Tenacious South Africa look to maintain pace against KOed Zimbabwe

TimesofIndia.com New Delhi: South Africa are the team to beat in the ongoing T20 World Cup. Apart from a nail-biting double super over against Afghanistan, they also underlined their quality with a win against favorites and defending champions India. As a result, they have won six games in a row and are the only undefeated team in the competition. Their next opponents are already eliminated Zimbabwe in the all-Africa tournament at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in New Delhi.With the semi-finals coming up against New Zealand, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. What’s most impressive about Protea is that there isn’t a single person at the helm, making this behemoth go full throttle. Aiden Markram, Quinton de KockRyan Rickton, Dewald Brevis, David Miller, Tristan Stubbs fired with the bat and Lungi Ngidi, Marco Janssen and Corbin Bosch finished the job with the ball.

“From our perspective, we are very sharp and what we want to make sure is that we maintain discipline and intensity and that we don’t drop off in those areas,” the South African batting coach said. Ashwell Prince On the eve of dead glue.With six consecutive wins and the last two wins over India and West Indies by 76 runs and 9 wickets respectively, South Africa have good form and momentum going into the knockout rounds. In contrast, their semi-final opponents New Zealand barely qualified as Pakistan failed to restrict Sri Lanka in the Super Eights. So, is there anything that can serve as an “ideal guide”?“Obviously, wins create good momentum. Wherever you win, sometimes you can get a convincing win. Other times, you can have intense games and really bring the team together, so however you can get over the line, I don’t think there’s an ideal way to do that. If you look at England’s last game[against New Zealand]team), you win like England did (by 4 wickets with 3 balls to spare) and their players at No. 7 and No. 8 made significant contributions and that made them okay, and it gave a lot of confidence to their batting line-up because they knew those guys could come to the party and take the team across the line,” Prince explained.“I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to do it, there’s no ideal way — I think it’s good not to have a lot of close games, but I think close games definitely help with team morale,” he continued.

If Zimbabwe’s last two games are any indication, the chances of this being a close contest look slim. After winning over Australia and Sri Lanka to become the favorite of the tournament, the journey across the Palk Strait was a rude awakening for me. The Sikandar Raza-led side’s score of 254 defeated West Indies (in Mumbai) and India (in Chennai) to score 256, both among the top three highest scores in the history of the T20 World Cup.Zimbabwe bowling consultant Courtney Walsh said: “The conditions in India are different to Sri Lanka, the pitches are different and so on. So it took us a while to adapt. We didn’t adapt as quickly, not as quickly as we would have liked. And it’s a different surface. Obviously, we didn’t execute as planned, but I still think these guys put their hands up and they did their best.”“Hopefully we can learn a lot from these conditions for future reference. I think one of the biggest takeaways is how quickly you have to adapt to different conditions, and that’s one of the things we’re going to learn from this group,” he continued.During the group stages, Zimbabwe and Raza made a point of being taken seriously and respected. The ruthless nature of the sport means they must start chasing that goal again after two recent hammer blows.