003 Rajneesh Gupta)