Pressure? What pressure
World Cup
A wounded Proteas must get up off the floor and dust themselves off as they prepare for their clash against ambitious India in Southampton on Wednesday.
After opening losses against England and Bangladesh last week Thursday and Sunday, their next match is fast becoming a must-win encounter against one of the tournament favourites.
“We keep telling [the players] how good they are, we keep going back to our best experiences, we keep going back to the last 10 games we played, and we’ve won eight or nine of them with the same guys who are in the dressing-room now,” said Proteas coach Ottis Gibson.
“We keep reminding them of that, we keep showing them what they’ve done in our recent history.
“And we see that we’re actually not a bad team. We’re not playing great at the moment, but if we can get it together in the next week or the next game and start to get some momentum, it gives us a lot of confidence going forward.
“Losing two games your confidence takes a hit, but you don’t become a bad team overnight.”
Had Faf du Plessis’ team won at least one of their first two games they could claim some sort of advantage against an Indian side who have yet to begin their bid.
Instead, they go into the game looking like fodder to help India live up to their billing as second favourites after England.
But Gibson can’t afford to entertain that kind of thinking: “There’s no place to hide. We’ve got to get up. We’ve got to think about where we’re going wrong.
“We’ve got to put better spells of bowling together and we’ve got to put better batting together. If one of our top six scores a hundred it’s a different outlook.”
As it would be if the bowlers were exploring their strengths: “[Chris Morris] is one of the best yorker bowlers in the country, so I’d have liked to have seen him bowl more yorkers.”
South Africa’s best bowlers across the two games have been Andile Phehlukwayo and Imran Tahir, who have taken seven wickets between them – as many as the other six combined – and they are the only ones who have conceded less than a run a ball.
There’s surely a lesson in the fact that Phehlukwayo and Tahir are the only frontline bowlers used who are not trying to operate at full pace.
Batting, bowling, even South Africa’s fielding wasn’t what it should have been against Bangladesh.
Now they’re in damage limitation mode. How many of their remaining six games can they afford to lose without falling out of contention for the semifinals?
“You have an idea in your mind but it’s not something you want to go and start telling people,” said Gibson.
“But losing early isn’t always a bad thing if you’re learning and improving, because if you lose in the last week then you’re going home.
“At the moment we’ve just lost two games and were hurting, but we still have the opportunity to play better. And we know we can play better.”