“When you are playing at home, you must play to your strengths,” SA coach said.
Ottis Gibson (photo:twitter)
Coach Ottis Gibson is quite pleased with four pacers in the South African squad against India and has hinted that the Proteas are going to follow the same strategy in the upcoming Test. The second Test is going to be held at SuperSport Park in Centurion from 13 January.
In the opening Test match of three-match series between India and South Africa, the hosts won the match by 72 runs. In the first Test, Faf du Plessis had added four pacers in his team and now the South African coach hinted that the team composition will not change in the upcoming matches.
“I’m a very fast-bowling minded coach and I guess we will always have to find a balance to see if we can get four fast bowlers in the team, first of all,” Gibson was quoted as saying by Espncricinfo.
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“We’ll look at things like the conditions suited to four fast bowlers. If not, we try and shape the team in other ways.”
“Ultimately, especially in this series and for the rest of the summer, we will be looking to see how best we can fit four fast bowlers into whatever formula we come up with,” he added.
In the Newlands Test, Proteas had opted for their strongest pacers– Dale Steyn, Kagiso Rabada, Vernon Philander and Morne Morkel and had managed to bowled visitors out for the scores of 209 and 135.
After returning from an absence of 14 months, Dale Steyn was again injured in the first Test and has been ruled out of the remaining series.
On Tuesday, South Africa announced the addition of rookie pacers Duanne Olivier, Lungi Ngidi in their squad.
“When you are playing at home, you must play to your strengths,” Proteas coach said.
“If you want to beat the best team in the world, which India are, then maybe we have to do something slightly different to what we’ve done in the past.”
“We have to get stuck in and be tough with the bat and the ball; get in their faces a bit and use our physicality in terms of our pace.”
“We had, in this game, three guys bowling over 140 (kph) so we need to use that and have a presence that says we are trying to get to where you are as a team,” he concluded.
-With IANS inputs
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