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Eoin Morgan absolved Reece Topley of any blame for England’s last-ball defeat against South Africa at Newlands.

Topley was the unfortunate fall-guy who conceded 15 from the final over of the home run chase, as Chris Morris again landed the knockout blow with his brilliant late hitting.

As in Johannesburg a week ago, when the all-rounder hit his maiden one-day international 50 to level that series from what seemed an impossible situation, this time he clubbed 14 runs from five balls to consign England to defeat in the first of two Twenty20s in three days.

Morgan’s team must therefore pick themselves up for the final match on this tour, at the Wanderers on Sunday, having seen their winning streak of six in the sprint format ended - despite a fine performance in the field, capped by Chris Jordan’s three for 23, to try to defend 134 for eight.

The captain identified a below-par performance with the bat for England’s troubles, rather than Topley - whose telling last over was the most expensive of a match dominated by bowlers, and ended with him failing to pull off a run-out which would have salvaged a tie.

Morgan said it would be “very unfair” to criticise Topley.

“The bowling unit as a whole did exceptionally well - there was no bowler that let himself down here tonight” he insisted.

“I think we probably lost the game with the bat. The basics of just adapting to the wicket, we didn’t do well enough.

“We let ourselves down with a little bit of lack of awareness with the bat.”

Morgan, like his opposite number Faf du Plessis, indicated England’s batsmen failed to assess the situation accurately on a used pitch.

“It’s easy to play with the mode of batting on good wickets, and expecting that all the time,” he added.

“The hardest thing is to get your nut down and score 150-155 - which would have been par.”

As for Topley, Morgan is confident he will react favourably to a tough experience.

“I think he’ll handle it really well,” he said.

“He’s obviously very disappointed at the moment, but he has a huge amount of character - that’s the reason he plays for us.

“He has great skill, and he keeps delivering.

“We see a huge amount of potential in him, and the biggest compliment I can pay him at the minute is if we played the same game tomorrow and I needed him to bowl the last over I’d have every faith in him.”

South Africa have had just that in their leg-spinner Imran Tahir, who struggled in the early stages of the ODI series but has improved and equalled his career-best with figures of four for 21.

Tahir is known for his wild wicket celebrations, often running many yards to hug team-mates - and he very nearly had extra reason when he came close to a hat-trick, with a googly that bamboozled Jordan but just missed the stumps.

Asked what might have happened if it had hit them, Du Plessis said: “I think he’d have run up the mountain!”

There was still plenty for the winning captain and man-of-the-match to smile about - after Morris had again bailed them out.

“Successful teams get over the line, at times when they shouldn’t,” added Du Plessis.

“We’ll take a lot of confidence from that. We didn’t play as well as we can, but still got across that line - which is a huge credit to us.

“We sat down at half-time, discussed it, and tried to learn from what England had done.

“We found that possibly for that surface, they perhaps tried to go too hard - and by doing that, they offered us a lot of chances.

“We know with our batting line-up, if we can have wickets in hand for the last four or five overs we’re very strong.

“That was always the plan.”

It almost went off course, but not quite.

“When I got out, that was a bit of a speed-bump,” admitted Du Plessis, whose 25 was the top score in South Africa’s innings.

“One of us should have batted through, and that’s possibly where we let them back into the game.

“But ‘Morry’ had another good knock again tonight, and got us there when we shouldn’t have - England should have won that game.”