Kolpaks won’t be a Proteas excuse
FOR South Africa’s ODI captain AB de Villiers, nothing less than Champions Trophy glory will suffice next month.
Despite their standing as a cricketing powerhouse, particularly in the one-day format of the game, the Proteas haven’t won a major ICC competition since they triumphed in the competition in its very first guise – the 1998 ICC KnockOut Trophy in Bangladesh.
Since then, South Africa have been losing semi-finalists four times in the Trophy and four times in the World Cup.
And defeat in their first warmup game in England against the tournament hosts by 72 runs on Wednesday was hardly ideal preparation for the No.1 one-day side.
And for a batsman so accustomed to the higher echelons of the game, 33-year-old De Villiers is desperate to seal some one-day silverware befitting of his stature and has sights set firmly on going all the way with the Proteas when they take on the rest of the world’s best eight teams in June.
“It’s obviously a big desire, purely because I’ve shifted my focus to these types of tournaments that I haven’t won before,” said De Villiers, who hasn’t played Test cricket since January 2016.
“It will mean a lot to me to win tournaments like this and the World Cup coming up in 2019.
“This is a great opportunity for us as a team, and for me as an individual, to go play some good cricket, and hopefully bring back that trophy.
“We’ve won the Champions Trophy once before. It would be nice to repeat that but it was a long time ago that that happened.
“We’ve been playing some good cricket over the last few years actually; from the 2015 World Cup with that big disappointment (South Africa were knocked out in the semifinals by New Zealand).
“I think we’ve really raised the bar and picked ourselves up, and grabbed some really good results.
“We go with confidence and we’d like to win the trophy.”
Although hosts England enter the competition as many bookmakers’ favourites due to home advantage, South Africa are one of the sides that will challenge them for the title.
However, Russell Domingo’s squad have been hit by a raft of players opting to end their international careers early to play County Championship cricket.
Seven recently-capped Proteas have signed Kolpak deals, including key men like Rilee Roussow and Kyle Abbott, but De Villiers is giving short shrift to any suggestion of a South African talent crisis.
“We are not harping on too much on what we lost, rather focusing on what we have gained over the last few months,” said the Proteas skipper, who has seen a number of talented youngsters step up in the absence of those players that have said goodbye to international cricket.
“Yes, there are quite a few talented guys we have lost, which is not good for our depth at home – there’s nothing we can do about that.
“It’s part and parcel of what we are confronted with in recent times.
“We can’t stop guys from going where they want to go and playing cricket where they want to play cricket. I feel it’s something of the past.”
Along with De Villiers’ mesmeric talent, South Africa’s Trophy squad also includes a number of men that are set to catch the eye over the coming weeks.
Left-handed top-order wicketkeeper-batsman Quinton de Kock will be looking to batter boundaries with his impressive striking ability while 21-year-old paceman Kagiso Rabada, who became the first cricketer to win six awards at the 2016 Cricket South Africa annual dinner, has the potential to become a worldclass star.