Beating Australia was good, but still plenty of work for Proteas: Walter

Seeking to quell the understandable excitement that arose after the Proteas’ come-from-behind series win against Australia, head coach Rob Walter said it would be a much different affair when the teams meet at the World Cup in three weeks' time.

“We need to be careful of reading too much into this series and what it means for the World Cup,” Walter said after Sunday’s 122-run victory in the last ODI at the Wanderers sealed a 3-2 series win.

“Their team will change; and one thing we understand about Australia is that they know how to perform in World Cups.”

The Australians were missing Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Glenn Maxwell and Pat Cummins for this series, while all-rounder Cameron Green also missed three matches with concussion and opener Travis Head suffered a fractured hand, which meant he didn’t play on Sunday. 

“While we will take the momentum for ourselves as a team, we won’t look too far ahead, other than to say our recent track record against Australia has been pretty strong and we need to keep that up in the World Cup,” Walter said.

The teams meet again in Lucknow on October 18, the second match for both in the tournament. 

The South African players needed the match time the series provided above all else. It had been five months since their last competitive encounter, and they won’t play another serious match again until their World Cup opener against Sri Lanka in Delhi on October 5. 

“We had good camps in the winter, we trained really hard but nothing matches the pressure and competitiveness that comes from playing against good quality sides,” their coach said.

With the exception of Sisanda Magala and Anrich Nortjé, who are both struggling with injuries, the rest of the squad all got much-needed match time under their belts and contributed in a variety of tricky situations. 

Captain Temba Bavuma made a century in the first match, when the rest of the batting unit fell to pieces. Aiden Markram scored a hundred on a spinning wicket in Potchefstroom and 93 on a seaming bouncy track at the Wanderers.

Heinrich Klaasen delivered an awe-inspiring performance at SuperSport Park, that further underlined his white ball prowess. 

Marco Jansen’s contributions with the bat were also vital, not just for his confidence but in building belief among his teammates about his ability in that area, and that they can trust him. 

With the ball, besides the impact made by spinners Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi, there will still be concerns for Walter and the rest of the coaching staff about the seam bowling, with the inconsistency and lack of control at times alarming. 

“From a bowler’s point of view, we wanted to expose everyone in our bowling unit, which happened by default. It wasn’t exactly how we had planned it — we had some injuries along the way,” he said. 

Magala and Nortje will be assessed this week, with Walter saying any changes to the squad would be made before their departure on Saturday. 

Winning the series, he explained, provided confidence that the work being done behind the scenes was putting the Proteas on the right track. “The best part is we won matches in different ways in this series; we won the game in Potch with spin, at SuperSport Park we won with pace and we put it all together at the Wanderers.”

However, despite the positive steps taken in the series and probably understanding the scepticism with which the Proteas are viewed given their World Cup history, Walter also outlined how the players were not getting ahead of themselves. 

“In all departments we made progress and we improved. I will never be so bullish as to say we are ‘there’ because we are never ‘there’. But we are closer to playing good cricket than when we started.”