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One defeat didn't make us a bad team - Century hero Klaasen

cricket21 October 2023 16:53| © MWP
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Heinrich Klaasen © Gallo Images

Heinrich Klaasen admitted that he was “not in a good place physically” by the time he reached the 80s during his heroic century against England in their World Cup match at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Saturday and said that he had to “dig incredibly deep to keep going.”

“It was like running in a sauna, breathing in hot air all the time, it was incredibly hard out there, but we know it’s going to be like that that’s what we train for so did what I had to do and pushed on,” Klaasen said after South Africa had beaten the defending champions by a record 229 runs with Klaasen making 109 from just 67 balls, his fifth ODI hundred.

Klaasen added 151 for the sixth wicket, another record, with Marco Jansen who scored a career-best 75 not out from only 42 balls but it was his role at the non-strikers end which may have been just as important.

“I was incredibly chuffed for him today,” Klaasen said, “he takes his batting very seriously and he’s been disappointed that he hasn’t hung around for as long as he would have liked on some occasions, but today he said ‘I’ve got you today, keep going,’ and that’s what he did,” Klaasen said.

Jansen remembered the moment slightly differently: “He was on 81 when he went down, struggling to breath. I told him ‘you’re not leaving this field until you get your hundred, after that you can do what you like but I’m staying with you until you get your hundred, you deserve it,” Jansen recalled.

On a day when every member of the team contributed to a memorable victory, the least likely hero may have been Reeza Hendricks who scored a silky 85 from 75 balls opening the batting in place of regular captain Temba Bavuma who was laid low with a stomach ailment.

“It was about five, maybe ten minutes before toss when the coach came to me and said ‘are you good to go?’ I didn’t know anything about Temba’s illness so it was a complete surprise,” Hendricks said after the game.

“I just needed to hit some balls before the start but my bat and gloves were in the changing room so I had to run upstairs to get them. Apart from that I was ready to go.”

Klaasen said the team was back on track after the surprise defeat to the Netherlands: “It was a bad defeat but it didn’t mean we were a bad team. I know we have this ‘label’ but we have actually played some very good cricket at World Cups.”

England captain, Jos Buttler, was understandably deflated after the match admitting that his decision to bowl first was “a mistake in hindsight” and that his team were facing a huge task just to get to the semifinals, never mind defend their title.

“It’s going to be extremely difficult and we’ve now given ourselves no margin for error. We know it’s going to be tough but we will keep going forward because that’s what you do in these situations, you dust yourself off, puff your chests out and go again,” Buttler said.

“Klaasen and Jansen put a fantastic partnership together which took the wind out of us. When we had them five wickets down we thought we had a good chance of restricting them to around 350 which would have made for a good run chase on this wicket and these conditions, but 400 made it very difficult,” Buttler said.

South Africa face Bangladesh at the same venue on Tuesday while England will try to resurrect their stumbling campaign against Sri Lanka in Bangalore on Thursday.

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