South Africa’s skipper Faf du Plessis‘ side were at the receiving end once again. At Birmingham, home to the ‘Peaky Blinders’, Kane Williamson and his men called the shots and ended up chasing a competitive total of 242 with three balls to spare. The Proteas weren’t immune to making errors and they have got themselves to blame for the situation they are in at the moment.
Faf du Plessis on the loss
Post the defeat, Faf said that his side were 20 runs shot. He credited the Kiwi bowlers at the sa time mentioned Kane’s unbeaten hundred as the game changer. “We were aiming 260. I thought that was par on this wicket. The chat in the team room was to aim at 260 and 270. So we fell short. So good bowling from New Zealand and not getting boundaries away by us played a part. Individual batters will look at having an opportunity at facing a bowler that the fancy. Kane showed that. He also found it difficult to score but he waited for the guy he could hit. We also had a lot of stop start innings but Kane batted through for the hundred and that was the game changer.” the skipper said after yet another loss.
On the edge which went missing, Faf said that he had no clue and the best option was to aks the bowler himself. Kane hit an unbeaten 106* off 138 balls and a cameo from Colin de Grandhomme was enough to sail through. “We did everything we could. We threw ourselves a round. The energy was unbelievable. Sure, there was sometimes that we dropped intensity. But Kane took it away from us. [On missing DRS to get Williamson out] Was that lbw out? I don’t know. Which one is that. I don’t know. Oooh the nick. Oh well. There was no real appeal. No real lets have a look at it. So yeah, ask him [Imran Tahir] That’s all we can do.” he said.
The Proteas are now out of the reckoning for a semi-finals berth and Faf rues the missed chances through the tournament so far. “The performances haven’t been there. Individually we should have put on performances that could have driven the team home. But now we have to just try out best to compete again” he said.