Proteas must use the data to their advantage
THERE ARE several lessons to be learned for the Proteas, from their loss via the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method in the fourth one-day international against Sri Lanka on Wednesday.
On the face of it, the defeat is not much of a deal at all, but with all this data capturing being done in the run-up to the World Cup it means that assessing how the team plays in matches impacted by the weather needs to be reflected on if the same type of errors are not to be made in England and Wales next year.
The UK may have experienced a nice dry summer this year, but you can be sure that at some point at the World Cup in 2019 South Africa will be involved in a match where rain will have an affect.
As committed as Sri Lanka were in the field – producing their best performance in that category in this series – they still committed errors that the South Africans didn’t take sufficient advantage of. The tourists lost the match, more than the home team won it.
They did drop catches, bowled untimely wides and laughably gave up a no-ball and a “free hit” because they didn’t have enough fielders in the circle.
Andile Phehlukwayo and Keshav Maharaj played some very poor shots late in the chase, and there will be reminders to both of them, Phehlukwayo in particular about showing greater composure.
The 22-year-old is going to be a very important player for the Proteas at the World Cup, and already in his short career has produced some thrilling late heroics with the bat to take his side home.
But he must learn that there is a time to try and smash every ball, and a time when that can’t happen and picking up a single is more beneficial to his team – which was certainly the case on Wednesday.
Obviously picking on the lower order may be deemed harsh, but it is often where ODIs are won and lost. Some of the more experienced players in the top order will know they too should have pushed for another two or three overs and that match would have been won – JP Duminy, in sublime form and Hashim Amla spring to mind.
They are all valuable lessons, something the players can fall back on for the bigger occasions that await in nine months time.
Stand-in skipper Quinton de Kock correctly pointed out that the closeness of the game tested everyone’s composure, and would prove beneficial for all of them. “It was exciting, during the Tests it was one- sided and in the first three matches we beat them convincingly, to have a game like that eventually, is nice for the players and especially for the fans,” he said of the encounter in which SA fell three runs short according to the DLS method.
“For our new guys to be part of a game like that, you can only grow from a game like this. Only good things can come out of it for us.”
Good they may be, but they can turn bad if those experiences aren’t properly utilised in the future.