Pride salvaged as Proteas head home
The Proteas beat Sri Lanka by 8 wickets to salvage some pride after they failed to make the semi-finals of the WorldT20 in India.
Having their chances of making the semi-finals quashed over the weekend, the Proteas had to motivate themselves for a dead-rubber clash against Sri Lanka on Monday.
Playing for pride, South Africa put together one of their best performances of the tournament, unfortunately it was too little too late.
Bowling first, the Proteas restricted Sri Lanka to just 120 runs. Aaron Phangiso and Kyle Abbott took two wickets each.
Hashim Amla then anchored South Africa’s run chase, scoring an unbeaten 56 runs which saw the Proteas win the match with 14 balls to spare.
Reflecting on the tournament, captain Faf du Plessis admitted that an early exit was a huge disappointment. The seesaw nature of T20 games is undeniable and Du Plessis touched on the massive momentum shifts that plagued them in their various pool games.
“We played good cricket leading up to the World Cup. But the World Cup is a do-or-die tournament. If you make mistakes, it’s not like a series where you can come back into it. We made one or two mistakes against England and West Indies and they punished us for it,” Du Plessis said.
“The teams in a T20 World Cup are so close to each other, if you’re not on top of your game you will suffer. Our game was a good example, Sri Lanka made one or two mistakes with their batting and we capitalised on that – so we’ve only got ourselves to blame.”
The WorldT20 tournament used to be held every two years but will now have a four year break in between. That means that the likes of Dale Steyn and even Hashim Amla may not feature in the next tournament. It is a sad indictment that players of such pedigree will not have tasted T20 World Cup success.
“The sad thing now is that its four years until the next World Cup so a few of the players will not be there. That is going to be the challenge now for this squad - to try and rest and see if some of the seniors players want to go to the next World Cup.
“With that, you can bring in some young players. I don’t think there is a lot of T20 cricket coming up this year; it will probably take a bit of a back seat. When we get there we will reassess,” the captain said.
The Proteas returned to South Africa on Tuesday.
Meanwhile England face New Zealand in the first semi-final on Wednesday, March 30.
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