SA arrived in New Zealand on a high note after a hard-fought home series win over India, but a punishing defeat in their first Test against New Zealand in Christchurch on Saturday served as a sobering reality check.
Captain Dean Elgar refused to make excuses, blaming neither losing the toss, the 10-day quarantine on arrival in New Zealand, nor the matter of head coach Mark Boucher facing a May disciplinary hearing over charges of racism.
“Being a touring party, we are always going to be up against home conditions and rightly so,” Elgar said of having to bat first on a Hagley Oval pitch that had a nice covering of grass and offered plenty of assistance to the always relentless Blackcaps’ pace attack.
“If the shoe were on the other foot, we would like to have used it to our strength.”
Opener Elgar contributed only one run in two knocks, but he was not alone in failing with the bat, with no SA batsman totalling even 50 runs.
The top four batters combined for a miserable 45 runs in total.
Without a specialist spinner, the bowling attack lacked penetration at times, though sloppy fielding and numerous dropped catches made matters worse.
“We were totally outplayed by a classy New Zealand outfit in all three departments of the game,” said Elgar, who acknowledged that the pre-Test lockdown as mandated by the government's Covid-19 regulations was less-than-ideal.
We should be a helluva lot more competitive out there. We’ve achieved a lot over the last few months as a unit and clearly what we produced out there the last few days is not a reflection of us as a squad.
— Proteas captain Dean Elgar
“It would have been nice to have played a warm-up game but ... we are a professional outfit and ultimately we need to be firing by the time match day comes.
“We have to respect the rules and regulations New Zealand.”
And the Boucher situation was not a distraction, he insisted.
“As a group we’ve worked through that and kind of worked it out already. I don’t see that as being an excuse in our camp.”
SA have never lost a Test series against New Zealand and need to win the second match of the short two-Test encounter to avoid that fate.
The match starts on the same ground on Friday, giving SA a few days to figure out how to improve against a team that are not reigning world Test champions through luck.
“Why we were lacking in that intensity department I’m still trying to process,” Elgar said.
“We should be a helluva lot more competitive out there. We’ve achieved a lot over the last few months as a unit and clearly what we produced out there the last few days is not a reflection of us as a squad.”
Meanwhile, opening batsman Rohit Sharma has been named India’s permanent Test captain, weeks after Virat Kohli resigned after their series defeat in SA.
Rohit is now India’s captain across all three formats after he was earlier given the white ball captaincy. India play Sri Lanka in three Twenty20 internationals starting on Thursday, before the two-Test series next month.
Fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah has been named vice-captain. Batsmen Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane were dropped from the Test squad, selection committee chair Chetan Sharma told reporters.
— Reuters
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