Conrad Lambasts South Africa’s “Embarrassing” 3rd ODI Showing as they slumped to a record 342-run defeat against England
Head coach Shukri Conrad admits team “exposed” in record defeat, despite having already sealed series.
After a decisive victory in game one and a thrilling victory in game two, they lost the third game in England, which was a dead rubber. That resulted in England’s first series since 1998. However, the severity of the Southampton loss, which follows a 276-run loss to Australia in a series that was already won, raises concerns about how rapidly and drastically South Africa loses focus, particularly when the outcome is irrelevant.
South Africa has suffered two of its most crushing ODI losses, both of which occurred when they fielded first and were accompanied by poor discipline and missed catches. Alex Carey was knocked down by South Africa’s 15 wides against Australia, but he went on to have a great innings-ending performance. They dropped two catches, including Jamie Smith on 23 and Jacob Bethell on 44, and bowled 19 wides against England.
Conrad on the defeat
“Any excuse is better than none. We were definitely off today. And against a top side like England, when you’re not on top of your game, you do get exposed,” Conrad said at the post-match conference. “A similar thing happened in Australia, where after going 2-0 up, it was a complete aberration. They got in excess of 400 as well. But if we were going to be poor at something, we’d rather be poor at games that aren’t clutch games. We’re not making light of today’s defeat. That was slightly embarrassing.”
In the post-match presentation, Bavuma stated that the bowling of many extras was “far from ideal, not good enough” and “could be complacency.” Conrad, on the other hand, thought that a poor bowling performance affected the rest of their skill set.
“The bowling affects the fielding and the other way around, but nine out of ten times, Matthew Breetzke is taking that catch, Conraid said. “We’re not going to read too much into that, but it’s a difficult one because when that edge is not there and something doesn’t go your way and the harder you try, it’s just not there. I’m not offering it as an excuse because it’s not supposed to be like that, but the fielding wasn’t at the usual high standard that we set. All in all, yeah, it was an embarrassing performance in the field.”
Bavuma sees positives
Despite their lack of confidence in this match, Bavuma also emphasised South Africa’s accomplishments in the past month, which included defeating Australia and England with one game remaining.
“There are lots of positives in the series, coming to England away with a fairly inexperienced side and we wouldn’t want today’s performance to diminish that,” he said. “There are shining moments so we’ll try to highlight those. They can’t be wiped away by one performance.”