South African captain Graeme Smith said on Monday that New Zealand’s decision to bat into the third day took the possibility of South Africa playing positive cricket away from them.
Smith was speaking to journalists after the second Castle Lager Test at Newlands ended in a draw. ”Everyone wants results — no-one wants a dead rubber game, but we were forced to go on the defensive,” said Smith.
”They batted well into the game, and they really only gave us one option, which was to bat for a long time. We were all pretty confident — it did take a bit of turn, but it was slow turn. We were surprised that they played on for so long. I think they passed the point where they could play positively, and had to go for the follow-on in order to win, and then they just carried on batting.
”Our guys played superbly, especially in the middle. Hash [Hashim Amla] was great. We obviously needed one guy to go on and make a big score, and the others to bat around him and we had two — Ash [Ashwell Prince] did that today.”
Smith said he had been very impressed with Amla’s innings, in which he made 149.
”He’s a pretty calm guy, and he doesn’t let the occasion get to him. I thought he played the spin superbly, and that bodes well for where we are going at the beginning of next season.”
South Africa are scheduled to tour Sri Lanka later this year.
”Hopefully, from here, he’ll build on that and make it even better.”
Smith once again defended his decision to bowl first. ”The only way we could get a win was to bowl them out first. It didn’t work, but we created lot of opportunities, and so it could have worked.”
Prince said that although he lost two batting partners in two balls, he was not worried that he would run out of partners before he reached his fourth Test century. ”I had confidence in Dale [Steyn], as long as he was there before Makhaya [Ntini] came in,” he laughed.
The New Zealand captain, Stephen Fleming, who was named man of the match for his 262 in the first innings, said he did not regret batting on for a long time. ”I needed everything I could get. We probably should have got more, because the follow-on was our only real chance,” he said.
”Maybe if we’d been bowled out for 350, the game would still have been alive, but we played well enough to be in a position where we had to get South Africa out twice, so we needed as much cash in the bank as possible.”
Fleming said the main problem had been that his bowlers had not been able to extract the spin or movement or inconsistency from the pitch that they had found in the first three days. ”I don’t know if it was the cold or the wind, but it started to come to life again today.
”We had high hopes yesterday, but South Africa played well. A couple of individuals took time out of the game, and had personal milestones, which set South Africa up for the draw.”
Fleming said he was disappointed to be going into the final Test in a position where New Zealand could not win the series. ”We came here to win the series, and now we can’t. But we won’t accept anything but a tied series.”
Smith said he was confident going into the final Test. ”We’ve always wanted to play positive, winning cricket, and if we can win this series, it means we can put a tick against this summer,” he said.
The third Test starts at the Wanderers at 9.30am on Friday. – Sapa