With the World Cup scheduled to start in just 2 days’ time, South Africa has some pressing and grave issues to resolve.
Overcoming two injury layoffs of Anrich Nortje and Sisanda Magala, they have replaced them with Andile Phehlukwayo and Lizaad Williams.
No doubt both players are highly talented, it will be interesting to see how the Proteas will use them.
Now, former South Africa skipper, Graeme Smith has come forward to speak up on these issues and says that the Proteas will have to iron out all of these to ensure they win the tournament.
He believes even if six to seven South African players stand up for their team, it will be enough.
Talking about Quinton de Kock, Smith stated that he is a brilliant player for South Africa and will have to continue the same form that he did in the warm-up game against New Zealand.
In the recent warm-up game against the Blackcaps, de Kock made a good 84 runs.
Says Smith on South Africa’s batting lineup,
If South Africa need to be successful, they would need their 6-7 big players to really have a great World Cup. If you look at top-order you have Quinton, Temba and in that middle-order, really you have really good players of spin, power players like David Miller, Heinrich Klaasen and Aiden Markram that’s going to be key area for South Africa if they are going to be successful.
Smith shows concern for South Africa lacking an allrounder at No.7
However, what Smith is most concerned about is the absence of a genuine allrounder in the Proteas squad.
He feels that there should be someone at No.7 who can provide them with both bat and ball.
Once South Africa had the likes of Lance Klusener, Jacques Kallis, and Shaun Pollock as their genuine all-rounders.
Concluding, Smith says,
Where they fall short is, they don’t have a lot of depth in batting like some of the other teams have. Who is going to that allrounder for them at No.7? Marco Jansen or someone else.
South Africa will begin their World Cup campaign against Sri Lanka at Delhi on the 7th of October.
Therefore, these issues will have to be sorted out at the earliest so that they can call themselves a contender.
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