Gibson bats for Markram
PRAISE: YOUNG CAPTAIN HAS SHOWN ALL THE HALLMARKS OF GOOD LEADER Coach bemoans poor batting which let Proteas down badly in series loss against India.
Ottis Gibson, the Proteas coach, said in the wake of their historic one-day international series defeat against India that the responsibility of the captaincy may have affected the way Aiden Markram batted, but he still feels it was the right decision to put the 23-year-old in charge against the best opposition in the world after playing just two ODIs himself.
Markram scored just 103 runs in five innings, contributing to a series in which South Africa’s average score at five wickets down has been just 140.
“We’ve let ourselves down with the bat, we’ve spoken about it for five games so it was very disappointing to be bowled out inside 43 overs in Port Elizabeth when there was still a lot to play for. We want players who can adapt to different conditions and we know we have that, but they just haven’t produced it this series.
“Aiden has shown glimpses. Having been asked to captain the side, I don’t know if it was too much for him. That’s something we’ll have to look at in the review. But it seems to me that he has been trying to bat in a different way, he’s not the Aiden Markram I saw in September.
“We’ll have to assess how we go forward but it was a decision for the future, not now. Aiden has shown all the hallmarks of being a good leader and we thought it was the right time to give him an opportunity with Faf du Plessis out. I still think it was the right decision,” Gibson said after the 73run defeat at St George’s Park on Tuesday that gave India an unassailable 4-1 lead in the series.
It’s not as if the rest of the South African batting has been doing well either, with Du Plessis the only batsman to score a century in the series, in the first game in Durban, after which he has been forced to sit out with a hand injury. He and Heinrich Klaasen are the only batsmen to average over 30, while Hashim Amla and JP Duminy have posted the only two half-centuries for the Proteas.
“There’s been a lack of confidence in our batting and the difference has been that India, to their credit, has had one of their top three score a hundred in every game [except for when they were just chasing 118 in the second ODI at Centurion]. We’ve been trying to pace our innings because we know we have a lot of strength at the back.
“But you need to have good starts and losing a wicket and then a couple more has always set us back. We’ve needed six batsmen to bat the bulk of the overs but they could not do it, and I would have liked a bit more fight, especially with the spinners getting five wickets every game,” Gibson said.
The sixth and final ODI takes place in Centurion tomorrow.