Pune: It would be an understatement to say that South Africa have been having a bad time this series. Such has been the constant downpour of runs by the Indian batsmen on their bowlers combined with the relentless of the bowling they have faced, the Proteas have been in constant search of answers but to no avail. While there are a number of fronts on which they have fallen short against their opposition, captain Faf du Plessis cited ‘consistency’ as the main reason for the current scoreline of the series.
“You can take player by player in the two teams and the ability to land the ball in the right areas for a long period of time, and they do that as a bowling attack together. I find that in the first and the second Test there were periods when we did it, with Vernon and KG and a little bit of Keshav sometimes where there is pressure building and we managed to keep the run rate at a good tempo at 2.8 or 2.9, you’re sort of in the game. But then the pressure just gets released and their batting is on top and it is difficult to stop. All in all India has been much better than us in every department,” du Plessis said after the game.
Learning from India
Just like Proteas coach Enock Nkwe and batsman Temba Bavuma stressed earlier, du Plessis also spoke about the aspects of the Indian team they would like to have within their unit. “If you look at their team in terms of Test caps, and experience, and the numbers they have on the board in terms of averages, it all stacks up. That’s where we’ve got to get at as a team. If you look from our batting point of view, purely on the numbers side of things it’s not good enough. So we need to get there. We need the right guys to make sure there’s a plan for the next two years,” he added.
Du Plessis heaped praise on his contemporary Virat Kohli for his match-defining knock and said there was a lot they could learn from watching him up close, adding, “He was quite patient in the beginning which was required in the wicket, he left well. And then sheer mental toughness to bat for that long. It takes huge amount of brain power. Even Mayank as well with his performances, a double hundred followed by the hundred - that’s all in the mind. So there’s stuff for us to learn from that.”
