Proteas’ baffling problems with bowling at lower order need resolving

Though they won’t be losing any sleep over it just yet, the Proteas were again put on notice about their lackadaisical performances against opposition lower order batters by Bangladesh this week.

Whether it be a case of ‘job done and let's conserve energy’, or simply tiredness, the fact that the last three Bangladeshi partnerships totalled over 111 runs, and pushed their innings to the 47th over, will be a matter of concern for the Proteas’ leadership.

Stand-in captain, Aiden Markram described Tuesday’s conclusion to a match that his side won comfortably, as “frustrating”. It’s also habitual and cost them dearly in their only defeat in the tournament so far.

The Proteas, who play Pakistan on Friday at MA Chidambaram Stadium here in Chennai, have won all their matches by more than 100 runs, including a 229-run thrashing of defending champions England and it may seem churlish to quibble over lower order runs. However it's those details that decide World Cups and in one instance in this tournament actually cost the Proteas.

The Netherlands were 140/7 at the end of the 34th over of their rain-reduced innings in Dharamsala last week. With just nine overs to play, there wasn’t a soul in that ground or watching from further away who thought South Africa would be chasing more than 200 in that match.

The Dutch scored 105 runs off the last 9.1 overs — doing a fine show of mimicking the Proteas’ ‘death’ batting belligerence — and ultimately won by 38 runs.

But it wasn’t just that defeat that suggested a problem. Sri Lanka’s last three wickets added 94 runs in 12 overs in the opening game in Delhi, while in Lucknow Australia’s last four wickets added 107 runs and even England’s last three partnerships were worth 86 runs in seven overs last Saturday.

There would be a natural tendency towards complacency when bowling second in defence of the targets the Proteas have set in this tournament, but when bad habits are forming it’s best to nip them in the bud before they occur in a match with more at stake than the one in Dharamsala.

“We had pretty good plans in place, I felt, and went past the bat quite a bit in the back end of the innings,” Markram said about the latter stages of Tuesday’s performance. Bangladesh’s veteran all-rounder Mahmudullah, scored a battling 111, and engaged in a furious war of words with Marco Jansen at one point, an incident that illustrated the Proteas’ frustrations.

“I think it was good for us to be able to tap into ‘death’ [bowling] plans to a batter that was in and putting us under a bit of pressure. So, I think there was a lot of value in that for us.

“And then to keep taking wickets from the other end is also good for the bowling unit. So sometimes you can get a bit frustrated in the field but I think when the game ends, you sit back and you realise the good value that was out there in what happened for us.”

That’s putting good spin on it, but he’ll be aware, as will the bowlers, that there’ll be occasions, as in Dharamsala, where there won’t be positives after such carelessness.

Meanwhile, Markram was wary of looking too far ahead into the tournament after the two wins in Mumbai pushed them up to second on the log, behind the undefeated Indians. With six wins from the nine-round robin matches generally enough for a team to qualify for the semifinals it is tempting to think, ‘just win two of the last four games’, and make the playoffs.

“I think that's a pretty dangerous place to be, to be honest. I don't think you want to start trying to do maths this far out,” Markram said.

“There's still four games of cricket and that's potentially eight points up for grabs. That's what we're going to try to push for. If you start sitting and hoping for a result from this team and trying to work out, ‘We maybe only need two wins’, or whatever it is, I don't think that's a great place to be as a unit.

“So I'm sure we'll stay far away from that and focus on the very next game and try to back up performances that we've put in so far.”