South Africa had lost eight of their 11 series across all forms of the game ever since Mark Boucher’s appointment as the head coach in December 2019. No wonder, his coaching prowess was under the scanner for some time.
On Saturday (July 3), the Proteas defeated West Indies in the series-deciding fifth T20I at Grenada to clinch the series 3-2. It was preceded by a 2-0 win in the Test series at St Lucia last month.
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Despite the impressive result in the Caribbean tour, Boucher is still receiving criticism regarding the team's batting performances. However, he is not too concerned as it is a part of his job.
"Criticism comes with the job," Boucher told a media conference on Saturday. "I couldn't be too bothered about the guys criticising me. If you're here and you see what we're trying to do and how we're trying to work things out, I don't know if you would have the same mindset."
"A lot of people wrote us off before we even started playing this series," he said. "As much as you can talk to players, they've got to go out there and produce a result. After the first game - when we didn't play well - we learnt a couple of lessons. We put that into practice and we won the next two. We didn't play well in the previous game and we had a really solid game today. We've got a team that, if we rock up on the day, we could possibly beat anyone."
Boucher pointed out the positives from the series and also acknowledged that there is still room for improvement.
"If you're winning series against a strong team with a couple of guys out of form then you must be doing something right," Boucher said. "I think we were very smart in difficult conditions. The West Indies were playing their brand of cricket and we were playing our brand of cricket, and the guys bought into that. You've got to try and find a way to win and that's exactly what we did. We need to get some guys in form so we can finish off innings better, but there are so many positives."
With the COVID-19 situation forcing the ICC to shift the T20 World Cup 2021 from India to UAE, Boucher believes playing on dry pitches in the Caribbean will help his team in the showpiece tournament.
"We're probably going to playing in conditions like this in the UAE," Boucher said. "The wickets, after the IPL, are going to be dry. We took a lot of lessons out of how to play in these conditions. You've got to be skilful and you've got to be smart."
"If anything, conditions are going to go further towards the extremes of what we would have had in the subcontinent. They're playing the IPL there and there aren't a lot of grounds. So those wickets are going to be worn, and the scores are going to go down. It's going to be tough to bat, especially at the end of the innings. The IPL will give us an idea of what sort of scores we will see and which combinations work."
(Inputs from Cricbuzz)
