Australia sealed the three-match Twenty20 series against South Africa with the six-wicket victory in the final match at Newlands yesterday.
All four of the visitors’ top-order contributed, with Usman Khawaja (33) and Shane Watson (42) adding 76 for the opening stand before Steven Smith (44) and David Warner (33) put the match beyond the hosts with 79 for the third wicket as the visitor’s achieved the target of 179, with four balls to spare. Leg-spinner Imran Tahir finished with 2-38 off his four overs.
Earlier, Hashim Amla made a career-best 97 not out as South Africa made a competitive 178 for four in the series-deciding match. Amla hit eight fours and four sixes in a 62-ball innings. It was the highest score by a South African in a Twenty20 international against Australia and the highest individual score at Newlands.
Amla and Quinton de Kock got South Africa off to a fast start, putting on 47 for the first wicket before De Kock was caught at third man off Nathan Coulter-Nile for 25 off 13 balls.
The six-over power play yielded 68 runs but the scoring rate slowed when the fielding restrictions were lifted, with leg-spinner Adam Zampa conceding only 23 runs in a four-over spell.
Zampa should have had the wicket of Rilee Rossouw, with Glenn Maxwell putting down a straightforward catch on the midwicket boundary when the batsman had made three of his eventual 16 runs.
South Africa chose to bat first on a ground where the average total for teams batting second in floodlit games was 154.
Amla, making his first appearance in the series, replaced AB de Villiers in one of three changes in the South African team.  Left-arm spinner Aaron Phangiso was not included in the South African team despite having his bowling action cleared in an independent test, after failing a similar test ten days earlier.