SA head to World Cup full of confidence

“Overall, we had a very successful tour,” said Moreeng.

“Obviously winning the onedayers was the highlight and making sure that we qualified for the World Cup. That was really the result of a lot of preparation and especially the time we spent acclimatising to conditions.

“You could see that in the way we batted. We have talked about it often, that we need to be consistent with the bat.

“Our bowlers usually carry the load but they got a lot of support from the batters this time.”

The T20 matches were about testing combinations and strategies, so the results weren’t too important, although scoring less than 120 in three matches – twice when batting first – must raise red flags.

“It was important for us to give everyone in the squad an opportunity to play, to see combinations for the World Cup, and not lose sight of that as a team,” said Moreeng.

The Proteas did chop and change combinations throughout, which won’t have helped the players’ rhythm, and hopefully in the two warm-up matches they play in Adelaide – on Sunday against Sri Lanka and then next Tuesday against Australia – they will iron out some of those flaws.

South Africa face England in Perth next Sunday in their first match of the T20 World Cup.

“We took a lot of positives; the youngsters learnt a lot, and with some of our senior players we had to manage them to make sure that when they got to the World Cup they were ready,” explained Moreeng.

South Africa are widely being tipped as dark horses for the tournament and a spot in the semifinals is certainly not beyond skipper Dané van Niekerk’s team.

They are in the slightly easier of the two pools, with England and the West Indies their main rivals for a top two spot.

The tournament starts in Sydney next Friday with defending champions Australia taking on India in the opener.