It was complete domination by the Indian bowlers in the first ODI against South Africa, in Johannesburg on Sunday, as the hosts were bundled out for 116. Arshdeep Singh claimed five while his bowling partner Avesh Khan picked up four crucial wickets. What was a major surprise was, that the South African batsmen struggled against an inexperienced Indian attack.
Towards the end of the innings, it was Andile Phehlukwayo, who struck 33 to take his team beyond 100, or else the results would have been worse for the Proteas. Former South Africa skipper Shaun Pollock did not enjoy this performance at all and lamblasted the entire team.
“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 told Star Sports.
“For all honesty, what you could have done there today is you could have just blocked out ten overs. You couldn’t have scored 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.
Gavaskar Critical of South Africa Team
Former India opener Sunil Gavaskar further substantiated this point and said that this attitude comes because of so many options to the players. “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.
“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,” said Gavaskar.
