Now is not the time to take hasty decisions that might be regretted later — that’s how Haroon Lorgat, convenor of selectors, responded on Thursday to South Africa’s disappointing exit from the Cricket World Cup in the Caribbean.
South Africa, who went into the World Cup as the number one-ranked one-day international team, lost by seven wickets to Australia in the semifinal in St Lucia on Wednesday after being bowled out for 149 in the 44th over.
”It’s not just how we played in the semifinal,” said Lorgat.
”That was a very disappointing performance — we never got out of the starting blocks.
”But what I’m even more worried about is the team’s inconsistent and erratic performances. We only won five matches out of the ten we played.
”We played brilliantly at times — for instance against the West Indies and England, and even Sri Lanka, but at other times we were well below our best.
”I’m worried about the gap between the great days and the bad days,” said Lorgat.
”We need to keep calm, and once the team is back, we need to reflect and analyse what went wrong. People are saying we lost because we didn’t have a match-winning spinner.
”We certainly didn’t lose against Australia yesterday [Wednesday] because we didn’t have a spinner — it was our batting that let us down.”
Lorgat said it was unlikely that either coach Mickey Arthur or captain Graeme Smith would be axed.
”We need to take some time to decide what we need to do to pick ourselves up after this tremendous disappointment.
”I think it would be a mistake to make rash decisions in the heat of the moment — decisions that we might regret later. We need to sit down with the team and the team management and try to find out what happened, and then decide where to go from here.
”The players will be as disappointed as their fans, and they will want to do some soul-searching and try to find out what went wrong.” — Sapa