Once again the Proteas made a smashing exit from an ICC tournament and failed to deliver in a pressured environment. Whereas we normally choke, this time we were just made to look grossly inadequate.
The win against New Zealand could not atone for the 2 Losses to England and Pakistan. One has to say these are not the top tier sides in the world either. For a team that aspires to be the best in the world and has had the test and ODI number 1 rankings recently this is not acceptable, especially as it is a pattern that happens every ICC tournament.
Against Pakistan the bowlers did a solid if not spectacular job. Once again though we did see that we failed to deliver a knockout blow when it needed to be administered. Pakistan were able to recover from 18/3 to post a competitive 148/7.
My biggest concern is that even with different coaches we fail to learn how to chase down totals. I simply don’t believe you can leave it all for the last 10 (ODI’s) or last 5 overs of a T20 game to do the majority of the scoring.
Greater urgency needs to be shown at the beginning of an innings, getting up to or even past the required run rate so that if wickets fall you don’t lose momentum or worse still lose your way. Our batsmen take forever to get themselves set, often wasting deliveries that make them look silly if they can’t go on with the job. What’s needed is more manipulation of the ball around the field and into gaps like Jonty Rhodes used to do, and Hussey currently does for Australia.
Considering we needed a win with a massive improvement in our net run rate, I would have preferred an all or nothing approach trying to blast down the total as quick as we could. Better to go down with guns blazing! If you can’ score a single boundary between overs 7 and 15 in a T20 game, what are you trying to do? That’s embarrassing.
Until we fix this approach to the game, we’ll never win anything. I still believe the pressure of must win games holds us back as we are afraid to lose rather than brave enough to win. The record chase of 438 provides the blueprint of how to go about chasing totals. Please Graeme learn from what has worked!
Instead we get the usual dribble we always get.
“I guess you run out of excuses” said Proteas captain Graeme Smith at the post-match presentation.
“We were just not good enough again. It’s very, very disappointing. We bowled pretty well to restrict Pakistan, but we were tense with the bat and lacked fluency and positivity. Today we got strangled a bit with the bat” added Smith
“You always say you’ve got to learn your lessons. You have to say, with the talent in South Africa, it’s not good enough to perform at this level” continued Smith.
That’s an understatement! Changes have to be made, fast and permanently. This sort of rubbish is just not acceptable year after year. The question is can someone make the brave decisions?
