South Africa's Francois Du Plessis (right) is congratulated by teammate Hashim Amla after scoring a century during their Cricket World Cup Pool B match against Ireland in Canberra, Australia, yesterday. - AP

CANBERRA, Australia (AP):

Hashim Amla's 20th one-day international century set South Africa on course for its second successive 400-plus total and a 201-run win over Ireland in the Cricket World Cup yesterday.

Amla (159) and Faf Du Plessis (109) shared a 247-run second-wicket stand before Rilee Rossouw (61 not out) and David Miller (46 not out) added an unbroken 110-run stand in the last eight overs to lift South Africa to 411-4, beating its own mark - set last Friday - for the second-highest cup total.

It also made South Africa the first team to post back-to-back totals above 400 in ODIs.

Exceptional start

"The guys stuck to their guns really well. We started off exceptionally well with a great partnership between Faf and Hash," South Africa skipper AB de Villiers said. "When you get a partnership of 200-plus in an ODI, you're always going to get yourself into a good position as a batting unit, and we find ourselves in a great position going into the last 15 overs.

"What pleases me about our batting is we did it our way - we're not trying to follow someone else's strategy, we followed our game plans, and what we believe works for us."

Ireland were in trouble early in their reply with leading batsmen Paul Stirling (9), Williams Porterfield (12) and Ed Joyce (0) out in the first five overs as the score slipped to 21-3, with Dale Steyn (2-39 ) and Kyle Abbott (4-21) getting right on top. Andy Balbirnie (58) and Kevin O'Brien (48) prolonged the innings before Ireland were all out for 210 after 45 overs.