What has happened to South African bowling attack? At this moment, they are seem to struggle with all possible aspect of their game. The T20I series between South Africa and Australia concluded on Sunday, while it was expected that Proteas will show some reselience they are known for, Australia, once again, proved too good batting unit and thumpingly registered 5 wickets in 191 runs chase at Kingsmead, Durban.
With a better batting performance on display, South Africa must have thought that they can win this one if they bowl really well. However, their bowling unit, consisting of inexperience and bowlers who haven’t mastered their skills yet, couldn’t match up against the heavy hitting Australians and it is a point of notice that their fielding wasn’t great either. It really summed up where South Africa stands as a team.
The home fans saw their side getting hammered in back to back three matches, in all these matches, the contest appeard quite one sided. Apparently, they faced a new challenge in every game, maybe that’s why the job got tougher and tougher for them. It was very disappointing to see the senior bowler of the team, Lungi Ngidi, in absence of likes Rabada and Nortje, not being able to stand up and deliver for the team. Consistently leaking runs over 10 per over has been the issue for South African pace bowlers.
In first two matches, it was Marsh who did a lot of damage with the bat. Well, Australia had another batter standing up and playing w knock that also firmly put the team in a winning position. Travis Head scored 91 off 48 balls, which is his career best T20I score and he smashed the fastest half century of his T20I career in 23 balls. Josh Inglis had the opportunity to show what he can do with the bat against a rather weak bowling side to his standards, the impressive 42 runs innings surely given him some confidence going into the ODI series.
South Africa has a lot to reflect immediately on their unharmful batting, bowling and fielding, on the other hand, Australia would like to carry on with this incredible moment where they have got the home side under immense pressure after shocking result of T20I series. Psychologically, it will be a challenge for Proteas to not finally dig deep and find their A game but also convert it into a winning formula because with ODI World Cup only few weeks from taking place, no team wants to face this sort of struggle in home games.
The pressure has always got better of South Africa, they tend to lose their focus and play rashy and un-Proteas cricket in these moments, that has been a big reason behind their fall in this series.
The fair assessment of Aiden Markram’s captaincy is that he has not quite got the plan to get to job done. Having bowlers who are quite ineffective in their trade has definitely made his job difficult yet leading the South African team demands more firmness and dynamic leadership. Some players have failed in totality and this setup of a few experienced leading young ones didn’t produce results they had hoped for.
Except Reeza Hendricks, it is hard to find any consistentcy in the batting order, he has been mature and responsible enough to lead Proteas from the top but unfortunately there is support on the other end from him. Tristan Stubbs has a definite potential to become a gane changer like Tim David and South Africa should persist with him.
Donovan Ferreira is some player to be honest. In the debut match of his T20I career, he just smashed the second ball for a six. There was so much passion and enthusiasm about his innings that he just seems the player at the right position but again, South Africa has stick up something, a team of youngesters at least.
