Taylor leaps, Simmons goes to sleep

AB de Villiers pulled off numerous feats at the SCG - it was difficult to better his destruction of the West Indies at the Wanderers but this went close. Perhaps his most audacious stroke was to give the starkest possible indication to Andre Russell that he could hit the ball wherever he pleased, regardless of where the bowler pitched it. A delivery well wide outside off stump was aimed at producing a shot to that side of the wicket, but de Villiers walked impudently across and paddled it casually to the fine-leg fence.

West Indies' fielding did not scale terribly great heights for much of the afternoon, but late in the innings de Villiers' onslaught was briefly interrupted by a moment's brilliance from Jerome Taylor. David Miller's blow down the ground off Andre Russell was well struck and seemed destined to land just beyond the boundary rope, but Taylor leaped with an outstretched right hand to pull in the chance and grant his teammates momentary respite from the torrent of runs being clattered past them.

Lendl Simmons did not have much time to get acclimatised to the middle amid a rush of West Indian wickets, but his dismissal showed he was even more dazed than most. A quicker delivery from Imran Tahir appeared to strike him in front and the umpire's finger went up swiftly. But replays revealed an inside edge so thick Simmons would have needed to be completely in a funk to have missed it. West Indian supporters at the ground wondered rightly what he had been thinking.

At 63 for 7 the match seemed destined to end in the heaviest ODI defeat of all. But on a day when most everything had run South Africa's way, a couple of balls falling short or in between fielders granted West Indies a chance to mount a rearguard that if not saving face, at least served to provide late entertainment for a crowd of 23,612. Jason Holder made the most of his earlier good fortune to strike a crisp half-century, and the record defeat was averted.