South Africa’s astonishing boundary-hitting in the closing overs has become the talk of the World Cup after they scored 144 from the final 10 overs against Bangladesh at the Wankhede Stadium on Tuesday night and 143 from the final 10 against England at the same venue on Saturday.
Captain for the day, Aiden Markram, spoke about the ‘formula’ employed by the Proteas to capitalise in such a brutally successful way at the end of the innings:
“You need wickets in hand, obviously, but we don’t talk about a blueprint as such,” Markram said.
“Everyone knows what they have to do to help the batting unit and we know our roles. We try not to look at the scoreboard and just play exactly what is in front of us,” Markram said.
Defeat to the Netherlands is looking increasingly like an ‘outlier’ result with four victories coming by astonishing margins of 102 runs, 134 runs, 229 runs and now 149 runs against Sri Lanka, Australia, England and Bangladesh.
💯 Quinton de Kock, 174 (140)
— ICC Cricket World Cup (@cricketworldcup) October 24, 2023
💪 Heinrich Klaasen, 90 (49)
💥 David Miller, 34 (15)
Some brutal hitting has lifted South Africa to another massive score 👇#SAvBAN #CWC23https://t.co/qQX9k7IfxL
Did he feel his team had made a ‘statement’ to the rest of the teams?
“I’m not sure if we’re putting statements out there, we’re just trying to crack on with our own performances but everybody is trying to reach the knockout stages and play a good game in the semifinal and hopefully the final,” Markram said.
“We’re trying not to ‘blow up’ the occasion too much, obviously it’s a World Cup, and we respect that, but ultimately it is still a game of cricket.”
Quinton de Kock is now the leading run-scorer in the tournament after his 174 on Tuesday, his third century in five matches, but Markram said his value to the team went beyond the runs he scores:
“We all know Quinny to be the free spirit he is, but he also has a fantastic cricket brain and he reads situations and conditions really well and communications that information to the rest of us, so he adds huge value to the team apart from his runs. But you never want to clip his wings, you just want to let him fly,” Markram said.
This story continues to write itself ✍️
— Proteas Men (@ProteasMenCSA) October 24, 2023
What a remarkable knock from Quinny👏
A Take A Bow! 🇿🇦#CWC23 #BePartOfIt pic.twitter.com/QHFHvQZ9Ur
Markram also assured everybody that nobody was taking a semifinal place for granted or even looking at the log which now sees the Proteas move to second place ahead of New Zealand on net run-rate:
“That’s a dangerous place to be, to be honest. You don’t want to be doing maths this far out, if you’re hoping for other results to go your way or thinking that we need to win two out of the next four games, that’s not a good place to be. We’ll stay far away from that and just concentrate on the next game we play,” Markram said.
The next game is against Pakistan in Chennai on Friday.