Melbourne: A dejected South Africa captain AB de Villiers said the “embarrassing” 130-run defeat against India was a severe dent to their confidence and the team will have to lick its wounds for a while now.
“Yeah, it’s a big knock for us to get beaten by 130 runs. It’s almost embarrassing. You never want to lose by that amount of runs. You always want to be a competitive team. Feel like you’re always in the game, feel like you’ve got a chance to win games. We’re going to have to lick our wounds for a while,” de Villers said after crushing defeat in Pool B.
“It’s not just about qualifying for the quarterfinals. It’s not about that. Your confidence takes a bit of a knock with performances like that,” De Villiers said.
While he wants the senior players to come together in this pressure situation, he did admit that the defeat has taken its toll and he wants to sulk in silence.
“Come tomorrow, we’ll have to start strategising on how we’re going to recover and regroup as a unit, and we’ll put all our focus on Friday against the West Indies. It’s a big game for us and it’s a must win for us in Sydney, but for now I just want to sort of go feel sad in my room for a while, and we’ll see again how I feel tomorrow,” De Villiers said without hiding his feelings.
De Villiers had a word of caution for his teammates saying this poor show can creep into the team’s system.
“Today’s performance can creep into your game if you start thinking about it too much. If you allow it to creep in, it will knock your confidence down. I want to have a mature chat and honest chat about it. When it comes down to making the quarterfinals, I still believe that if we play some good cricket, we’ll make that.”
The South African captain feels that it was a combination of poor batting from his team as well as some good bowling from India. (PTI)
