South Africa emphatically broke their knockout drought at the cricket World Cup, with a crushing nine wicket quarter-final win over Sri Lanka at the SCG on Wednesday.

They rolled Sri Lanka for just 133 in 37.2 overs, with JP Duminy (3-29) claiming the ninth hat-trick in World Cup history, and fellow tweaker Imran Tahir (4-26) doing much of the damage, as their opponents lost 8-64.

South Africa coasted to their modest target in just 18 overs, with Quinton de Kock (78 not out off 57 balls) making a welcome return to form.

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They advance to the semi-finals, where they will meet the winner of the New Zealand-West Indies quarter-final.

For all the pre-match talk about South Africa’s tendency to choke in the knockout games, it was Sri Lanka who succumbed to the pressure on Wednesday.

They struggled against some high quality pace bowling early on and also played some poor shots on a good pitch that offered some bounce and turn.

Sri Lanka offered little resistance against such a disciplined attack apart from Kumar Sangakkara and Lahiru Thirimanne (41), who added 65 off 15 overs for the third wicket.

Kusal Perera and Tillakaratane Dilshan perished inside the first five overs, falling to Kyle Abbott and Dale Steyn respectively, with quality catches responsible for both wickets.

Kumar Sangakkara is congratulated on a magnificent ODI career by South Africa captain AB de Villiers. Photo: Getty

They recovered to be 2-69, but Tahir entered the attack and halted their progress.

The leggie broke the threatening third wicket partnership between Thirimanne and Sangakkara (45), inducing the former to chip a return catch.

Thirimanne earlier hit several offside boundaries to get the innings back on track after the Sri Lankans were reeling at 2-4 in the fourth over.

Tahir also dismissed Mahela Jayawardene and Thisara Perera before Duminy chipped in.

Duminy, who returned career-best ODI figures of 3-29, had captain Angelo Mathews caught at short midwicket with the last ball of his eighth over.

Duminy then struck with the first two balls of his ninth over, having Nuwan Kulasekara caught behind, before trapping Tharindu Kaushal lbw first ball.

It was the ninth hat-trick in World Cup history and Duminy became the eighth man and first South African to take one – Malinga owns two of the nine.

Sangakkara, in his final ODI, played a watchful innings, taking 16 balls to get off the mark and over 40 before hitting his first boundary.

He became just the eighth player to score 500 runs in a single tournament, finishing with 541 at a massive average of 108.20.

De Kock, who had only scored 53 runs in his six previous innings, smashed 12 boundaries.

-AAP