SA gets runs in India

01 September 2015 - 02:02 By Telford Vice

Numbers never tell the whole story, but the bare bones of the South African tour to India that ended last week will stick in the throat of any cricket-minded South African: played six, won none. WTF? SA A lost one-day games to Australia A by nine wickets and 108 runs, and to India A by eight wickets and 34 runs. They drew the first four-day match against India A, but went down by an innings and 81 runs in the second.This, mind you, from players who will serve as reserves when SA are in India from October 2 to December 7.The lack of experience on the sub-continent is not a defence for SA's performance, with only two of the 21 players who saw action in the one-dayers and four-day games not having played there before.But Cricket SA's high-performance manager, Vincent Barnes, SA A's coach in India, filled in the gaps between the stark numbers - starting with what might yet be called the chicken dance."Everybody who ate the chicken at the team hotel that night was ill," Barnes said. "It was a five-star hotel and we ate there on eight days out of 10, so you tend to trust the food." Ten of Barnes's players and two members of the management staff were hospitalised with food poisoning before, during and after the one-dayer against India A in Chennai on August 9. The rapid depletion of SA A's ranks forced Barnes to borrow a fielder from his opponents and to put his video analyst, Henrikus Coertzen, on the field.As for the four-day games ..."We should have won the first one; we dominated for three of the days," Barnes said. "In the second game the pitch was crumbling from day one, so much so that the Indians had a fielder in a catching position behind the wicketkeeper. But we were too tentative with the bat, and we should have taken on the spinners."There was also good news to be had from the tour, notably that Quinton de Kock and Dane Piedt seem to be back on track.De Kock smashed centuries in both of his one-day innings for SA A and another in one of his three trips to the crease in the four-day games.Piedt not only topped SA A's wicket-taking charts in the four-day games with 11, but he also sent down 112 overs - more than any other bowler in the series...

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