A Critical game in the context of the series saw Australia get home more as a result of South African ineptitude than Australian brilliance.

Australia overcame the early loss of Warner brilliantly through Ponting and Marsh. Although the South African catching was disgraceful. 3 dropped catches at this level is disgraceful. It ultimately cost us the game. Some of the fielding has been outstanding, especially a lot of the ground work. It kills the team when you give players of the calibre of Ponting and co. second and even third chances. Why after the test series has it become so bad? Change of personnel…well not that many have changed. I put it down to the loss of Smith and lack of focus and intensity.

We came back well in the bowling department to limit the Aussies to 250. At one stage I thought they’d get 320+ so we did really well. At the innings break I was reasonably confident we would win if we had a half decent start.

I’m used to us not trying to force the pace early and keep wickets in hand. As I have mentioned, I don’t think this strategy works. It puts too much pressure on the lower order and if you lose wickets you are screwed. I’d rather see a more even pace, and even better take the attack to the opposition and put them under pressure. If you start off well and go at 7-8 an over you open up the field (they won’t use their power play early either which means you can keep the batting and bowling power plays up your sleeve), you don’t need to take risks to get 6 an over comfortably, and in a worst case scenario if you do lose wickets you are still ahead of the rate and don’t put pressure on the new batsmen. The problem is the Proteas are conservative by nature, and always have been. We gotta change that asap…for me the coach Arthur has to go. I can’t see that happening. Without an agressive individual such as Smith (and I still think he is not aggressive enough) we will always be a shadow of the team we can be.

How a team can end 6 down in a run chase is beyond me. It says we were not aggressive enough. We didn’t take enough risks and try and win the game. I’d rather see us try to force the pace and get out. There is no use having wickets left. It’s like a runner still having gas in the tank at the end of the race…pointless. Didn’t try hard enough. We should have been forcing the pace earlier. Why we do this year after year is beyond me…could be the reason my hair is starting to grey prematurely…

Sydney looms as a crunch game on friday night…come on boys lets maak a bietjie noise!!!