Young Proteas batters need to deliver against Black Caps – Ashwell Prince
· Citizen
South Africa’s batters need to stand up on Friday, according to assistant coach Ashwell Prince, when the Proteas face New Zealand in the third T20 International in Auckland (8.15am start).
In the first game of the five-match series, the national men’s squad won by seven wickets in Mount Maunganui (with debutant Connor Esterhuizen hitting 45 not out at the top of the order), but they were handed a 68-run defeat in the second fixture in Hamilton on Tuesday.
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Set a target of 176 runs to win, the Proteas never really got going in Hamilton, and they were bowled out for 107 runs in the 16th over of their innings.
With a lot of senior players being rested after the recent T20 World Cup, and ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) which starts next week, Prince admitted most of the fringe players in the squad had not yet delivered with the bat in New Zealand.
“I think we’ve got an exciting group of young players. They’ve played really well over the last couple of years in the SA20 league, and with so much cricket coming up and a lot of guys going to the IPL now, it’s given some of the young guys an opportunity,” Prince said.
“Obviously we played really well in the first game, but it was predominantly the bowling that saw the first game home, and [in the second game] we didn’t quite get any rhythm in our batting.”
Time to take their chance
With an opportunity to potentially secure their place in the first-choice national side moving forward, Prince said he would be urging the players to take advantage of their opportunity ahead of the clash in Auckland.
“I think the message to the guys is that generally in a T20 game you get three opportunities. You can either play the match-winning innings… or you can be in a match-winning partnership with someone, or you can play a really nice cameo towards the end,” he said.
“In Hamilton the only box we ticked was George Linde who played a real nice cameo towards the end (hitting 33 runs off 12 balls) but we didn’t get any partnerships going and we didn’t get anyone going on and making a big score.”