TWO days off. That is SA's reward for clearing their first World Cup hurdle. Then they will begin preparing for their toughest challenge of the group stage.

"Not at all," SA captain AB de Villiers said when he was asked if he had started thinking about his team's next match, against India in Melbourne on Sunday.

"My wife is coming over; all our wives are coming over, and I'm going to try and get away from the game. I'll start thinking about India on Wednesday."

Behind De Villiers and his men lay an unusually competitive game against Zimbabwe in Hamilton yesterday. SA won by 62 runs, but the Zimbabweans were in the game for longer than SA would have wanted.

An important part of the reason for that happening, De Villiers said, was the pitch.

"It was difficult to bat on in the first 15 to 20 overs, but it played exceptionally well in the second innings," he said. "You don't often see guys hit through the line like that to Morne [Morkel], Vernon [Philander] and Dale [Steyn]."

SA, who were put in to bat, slumped to 83-4 in the 21st over before recovering to a total of 339-4, thanks to a World Cup-record stand of 256 for the unbroken fifth wicket between David Miller and JP Duminy, who both scored centuries.

Zimbabwe were ahead of SA in runs terms until the end of the 46th over of their innings, but they were dismissed for 277 in the 49th.

Said Zimbabwean captain Elton Chigumbura: "We had the game; we lost it in the last five overs. Our game-plan worked for 46 overs, but in the 47th it didn't work."