South African batter David Miller was not pleased to fly down to Dubai ahead of their ICC Champions Trophy 2025 semifinal which ended up being in Lahore.
South African batter David Miller’s brilliant century went in vain as his side lost the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 semifinal to New Zealand at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore. Miller slammed a century off only 67 balls to break Virender Sehwag’s 23-year-old record of fastest century in Champions Trophy.
Chasing 363 to win, South Africa ended up with 312 – only thanks to a late blitz by Miller. He bettered Sehwag’s record, who had struck a century against England in 77 deliveries, in Colombo during the 2002 edition of the tournament.
However, the veteran South African batter slammed the International Cricketer Council (ICC) for their ‘scheduling’ woes as the Proteas side had to travel up and down from Lahore to Dubai for a day before their semifinal match on Wednesday.
With India playing all their matches in Dubai in the Champions Trophy 2025, both Australia and South Africa had to fly down to Dubai ahead of India’s final Group A match against New Zealand last Sunday. If India had lost the match, then South Africa would have needed to face them in Dubai in the first semi-final on Tuesday but since India defeated New Zealand by 44 runs, it was Australia who ended up facing the Indians while the Proteas had to fly back to Lahore.
“It’s only an hour and 40 minute flight, but the fact that we had to do that was not ideal,” Miller said after South Africa lost to New Zealand on Wednesday by 50 runs. “It’s early morning, it’s after a game and we had to fly. Then we got to Dubai at 4 pm. And at 7.30 am we had to come back. It doesn’t make it nice. It’s not like we flew five hours, and we had enough time to recover and recuperate, but it was not an ideal situation still.”
David Miller scores the FASTEST century in Champions Trophy history.
67 balls – David Miller🇿🇦 v NZ, Today
77 balls – Virender Sehwag🇮🇳 v ENG, 2002
77 balls – Josh Inglis🇦🇺 v ENG, 2025
80 balls – Shikhar Dhawan🇮🇳 v SA, 2013#SAvsNZ #ChampionsTrophy pic.twitter.com/6dOkvWZitR— Kausthub Gudipati (@kaustats) March 5, 2025
Miller maintained his fine form in the ICC ODI knockout matches. In his last four appearances in the ICC ODI knockout fixtures, Miller has notched up two centuries and a fifty. He struck an unbeaten 56 against England at the Oval in the Champions Trophy 2013 semi-final. He topped it up with 49 off 18 deliveries against New Zealand in the 2025 ODI World Cup semi-final. In the 2023 ODI World Cup semi-final against Australia, Miller defied the odds to keep his side alive with a memorable 101 at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata.
“I do think it (the target) was above-par. Probably if it was 350, we would have backed ourselves to chase the score. We had one or two partnerships today but we needed me or Rassie to go on and emulate what two of their batters did. They really put us under pressure from the word go, the way they were able to pierce the off-side at the start and the way they played in the middle overs,” South African captain Temba Bavuma said after the match.
