Sticking to the basics and drawing from a larger talent pool, fighting for limited spots in the team has led to South Africa’s resurgence across formats in the past couple years, according to pacer Anrich Nortje.
Buoyed by historic achievements, including their World Test Championship title and a maiden appearance in the T20 World Cup final last year, the Proteas have re-established themselves as one of world cricket’s leading forces.
In the tour of India, they defeated the hosts 2-0 in the Test series, their first win in the country in 25 years. “The team’s been doing unbelievably well. The way they’ve locked up, there’s some fresh faces, there’s some old faces, guys have been on the fringes for a while, getting to play more cricket, more consistently,” Nortje said on the eve of the fourth T20I against India here on Tuesday.
The fast bowler attributed South Africa’s white-ball success to clearly defined roles and internal competition. “I can only speak for the white ball team, but on the outside it just looks like the guys are doing really well, getting along very well, and everyone knows their role in the team, and that’s very important,” Nortje said. “There’s a lot of competition, which creates opportunity and also creates a little bit of pressure for guys in the team, which is good, which is what you want.”
This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever