South Africa captain Graeme Smith said his side have the opportunity to become heroes during the Champions Trophy one-day tournaments, which start in England later this week.
The Proteas come into the ”mini World Cup” on the back of a 5-0 one-day whitewashing in Sri Lanka.
But Smith, still one of the youngest captains in world cricket at the age of 23, insisted that far from being downcast, South Africa will use the Sri Lankan series to inspire them to greater efforts in England.
”We had a really rusty tour in Sri Lanka,” Smith said at the squad’s hotel in London on Monday ahead of their opening match on Sunday against minnows Bangladesh at Edgbaston.
”We didn’t perform to the standards we would have liked. We come here a team with a lot of pride hurt.
”The team is obviously highly motivated because of the way we performed and we come here being big underdogs,” added Smith, whose side face the West Indies in the second match of the tournament at The Oval on September 18.
”Hopefully that can play into our hands and hopefully we can get a really dominant performance in up front against Bangladesh and move on to The Oval against West Indies and do well.
”It’s a tournament where if you win four games you are heroes again,” the left-handed Western province batsman added.
”It’s a knockout tournament and it will be interesting to see how far we’ve come since the World Cup.”
South Africa staged last year’s World Cup and were strongly fancied to do well.
But their tournament ended in embarrassing fashion when a failure to correctly interpret rain delay regulations led them to believe they’d beaten Sri Lanka when in fact they had only tied.
The result meant South Africa exited the tournament at the end of the first group stage and sparked a chain of events that saw Smith, omitted from the World Cup squad, replace Shaun Pollock as captain.
However the two men have worked well together since then and Smith stressed that the experienced pace bowler’s ability to move the ball late would be vital to the team’s chances of success.
”Obviously swing bowlers are crucial. Shaun Pollock will be crucial for us up front. He’s been a world-class performer for a number of years.
”And your top four in your batting department are going to have to produce the goods up front. Maybe the first 15 overs won’t be as dominant as in the past. You can score a lot of runs at the death.”
Last year also saw South Africa tour England and it was in the Test series where Smith really made his name by scoring back-to-back double hundreds in the first two games of the campaign at Edgbaston and Lord’s.
Those performances came after South Africa had lost the preceding one-day series final, against England.
Despite their bad start the hosts fought back and drew the series 2-2, a result that was the spark for a run of form that has seen England win their last seven Tests.
However, many expect that run will come under threat during England’s four Test tour of South Africa starting in December, a series where two of the world’s best all-rounders, the visitors’ Andrew Flintoff and the hosts’ Jacques Kallis, will be in
opposition.
”Both teams are pretty similar man-for-man. I think their tour at the end of the year is going to be a helluva of an exciting tour to watch.
”Freddie [Flintoff] has been performing well and Jacques [Kallis] has been awesome over the last year.
”They are the in-form guys at the moment but in a couple of months’ time it could be other guys who are standing up to be counted in both teams.” – Sapa-AFP