The KIA Oval, London witnessed another flop show from South Africa during a knockout game. Do-or-die situations have always brought the most underwhelming performance from the Proteas. The last match of the Group B against India was also a similar story.
South Africa committed fatal blunders that saw them lose the must-win game by eight wickets. The seeds for the embarrassing loss was sowed by the flop batting show. After being put to bat first South Africa was in a good position with 116/2 on the scoreboard at one stage before nosediving acutely and getting bundled out for 191 runs.
The highlight of the batting failure were runouts. In all, three run outs took place with Faf du Plessis responsible for two of them. The run-outs of AB de Villiers and David Miller, which came five balls from each other, was largely due to Du Plessis’ misunderstanding behaviour.
“I take full responsibility for AB’s run-out,” du Plessis said South Africa’s eight-wicket defeat.
“That’s my fault. Obviously, he (de Villiers) is a big player for us and he was looking good and it was a crunch time in the game. Big mistake on my part running AB out.”
AB de Villiers’ run out was the turning point of the match, as it opened the gates for the downfall. India skipper Virat Kohli also acknowledged the same. When de Villiers was asked about the seemingly suicidal run, he took a more philosophical view on the subject, saying that he simply responded to du Plessis’ call.
“You see, I just tried to take a one with my partner out there and it didn’t work. I wasn’t searching for runs, I wasn’t even facing. There was a call out there, and I thought we could get through for the one,” said de Villiers.
Ironically, the chief reason behind the miscommunication was the crowd support, Du Plessis pointed out. It seems quite logical given the fact that a vociferous Indian crowd was present at The Oval on Sunday to cheer India.
“I suppose, after that moment, Dave (Miller) came in and we discussed that it is extremely loud out there and difficult to hear each other so the communication between the two of us was just for the next five overs, just play it as risk-free as possible. Try and get the partnership going in, settle the partnership because the last thing you want to do is go wicket, wicket. And then two or three balls later, obviously a miscommunication, and then Dave came down and ran. Not a great sight to see two guys standing in the crease,” he said.
Du Plessis also felt that the Indian bowlers were very good right from the start of the match. He also commended the approach of the Indian batsmen during the chase.
“I thought India bowled well in the first 10 overs, there was an opportunity there for us to maybe put them under pressure which we didn’t do. It was a day where India dominated us in all aspects and it shouldn’t happen,” he said.
“When India were batting they took the pressure, created momentum and then just ran with it. We had a similar opportunity where it was needed for someone, or, two guys to just put the pressure back on the Indian team and you run with it. We didn’t do that today. They put us under pressure and we made mistakes and we couldn’t get out of it,” concluded du Plessis.