‘A fine balance’, but Proteas are finding their feet with new brand

While they relied largely on one player to come off in a big way, the Proteas cricket team believe the result of the third and final ODI against West Indies on Tuesday showed how successful they can be when they take an aggressive approach.

With South Africa’s bowling attack having restricted the tourists to a competitive total of 260 runs in Potchefstroom, the hosts looked to be in some trouble in the early stages of their chase after losing a few early wickets.

But Heinrich Klaasen took control, racing to an impressive century as he scored 119 runs to carry them to a comfortable four-wicket victory with more than 20 overs to spare.

READ MORE: Heinrich Klaasen carries Proteas to victory over Windies

“It’s a fine balance. Sometimes it will look great and sometimes it won’t look great, but we want to play a certain brand of cricket, and in difficult situations you still want to encourage players to play that brand,” Klaasen said after the game.

“If it comes off, that’s brilliant, and if it doesn’t we can move on from there and learn from it. There will be days that it’s not going to go our way, but as long as we give ourselves the right options, stick to our game plan and play our brand of cricket, we don’t have issues in our squad.”

‘A learning process’

Though he did not play in the final match of the ODI series due to a hamstring niggle, regular captain Temba Bavuma was equally delighted to see the SA team’s risky approach resulting in success as they ended the three-match campaign with a 1-1 draw.

“I think we’ve taken another few steps towards what ‘perfect’ would look like for us,” Bavuma said.

“It’s still a learning process we have to go through, and we’re going to have to come up against different opposition in different conditions which we’ll have to adapt to, but I think what we’ve shown in the last few games is that we’ve come a long way in refining and building our confidence around our brand.

“I think for me today, watching from the side, it was a big watershed moment for us as a team. We’ve been speaking and speaking about how we want to play, and there have been moments before today, but when a guy (Klaasen) goes and plays like that it really builds the belief and confidence in the team.

“I hope it also builds the trust of people who are watching us as a team.”