It was a tale of two centuries but the happy ending was snatched by Kagiso Rabada, who bowled SA to a wonderful win in the first one-day international against India in Kanpur yesterday.

AB de Villiers's 104 not out rocketed SA to 303/5, the highest ODI total at Green Park.

India's fire burnt deep thanks to Rohit Sharma's 150. But SA snuffed it out at 298-7 to sneak home by five runs.

Asked to defend 11 off the last over against opponents powering to victory, Rabada took wickets with consecutive balls and kept the runs down to five.

One of those scalps belonged to MS Dhoni.

"I was feeling a bit of nerves because MS Dhoni was at the other end of the pitch and we all know how destructive he can be," Rabada said.

Rabada pitched the fateful delivery short and, importantly, straight at his prey. Dhoni, struggling with an abdominal injury that limited him to one boundary in 30 balls, heaved hard.

The top edge arched into the sky. Rabada was there to meet and greet it as it descended. The catch claimed, he hurled the ball into the ground with a triumphant roar that rent the sudden silence in the stands.

Rabada's next delivery, also short, produced another top edge, this one Stuart Binny's. Hashim Amla sped in from square leg to avoid a collision with the rampant Rabada and take the catch.

A hat-trick loomed. Rabada had been shot in this movie before - in Dhaka on July 10 when he took 6-16, including a hat-trick, on his ODI debut against Bangladesh.

This time there was a match to be won.

"There were a lot of things going through my mind but I wasn't thinking about the hat-trick," Rabada said.

One of the things happened in the 45th over, when Rabada flubbed a catch on the square leg fence that would have ended Sharma's innings at 132.

"I owed it to the team because I dropped Rohit on the boundary," Rabada said. "It could have turned out badly on another day."

What a day it was. De Villiers was vintage De Villiers, all effortless innovation and emphatic nonchalance.