Proteas Captain Faf du Plessis has attributed his side’s poor performance at the World Cup to lack of consistency. The Proteas managed just three wins in nine matches with victories coming against Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Australia.
It was the Proteas’ worst performance at a World Cup since the 2003 tournament on home soil.
The South African cricket team arrived back in the country earlier on Monday after the dismal showing in England and Wales.
“We had small contributions from different guys through the tournament but only really up until the last two games that we had huge impact on players making performances. Only one hundred scored in the entire series. If you look at the last two games almost as a blue print when you do those things we win games of cricket no matter how strong the opposition are,” says du Plessis.
The Proteas struggled to get runs on the scoreboard, with du Plessis being the only player to reach a century against Australia in their last game of the 2019 ICC World Cup.
The captain says that before they departed for the global spectacle, they understood that they didn’t have the strongest batting line-up.
“We thought we had the best bowling attack and that was the one thing we spoke of that we knew. We knew our limitations and knew our strengths as a team and obviously, the last year, consistency from a batting unit was not there. That’s why I’m saying that our hopes were not on putting 350 runs every game as a batting unit our hopes were on bowling teams out for 280 then chasing it down,” says du Plessis.
Proteas Coach Ottis Gibson says he was optimistic ahead of the 2019 ICC World Cup. However, they struggled to recover from early injury setbacks in the tournament.
Hashim Amla, Lungi Ngidi and David Muller all suffered injuries in the opening matches.
“I felt like certainly, from a batting point of view, we had batsmen that if they click could put runs on the board but ultimately once we didn’t have that world class attack anymore, then it became obviously a very difficult situation,” explains Gibson.
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