Our powerplay was poor: Smith
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Jan.19: South Africa skipper Graeme Smith is hoping that his team will put up a better show in the two remaining ODIs against India with the World Cup squad now announced.
The Proteas lost two close matches in Johannesburg and Cape Town after their comprehensive win in the first ODI at Durban. “The World Cup squad comes out tonight and that will ease a lot of minds and stress on the players. Hopefully it frees up a lot of players, and makes them play with freedom in the next few games,” Smith said before the World Cup squad was announced.
On not being able to come out on top in the last two encounters, Smith said: “The margins have been so small in the last two games, we could easily be 2-1 up or 3-0 up. Just got to keep training hard and keep doing the right things and hopefully the things will kick into place.”
Smith admitted that they were 20 runs short of a competitive total at Newlands on Tuesday. “I think 220 gave us a chance. The wicket was very difficult to bat on, had sort of plates on it, and its two-paced nature made strokes very difficult. It also had up and down bounce.
“But we were really hoping for 240. J.P. (Duminy) and Faff du Plessis played well together to take us to a decent total. Our powerplay was poor again, we lost JP and Faf within two overs, and we only got 19 runs in our last six overs,” he said.
Meanwhile, India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni said he had expected Yusuf Pathan to play his natural game. “We just told the youngsters to play their natural game, we want Yusuf to play the sort of game he plays.” He pointed out that a number of positives had emerged for India going into the final two ODIs. “We have been outstanding so far, ground fielding has also improved a bit. Our catching has been decently good,” Dhoni said.
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