Proteas must show some fight - Smith
South Africa touched rock bottom at Kingsmead when they subsided meekly to a 241-run defeat against England.
|||South Africa touched rock bottom at Kingsmead yesterday morning when they subsided meekly to a 241-run defeat at the hands of England in the first Test match.
With the Cape Town Test starting in just two days’ time, the Proteas team management will have to take on board former captain Graeme Smith’s cry of anguish on TV yesterday when he said: “This can’t continue.”
He pointed out that the Newlands New Year’s Test was an “iconic” one and that anything resembling the surrender in Durban could have major implications for South African cricket.
“There’ll be a packed crowd at Newlands, and they will want to feel an energy and confidence in their team as well as a desire to fight,” Smith said.
Though there are no thoughts of Hashim Amla being replaced as skipper, there is a concern in some quarters that the Proteas lack the kind of robust, aggressive leadership that Smith embodied to help dig the home team out of a hole.
Worryingly, energy and confidence aren’t even on the horizon at the moment as the world’s No 1 ranked team showed hardly any fight as they lost their last six wickets for 38 runs to be dismissed for 174, 20 minutes before lunch.
The rot started early when AB de Villiers was dismissed leg before by Moeen Ali to a relatively unthreatening delivery that turned back into him and perhaps kept a little low. De Villiers, who had moved across to his off-stump, simply missed a regulation push through the on-side.
That meant that the Proteas’ two hoped-for mainstays, Faf du Plessis and De Villiers, had been dismissed in the space of six balls. Any further hope of a miraculous recovery was dashed when Temba Bavuma darted down the pitch and was stumped by a mile by Jonny Bairstow. Three wickets had now fallen on 136 and the end was nigh.
It was mildly encouraging that JP Duminy managed to survive to the end, playing a couple of nice drives off Steven Finn as he remained undefeated on 26, but it took only 80 minutes of play before the England team began saluting their fans on the grass banks and in the stands as they took a 1-0 lead in the four-match series.
Proteas coach Russell Domingo had the unenviable task of responding to his team’s crushing defeat.
“It wasn’t a happy Christmas for us, that’s for sure. There are some disappointed players in the changing-room and some disappointed coaches. There’s a lot of work to do,” he said.
Asked whether mass changes were the answer to their problems, Domingo said there was a fine line between making the right decisions and panicking.
“You can’t just throw everyone out and bring in five new players. England would love that,” he added. “Wouldn’t they love to bowl to five debutants! The key for us is to get our known quality players to fire and play to their potential.”
Domingo said it was a challenge when to stop giving misfiring players chances and provide opportunities for players beating at the door with good franchise performances.
“When you’ve got players of the calibre of Hashim Amla, JP Duminy and Faf du Plessis – players with proven records – you know that they’re just one or two innings away from a big score and so you’ve got to keep on believing in them,” he said.
Domingo was asked what he needed to do to help the Proteas emerge from their slough of despond after the defeat in India and Durban.
“It might not be a bad thing that we start playing again in two days’ time,” he said. “The longer the wait, the more guys will mull over it and work on things in the nets and look for problems in their batting techniques and look for things that might not even be there.
“The best thing might be to get straight back on it and get stuck in again.”
The coach said he couldn’t comment on Smith’s remarks that there was “trouble” in the Proteas camp. “Smitty’s entitled to his opinion, of course, but I don’t know where he got that from. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a happy camp: not happy with the result of course, but all supporting and backing each other and supporting the captain 100 percent.”
He said he hadn’t been surprised by the quality of England’s performance, describing the tourists as a well-balanced, disciplined side who had played a “pretty perfect game of cricket”.
Amla defended his bowlers, saying that the team’s Achilles heel was the batting which he described as “disappointing”.
Asked how quickly his team could recover, the skipper said: “Hopefully we can turn it around quickly, but it has been very disappointing for everybody.
“It’s a confidence thing. Dean (Elgar) started off brilliantly and has been the big positive in this Test for us. The way he batted was a good lesson for everybody.” - Cape Argus