India beats South Africa by 7 wickets to take 2-1 lead in T20 series

DHARAMSALA, India (AP) — Aiden Markram helped South Africa avoid another unwanted batting record but couldn't prevent India winning a lopsided third Twenty20 match by seven wickets on Sunday.

Put into bat, South Africa rallied from 7-3 to 117 all out in 20 overs and India replied with 120-3 in 15.5 overs under the floodlights at Dharamsala to take a 2-1 lead in the five-match series.

South Africa had looked in danger of scoring fewer runs than its series-opening 74, the team’s worst total in T20 cricket, before Markram’s defiant knock. The South Africa captain hit two sixes and six fours in his 46-ball innings before he was caught behind against pacer Arshdeep Singh (2-13 in four overs).

Harshit Rana claimed 2-34 in four overs after replacing Jasprit Bumrah, who missed the game for personal reasons. Kuldeep Yadav took 2-12 in two overs, including the wicket of Ottneil Baartman off the final ball of South Africa’s innings.

India made light work of the chase. Openers Abhishek Sharma (35 runs off 18 balls) and Shubman Gill took the hosts to 43-0 after 3.1 overs, the same stage at which South Africa was 7-3.

Sharma and Gill shared an opening stand of 60, which was ended by Markram running to catch Sharma off the bowling of Corbin Bosch. Gill was bowled by Marco Jansen for a run-a-ball 28. South Africa quick Lungi Ngidi (1-23) dismissed India captain Suryakumar Yadav, who was caught by Baartman for 12.

Tilak Varma (26 not out) and Shivam Dube (10 not out) took India home in the latest twist in an unpredictable series. South Africa won the second T20 by 51 runs after losing the first match by 101 runs.

The fourth T20 is on Wednesday at Lucknow.

The series is in preparation for the T20 World Cup in India in February. India is the defending champion after beating South Africa in a gripping end to the final in 2024.

India won the ODI series against South Africa 2-1 after losing the test series 2-0.

AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket

India's Harshit Rana celebrates the wicket of South Africa's Quinton de Kock during the third T20 cricket match between India and South Africa in Dharamshala, India, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

South Africa's captain Aiden Markram plays a shot during the third T20 cricket match between India and South Africa in Dharamshala, India, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

India's Tilak Varma plays a shot during the third T20 cricket match between India and South Africa in Dharamshala, India, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

India's Shubman Gill, left, and Abhishek Sharma greets each other during the third T20 cricket match between India and South Africa in Dharamshala, India, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

India's Arshdeep Singh, center, celebrates with teammates the wicket of South Africa's Reeza Hendricks during the third T20 cricket match between India and South Africa in Dharamshala, India, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

BEIRUT (AP) — A man who carried out an attack in Syria that killed three U.S. citizens had joined Syria’s internal security forces as a base security guard two months earlier and was recently reassigned amid suspicions that he might be affiliated with the Islamic State group, a Syrian official told The Associated Press Sunday.

The attack Saturday in the Syrian desert near the historic city of Palmyra killed two U.S. service members and one American civilian and wounded three others. It also wounded three members of the Syrian security forces who clashed with the gunman, interior ministry spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba said.

Al-Baba said that Syria’s new authorities had faced shortages in security personnel and had to recruit rapidly after the unexpected success of a rebel offensive last year that intended to capture the northern city of Aleppo but ended up overthrowing the government of former President Bashar Assad.

“We were shocked that in 11 days we took all of Syria and that put a huge responsibility in front of us from the security and administration sides,” he said.

The attacker was among 5,000 members who recently joined a new division in the internal security forces formed in the desert region known as the Badiya, one of the places where remnants of the Islamic State extremist group have remained active.

Al-Baba said the internal security forces’ leadership had recently become suspicious that there was an infiltrator leaking information to IS and began evaluating all members in the Badiya area.

The probe raised suspicions last week about the man who later carried out the attack, but officials decided to continue monitoring him for a few days to try to determine if he was an active member of IS and to identify the network he was communicating with if so, al-Baba said. He did not name the attacker.

At the same time, as a “precautionary measure,” he said, the man was reassigned to guard equipment at the base at a location where he would be farther from the leadership and from any patrols by U.S.-led coalition forces.

On Saturday, the man stormed a meeting between U.S. and Syrian security officials who were having lunch together and opened fire after clashing with Syrian guards, al-Baba said. The attacker was shot and killed at the scene.

Al-Baba acknowledged that the incident was “a major security breach” but said that in the year since Assad’s fall “there have been many more successes than failures” by security forces.

In the wake of the shooting, he said, the Syrian army and internal security forces “launched wide-ranging sweeps of the Badiya region” and broke up a number of alleged IS cells.

The incident comes at a delicate time as the U.S. military is expanding its cooperation with Syrian security forces.

The U.S. has had forces on the ground in Syria for over a decade, with a stated mission of fighting IS, with about 900 troops present there today.

Before Assad’s ouster, Washington had no diplomatic relations with Damascus and the U.S. military did not work directly with the Syrian army. Its main partner at the time was the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the country’s northeast.

That has changed over the past year. Ties have warmed between the administrations of U.S. President Donald Trump and Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of an Islamist insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that used to be listed by Washington as a terrorist organization.

In November, al-Sharaa became the first Syrian president to visit Washington since the country’s independence in 1946. During his visit, Syria announced its entry into the global coalition against the Islamic State, joining 89 other countries that have committed to combating the group.

U.S. officials have vowed retaliation against IS for the attack but have not publicly commented on the fact that the shooter was a member of the Syrian security forces.

Critics of the new Syrian authorities have pointed to Saturday’s attack as evidence that the security forces are deeply infiltrated by IS and are an unreliable partner.

Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an advocacy group that seeks to build closer relations between Washington and Damascus, said that is unfair.

Despite both having Islamist roots, HTS and IS were enemies and often clashed over the past decade.

Among former members of HTS and allied groups, Moustafa, said, “It’s a fact that even those who carry the most fundamentalist of beliefs, the most conservative within the fighters, have a vehement hatred of ISIS.”

“The coalition between the United States and Syria is the most important partnership in the global fight against ISIS because only Syria has the expertise and experience to deal with this,” he said.

FILE - U.S. forces patrol oil fields in Syria, Oct. 28, 2019 . (AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad, File)