South Africa’s pace spearhead, Kagiso Rabada has called for “patience and understanding,” for their failing batting line-up, while also admitting it is “frustrating as a team,” to accept their performances.
South Africa’s pace spearhead, Kagiso Rabada has called for “patience and understanding,” for their failing batting line-up, while also admitting it is “frustrating as a team,” to accept their performances.
South Africa’s batters have had their most awful Test year in 2022 and have been dismissed for under 200 eight times the most in their history.
Their lean run looks more terrible when compared to the greatness of their pace attack Rabada is the year’s leading Test wicket-taker with 45 scalps in eight matches so far.
“The batting line-up that we have is quite inexperienced,”
Rabada said.
“In fact, the team that we have is relatively inexperienced if you look at other cricketing nations. Dean Elgar is our most experienced player followed by myself and Temba (Bavuma). I’ve played 50-odd Test matches and everyone else hasn’t played much. It can get frustrating as well and when I say frustrating I don’t mean to single out the batters, it’s frustrating as a team and you almost have to understand that sometimes this is what happens in a rebuilding phase.”
Elgar’s 80 caps are the most in the ongoing South African Test squad, followed by Rabada’s 56 and Bavuma’s 52. The rest of the top six Sarel Erwee, Rassie van der Dussen, Khaya Zondo, and Kyle Verreynne have only 41 Tests between them which implies South Africa’s top six has played 173 Tests altogether.
By and Large, the XI that played in Brisbane against Australia, have altogether showed up in 315 Tests. Comparatively, Australia’s most experienced player is Nathan Lyon who has played 113 matches and their longest-serving batter is David Warner, who has 99 Test caps.
“I’ve played in a team in a star-studded line-up, where you are playing with greats of the game. I don’t think that happens quite frequently,”
“Now, the situation that we’re faced with, there’s a whole lot of players who have come in, who have the ability but need to get used to the international circuit. So, there needs to be an element of patience and understanding but at the same time, you can’t advocate for bad performances. However, we’re quite positive.”
Rabada made his debut in 2015, under Hashim Amla’s captaincy and with AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis in the batting line-up and Dale Steyn and Vernon Philander in the attack.
While the batters find real confidence, Rabada insists the bowlers are glad to get a move on, because they know they have the stuff to keep South Africa in challenges.
“If you don’t have the belief, then I don’t think we’d be able to go out and produce performances as we have,”
“It’s all down to belief and I think we have the belief. We will never go down without a fight.”
