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South Africa were well and truly hammered in the opening ODI of the three-match series against India on Sunday. Despite missing their prime squad members such as Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Ravindra Jadeja, South Africa folded tamely to India’s bowling at Wanderers in Johannesburg.
Having won the toss and decided to bat, that decision came back to haunt Aiden Markram and side as they collapsed to just 116 runs with Arshdeep Singh and Avesh Khan sharing nine wickets between them.
Things didn’t start well for South Africa. Reeza Hendricks, Rassie van der Dussen, Tony de Zorzi and Heinrich Klaasen all fell within the powerplay overs.
Avesh Khan ran through the remainder of the batting lineup. No. 8 Andile Phehlukwayo was the highest scorer for the hosts with a 49-ball 33, but Arshdeep came back to remove him and completed his fifer before Kuldeep Yadav ended South Africa’s misery with the last wicket.
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Legendary players Sunil Gavaskar and Shaun Pollock questioned South Africa’s dire batting show at the New Wanderers Stadium. Gavaskar stated he believes players these days are not afraid of losing their national team spot since they have T20 leagues as fallback option.
“Back in my day, we didn’t have too many options. If we failed, we had to go back to club cricket. And there was no money in club cricket back then. Today, players have options. You play for your country, you play T20 leagues… you still can put the food on the table,” Gavaskar said on broadcaster Star Sports.
“And therefore there is this tendency to go bang-bang (with the bat)! (There is a tendency) If they don’t score runs, if they don’t take wickets, if they get dropped, so what? They will still have some T20 contract somewhere, if not with the IPL, then some league or the other.
“That makes players take a lot less responsibility. They try to take the easy way out, which is to go ‘bang-bang’. If they succeed, great. If they don’t, the team is 116 all out. So what? There will be another match two days later,” Gavaskar added.
Former South Africa captain and allrounder Pollock picked David Miller for his criticism. Pollock slammed the approach of remaining into the attack despite the scoreboard needing a defensive approach.
“Try and work their way out of the situation and get themselves into trouble and get bowled up very cheaply. And you can’t do that. I mean, I can’t accept that. The modern player will say, oh, you’ve got to be positive, all that nonsense. I can’t accept that as a former South African, that always when you get put into pressure, you just fall down,” he said after South Africa’s eight-wicket loss.
“For all honesty, what you could have been done there today is you could have just blocked out ten overs. You couldn’t have scored a run for ten overs just to absorb some pressure and then you could have continued to bat and they would have posted 200 and something on the board. So, I mean, if you look at the class of…for example, David Miller, I mean, he walks to the crease, they’re in trouble. He got a 100 in the World Cup semifinal in the same situation, but today he walks to the crease. He tries to execute a booming cover drive on the up and nicks off when his team needed him just to be there for a period of time.”
“So I do get the point. We were old dinosaurs. We didn’t play as positively as the modern player plays. But I’m afraid at some stage you have to take on that responsibility and say, I’ve got to dig in here today. Unfortunately, the best thing for the team is that I don’t be positive and I actually just get myself in and get a decent runs,” he added.
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