Faf: Batting in Nagpur isn’t brain surgery

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Cricket365
April 14, 2016

South Africa T20 skipper Faf du Plessis laid the blame for his side's defeat to the West Indies firmly at the feet of the batsmen, saying they were at least 10 runs short and made silly mistakes.

The Proteas scored only 122 runs in Nagpur, and while they came close to defending it, taking the game to the final over, the skipper acknowledged that they played the wrong shots for the conditions.

As such, the Windies are through to the semi-finals, while the Proteas need other results to go their way if they want to advance to the knock-out round.

Du Plessis said: "The batting today was the difference between us winning and losing. We needed to get to 130-135 to have a par score. I thought we were 10 runs short, definitely.

"Obviously batting first, the thinking was that it wasn't going to be the same wicket as Mumbai, doesn't take a brain surgeon to look at that. But those decisions you make when you're batting, we didn't make them tonight.

"The run-out, caught at mid-off, and Rilee – our first three wickets for me were all soft wickets. AB's wicket was also a soft wicket.

"They didn't bowl us out tonight. We were put in situations where we needed to be smarter and we weren't. If you don't do those things you're not going to bat as well as you can.

"We went into this game thinking that West Indies is a power hitting team and we rely on being smart. Ten or 15 runs more, I think we could have won the game.

"They don't rely on touch, on getting ones and twos, whereas this ground is spot on for that. That's where we lost the game."