Times Media
TELFORD VICE, Cape Town
COULDN’T bat. Couldn’t bowl. Couldn’t field. When South Africans are accused of being too negative about their team, they can point to AB de Villiers’ damning assessment of his side’s performance in the first one-day international against Australia in Perth on Friday.
“We didn’t get it right in all three departments,” De Villiers said after SA crashed to defeat by 32 runs. “Our fielding was poor, we bowled badly and we lost too many wickets at the wrong times.”
SA fell victim to chronic inconsistency. They could do nothing to stop David Warner and Aaron Finch from piling up 94 runs in 14.2 overs for Australia’s first wicket. Then they took five wickets for 50 runs in 15 overs. Only for the Aussies to score 156 runs in the last 19.3 overs of their innings to reach a total of 300/8.
“It was a very poor first 50 overs,” De Villiers said. “We pulled it back nicely and lost it again, and didn’t have that ruthlessness to finish it off.”
In reply, SA lost Quinton de Kock, Hashim Amla, Farhaan Behardien and Faf du Plessis inside 16 overs with just 76 runs scored. De Villiers and David Miller made batting look simple in their run-a-ball stand of 126, but Miller was one of three men out in the space a dozen deliveries as SA slip slided away to 268 all out in 48.1 overs. What might have been was emphasised when Morne Morkel and Imran Tahir shared 46 for the last wicket - the second-biggest partnership of the innings.
For all that, De Villiers felt his team were in with a chance deep into the match.
“With 15 overs to go, I felt we were favourites,” he said. “As a cricket team things will go wrong sometimes, and they did go wrong today.
“It was proved that (the target) was really easy to chase it down at the end, but we just lost wickets at the wrong times.”
And then there was the catching. George Bailey alone was the beneficiary of four spilled chances: on two by Miller, still on two by Tahir, on 38 by Vernon Philander, and on 47 by Behardien. He scored 70.
Asked if any of the grassed catches had surprised him, Bailey said, “I haven’t seen ‘Davey’ (Miller) drop too many, the second one was (a surprise), the third one was, the fourth one was ... I don’t know how many times I was dropped.”
De Villiers tried to put the blame for the Fawlty Towers fielding on himself: “Maybe I made a mistake mentioning it in the media and put too much emphasis on it (fielding drills) so I’ll try to pipe down. I put a bit too much pressure on the guys, maybe.
“I have no problems with a dropped catch - it happens. I’ve dropped catches before; everyone does at times.
“I’m more disappointed about the catches we pulled out of; the catches I want us to get a hand on, and we don’t even get a hand on the ball. That’s when I get frustrated.”
Being named the International Cricket Council’s one-day player of the year on Friday would have done nothing to lighten De Villiers’ mood.
But at least he will have a chance to, as he said more than once, “fix things on Sunday” in the second game of the series, which will be played at the same venue.
De Villiers’ Australian counterpart, Michael Clarke, suffered his third hamstring injury in six weeks while batting on Friday and is doubtful for Sunday’s second match of the series, also at the WACA.
“Early in my innings I took off for a run and just felt it grab,” Clarke said. “I’ve got my fingers crossed that it’s not that bad.
“I’ve had a long stint of rehab trying to get it strong and unfortunately it’s come back again, so that is not positive.”
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