New Zealand 135 for 3 (Seifert 66*, Mitchell 20*, Muthusamy 2-24) beat South Africa 134 for 8 (Hendricks 41, Linde 23*, Milne 2-21, Santner 2-26) by seven wickets

New Zealand will take the advantage into the tri-series final after beating South Africa for the second time in two meetings in the group stage. The two sides will meet again on Saturday, and New Zealand will have one more opportunity to fine-tune when they play Zimbabwe on Thursday. Zimbabwe have already been eliminated.

In a competition where the chasing team have won four out of the five games so far (including this one), New Zealand played the situation to perfection. On a dry Harare surface, they restricted South Africa to their lowest total of the series and then chased it down inside 16 overs with seven wickets in hand. They made batting look relatively easy with an opening stand of 51, the highest powerplay score of the series, 55 for 1, and had the only half-century of the match courtesy of Tim Seifert.

Contrastingly, South Africa struggled to find fluidity or string together partnerships. Their highest was a sixth-wicket stand of 30 off 16 balls between Reeza Hendricks and George Linde, who were also the only two batters to have individual scores over 20. None of their bowlers could keep New Zealand quiet and Gerald Coetzee was particularly expensive. His three overs cost 37 runs while Zakary Foulkes and Adam Milne gave away just 33 runs in seven overs.

New Zealand's early squeeze

Under cloudy skies, New Zealand made run-scoring particularly difficult and found the right lengths straight away. Jacob Duffy opened the bowling and set the tone with back-of-good-length balls and a hint of extra bounce. He would not have been too unhappy when the first runs came off the edge as Rassie van der Dussen threw his hands at one and earned a streaky boundary. Foulkes followed up with a similar strategy and Milne reaped the rewards from the early pressure when van der Dussen made room to try and find the boundary but exposed his stumps and was bowled. South Africa managed just 17 runs off the first five overs, off seven scoring shots.

South Africa's slew of soft dismissals

At 52 for 2 and approaching the halfway mark, South Africa needed quick runs and made several reckless attempts to get them. Dewald Brevis tried to upper-cut Will O'Rourke but only managed to give Seifert a simple catch. In the next over, Lhuan-dre Pretorius, moved down to No. 5 for this match, sent a Mitchell Santner ball that was zoning in on the pads straight to Duffy at short fine when he could have hit it anywhere on the leg side. While those two mistakes could be put down to inexperience, Hendricks, who was holding the innings together on 41, will be livid with the shot he played off the penultimate ball of the 17th over. Duffy offered him width and Hendricks tried to smash it over the covers but only got it as far as Michael Bracewell in the ring. South Africa were 109 for 6 at that stage but had Senuran Muthusamy, who can bat as high as No. 4, in hand. He was deceived by a change-up from Milne and sent a slower ball straight to extra cover as South Africa's innings stuttered at the death. They scored 30 runs off the last four overs and lost three wickets.

South Africa's wayward start

The fielding team can ill-afford mistakes when defending a small total but South Africa had three in the first over, which made things even more difficult for them. Linde's first ball went wide down the leg side, his second did the same thing and snuck past Pretorius behind the stumps to go for four, which meant New Zealand had six runs on the board before a legitimate ball was bowled. Three deliveries late, Linde floated one up, Seifert, who had yet to score a run, went inside-out and tried to clear long-off but didn't quite get enough on it. Andile Simelane ran around to attempt a catch. He got both hands to the ball but could not keep it under control and it popped out as he fell to the floor. Seifert collected his first three runs and went on to score his 11th T20I half-century.

Seifert's charmed life

After he was dropped on 0, Seifert could have been bowled when he shuffled across his stumps to try and lap Coetzee but missed and then could have been caught when he top-edged Coetzee on the leg side but the ball fell safely over both Rubin Hermann and Linde who converged from midwicket and mid-on, respectively. Seifert went on to hit Coetzee for back-to-back boundaries and seemed to settle. Just as things seemed to become easier for him, he survived a caught-and-bowled chance off Linde, who could not snatch a return chance. Seifert wrested back control with the shot that brought up his fifty, a massive six off Muthusamy over long-on, off the 38th ball he faced. He hit another off Nqaba Peter and put the result beyond doubt.