The first 20/20 fixture turned out to be a disaster for us. 2 weeks ago the MCG was a ground were history was made, and the gods smiled upon us. Since then we have been very average, on the decline and allowing Australia to gain momentum which we will find hard to turn around.

Overall we were outplayed…Batting, bowling and fielding. Losing Smith is a major setback, but we have enough experience to deal with it better than we have. I have never felt Johan Botha is a man to lead us…I think he’s lucky to be in the side.  I didn’t think his explanation that we were taken by surprise was adequate. Does he think the game is played according to a script? All in all I felt he was too reactive.

Once Warner got going, granted he was hard to stop. But bowling to his strengths is not the best tactic. All of our bowlers (other than Morkel who changed his pace effectively) bowled length balls in his hitting zone. Why not bowl yorkers??? Stem the flow of runs and the pressure turns back to the batters. Allow him a boundary or 2 an over and the fielding side wants to hide. Ntini and Steyn showed how effective they can be by bowling the right length, unfortunately they waited until the 16th over.  It is a pity Tsotsobe has been dropped for Brisbane. I thought he had a decent debut, and got the early wicket too. Why he only got 2 overs i’ll never know. Why do we never give these black bowlers much of a chance?

So after a bad start I thought we fought back well, to have a 50/50 chance at the interval. Unfortunately our fielding was a bit poor and didn’t apply enough pressure.

On the batting front, what a dismal effort. Other than Duminy who is a star, we were shambolic. As I have mentioned many a time, why do we persist with Gibbs? De Villiers was awful…what an embarrassment having to leave the field and barely be able to walk off. As I mentioned last week, where has his game gone since Perth. He is another player to promise so much yet deliver so haphazardly (interestingly him and Duminy are the same age yet how long did we wait to give Duminy a go? yet we have persisted so long with De Villiers). Once Kallis went, we had put pressure on ourselves with wickets and run rate. The match was effectively over. Even a brilliant innings from Duminy couldn’t rescue us. By the way was I the only one who thought the ball that got Duminy out was going down leg?? Where is hawkeye when you want it?

In the field I thought the Aussies were brilliant. Where they got lots of 2′s, we only picked up singles. They displayed better field placement awareness and bowled to their field better.

So to Brisbane on tuesday…a chance for redemption and to halt the slide. I’d like to see us bat first, but more importantly take our chances. Put the pressure on them and get some momentum back heading into the ODI’s…