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Faf du Plessis suggests that Cricket South Africa may change team structure after poor Cricket World Cup 2019
South Africa lost to New Zealand to continue their dismal streak in the CWC 2019
Cricket South Africa might change the entire team structure after a poor outing in the ongoing Cricket World Cup 2019, believes skipper Faf du Plessis.
At Edgbaston on Wednesday, the Proteas suffered a four-wicket loss against New Zealand and are more or less out of the event with just one win in their outings thus far. With a majority of their players, including Imran Tahir, Hashim Amla and du Plessis himself - not likely to play the World Cup in 2023, the skipper admits that the selectors might take a tough call regarding the future after the event ends.
“I think that will happen naturally with quite a few guys at the end of their careers. So you’re probably getting three or four guys getting away from that. And then you will. You know, depending on cricket South Africa, I feel in terms of what they believe is a good way forward, they might want a complete change,” said du Plessis.
“For me, it’s just finding - we’ve got some young players, so there's a future there. The young guys, I've really backed them this tournament. I think they've got a great future ahead of them,” he said.
“What will naturally happen is you'll probably lose six or seven players after this tournament. Whether you want to change more than that, no, I don't think you need to do more than that.”
In the last three World Cups, South Africa have been unable to get across New Zealand. Du Plessis stated that the loss on Wednesday reminded him of the heart-wrenching loss in the semis of the 2015 World Cup, when they had been defeated by New Zealand as well.
“Very disappointed. You know, it almost feels like fours years ago against New Zealand again, where we actually played a good game of cricket. I can't fault the game that we played today. We threw everything at New Zealand.
“We've been saying, and we've been hard on ourselves in that as well. We need guys to stand up and put in performances that will win you games. That has been where we've been short in the innings we've played so far,” he said.
“The wicket wasn't as flat as you would have thought it would be. Those first 15 overs felt exactly like Auckland. The ball was hooping around corners there.
"So we felt like we did the whole work, and we thought it would be easy, but they kept getting a wicket every time there was a 50 partnership, 60 partnership, and you need that to go to 100, and you need one guy to bat through the innings.”
