South Africa requires improvement

Yesterday, the most experienced South African cricketer-Jacques Kallis asks for some improvement from the South African players who could all do is to take home a consolation win in their recently concluded one day series against India after winning the third and inconsequential match at Ahmedabad by 90 runs. This was against an under powered team India which didn't have the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan, which South Africa made use of to the fullest extent at Ahmedabad. A victory was more than less guaranteed for South Africa than expected. This was without Graeme Smith to head RSA.

However, even though the series against India be sidelined, South Africa have hardly anything to justify by its side in one day cricket. The last time South Africa won a one day series was in January last year against Australia (excluding all the under rated teams like Zimbabwe which is fresher than the one under discussion) . That was also an under rated performance which saw the Proteas gasping for a 3-2 finish in the 5 matches that it played. Prior to that, South Africa had defeated Australia in Australia by a margin 4-1 in the former part of the Commonwealth Bank series.

Since then, South Africa has hardly played any international one day series in 2009. And, whenever South Africa played an international one day series, it was found crashing unpredictably. South Africa couldn't even make it to the semi finals of the ICC Champions Trophy after losing to Sri Lanka and England, at a time when everyone thought it would be South Africa to emerge at the top of it group. South Africa gave no fight to either Sri Lanka or England against which it lost in a one sided manner. All the aforementioned developments happening when South Africa hosted the ICC Champions trophy.

And then, South Africa played their next one day series after the ICC Champions trophy only after a gap of 2 months when it faced England. But, the result was no different for South Africa. For, South Africa yet again lost the five match series to England unexpectedly by a margin 1-2 with the remaining matches being washed out. This was followed by the recently concluded one day series against India, the result of which is needless to be highlighted specially whatsoever. Despite being a strong outfit, South Africa's run in ODI cricket is fairly below par compared to the expectations that it draws from the cricketing world.