2017 ICC Champions Trophy: South African Team Was Mentally Weak: Sourav Ganguly
Nov 2, 2023 at 3:41 PM
The Indian team sealed a comfortable win over South Africa by a margin of eight wickets, to shrug off the pressure created after the loss against Sri Lanka. With this win, defending champions have sealed a berth in the next round of ICC Champion Trophy. A contest which was expected to be the gem of Group B became quite predictable with each and every wicket that South Africa lost.
Proteas could just manage a score of 191 on the board which should not surprise many due to South Africa’s old fashioned habit to choke – which made way for India in the next round. It was a disappointing loss for them and it looked like they were trembling in the high-pressure game and as a result, three of wickets came in form of run-out, including that of skipper AB de Villiers.
Before going in the game, South Africa was under immense pressure and the results were quite visible in the field,
“South Africa were mentally weak here and against Pakistan as well. It was a remarkable performance by India. In terms of quality, South Africa were a better team in these conditions but their performance was very poor,” Ganguly told India today.
Further, the former Indian skipper said that India can’t afford to take Bangladesh lightly in this game, as according to him, they can give India a better competition than South Africa,
“On paper, Bangladesh is a weaker team than South Africa but will probably pull up a better fight because they have a good batting lineup, they play spin well and their bowlers have done well. But I am not too sure if they are strong enough to beat this rampaging Indian team,” Ganguly added.
India, in probability, will now face Bangladesh in the semi-final of the tournament until and unless either Sri Lanka or Pakistan seal a record win over each other.
This will be second running time when India and Bangladesh face each other in a knockout stage of a 50 ver competition and the game promises to be a cracker, where India will look to pummel their opposition. On the other side, Bangladesh will have to come up with an out of the box performance in order to register a surprise against the defending champions.
The contest between the two sides will be on June 15 at Edgbaston in Birmingham.