Skipper AB de Villiers insists South Africa’s recent losses to Pakistan and India were hurtful experiences for the team, but is confident that they will benefit from the learnings of those two matches.
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The Proteas were the form team coming into the 2015 World Cup, but suffered a massive 130-run loss to the defending champions in Melbourne, while the defeat to Pakistan was even more embarrassing as they failed to chase a target of 232 on a small Eden Park ground and lost by 29 runs.
And ahead of their final group match today against the UAE, de Villiers said they still remained the team to beat.
“We’ve moved on from the last game. It’s past tense now,” said the captain, who top-scored with a 77 against Pakistan.
“We didn’t expect to be five (wins) from five. World Cup is a funny tournament. You’ve got to take whatever comes your way, and we’ve had a rocky road.
Good day out in Wellington with @DanielleDV27 . Lovely city! Refreshed and ready for our next challenge #CWC15
— AB de Villiers (@ABdeVilliers17) March 8, 2015
“Yes, we would have liked to win those two games against India and Pakistan. It didn’t happen that way, and there’s no time to sulk about that now. It’s a really important stage of our World Cup moving forward. Now it’s important to be confident, and I still want the boys to believe we are the best, which we are.
“We’ve taken our learning from it, and it’s all positive from here on in. I still feel very confident. Those two losses in the group stages did hurt us a bit and did hurt me a bit, but we are past that now. We have taken our learning and we know we could have won those games. We weren’t that far off.
“It’s all positive chat from now on in. We know we’re a few games away from taking that World Cup home. We know we are not far off, so it’s important to be positive and still believe that we are the best.”
While South Africa’s frontline bowlers have done a great job, opposition teams have taken advantage of the missing fifth specialist bowler. De Villiers said he was aware of that, but the balance of the team will only be determined on the basis of the opposition.
Informing that paceman Vernon Philander, who has been sitting out with a back injury, is close to regaining 100 per cent fitness, de Villiers added: “Yeah, I think that’s the difficult decision that most teams in this World Cup have got to make.
“You play either the extra batter or the extra bowler. We look at what kind of team we are playing against, what field we are playing on, what kind of situation and conditions we are expecting, and then we make that call.
“The last few games, we’ve gone for the extra batter. Against India we went for the extra bowler. Both times we lost, so it’s a difficult one.”
South Africa lost both their matches chasing, but de Villiers said the team did not discus any special strategy about batting second.
“It’s not an issue to be honest with you,” he said. “I believe we can chase down any total. There’s no special strategy.
“We’ve got to do the basics well. We’ve got good key points and plays that we want to follow throughout the World Cup. We didn’t get it right in the two chases. As long as we get those couple of key points right, I truly believe we can chase down anything. It’s not a problem.”
If South Africa beat the UAE, they will finish second in Pool B and will take on Sri Lanka in the quarter-finals in Sydney. When asked if he has ventured ahead and thought who the team would prefer to face in the quarters, de Villiers replied: “Yeah, we’ve got to win our game first, otherwise we might actually play Australia in Adelaide.
“There are quite a few options, but we’d just like to focus on tomorrow and make sure we have a good win. From there on we’ll see where we go in the quarters and start planning accordingly. Whoever we play, I believe we’ve got the right squad here to come out on top.”
