We’re giving it our best we're shot, just rusty, says Boucher

Proteas doing lot of hard work behind the scenes to improve, coach says after T20 series whitewash by England

When Proteas coach Mark Boucher started his international career in 1997‚ England were neither here nor there as a cricketing nation.

But 23 years later along with the transition to international coaching‚ SA are in England’ s 1997 position‚ but with the English being the pre-eminent limited-overs team in world cricket.

After winning Tuesday’ s third T20 by the wide margin of nine wickets with 14 balls to spare ‚ the gap between the teams could not be starker. Boucher admitted as much ‚ but said they were trying hard to get their cricketing act together.

“I do think that England are a step ahead and not only of us ‚ but the other teams in world cricket at the moment,” he said.

“We are trying and we want to win. We are doing a lot of hard work behind the scenes to be a good force in world cricket.”

Boucher has never been the man for excuses, but he pointed out that it would be difficult to accurately gauge where his charges were because they had played only England and Australia.

We ve lost to England,” he

“’ said.

We beat Australia in the “

ODIs and we ve played against

’

England again so it s two very

‚ ’ good teams so it s difficult to

‚ ’ determine where we are at the moment.

“It s shown that we ve got a

’ ’ lot of work to do with regard to catching up with them as they re the best teams in the

’ world.

“There s a bit of rustiness and

’ we didn t have the most ideal

’ preparation.

We did as well as we could “with regard to our training.

I m not looking for excuses “’ though.

We have to man up and face “the fact that we lost 3-0.

We ve got a determined “’ group of guys who want to learn quickly and compete with the world s best.”

ESPNcricinfo reported on Tuesday that SA might face tougher transformation targets with regard to picking more black players.

Boucher’ s team featured three black players in the series ‚ but he was not forthcoming about the details of the transformation meeting he recently attended.

The only thing I can say was “that I was in a transformation meeting and we were given an outline of what the rules and regulations were.

“That’ s what we have to abide by. I don’ t know if it’ s been taken to the minister.

“I think someone who is above me needs to answer that question.

If you look at the three black “players, they’ re very good players Boucher said. ‚”

I don’ t know where people “’ are going with this but it’ s not ‚ up to me to answer these things.

“I have to select a team that I believe can do a job on the day and I do select that team along with Victor Mpitsang and Enoch Nkwe.”