Hashim Amla. Picture: Lee Warren / Gallo Images
When things go wrong for the Proteas, they tend to pick one man to tell the rest of the world what exactly is going wrong.
Hashim Amla did so when the side were eliminated early in 2016’s World T20 in India and on Thursday he fronted up again to talk about South Africa’s ODI series loss to India.
Should the Proteas lose Friday’s final match of the series in Centurion, it will be their heaviest ODI series defeat since 2002 against Australia.
Here’s what the bearded stalwart had to say on various issues.
On Kagiso Rabada being fined for his behaviour…
These type of things you leave to the authorities. KG is a fast bowler and we’ve seen they how they are emotionally involved when they are bowling. It’s not something for me to really comment on. The authorities need to determine what’s within the spirit of the game and what’s not. All you can ask for is for consistency.
On Rabada’s form with the ball…
I think he’s bowled very well to be really honest with you. He’s always looked like he’ll take wickets upfront and it simply hasn’t quite gone his way. Although we haven’t managed to make inroads at the start of Indian innings, we have managed to restrict them in the middle and at the death. We’ve controlled the back-end.
On Aiden Markram’s captaincy…
I’ve been very impressed with Aiden on the field. He’s very composed and he has a very good idea of what he would like in the field. If you don’t score runs as a captain, the immediate assumption is the leadership is affecting your batting. I’ve seen the same cliche applied to all these players. He’s had a wonderful opportunity to captain, he’s learned so much. He’ll only get better, he’s a world-class player.
What to take from this series…
On of the the silver linings of losing a few matches like we have is that you can throw out all the lessons that you can take from those games. In this series, we can highlight that we haven’t scored runs in the middle period. All the batters have certainly learnt a lot about themselves in terms of playing spinners. There hasn’t been an issue with wrist spinners before. These problems have been highlighted now and now we can improve. When it comes to World Cups or other series, we can prepare for this.
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