Confident Australia meet shaky South Africa

Colombo: Australia, riding on the confidence from their morale-boosting win over India, meet South Africa in Sunday’s first World Twenty20 Super Eights match at the Premadasa Stadium here.

Confident Australia captain George Bailey is already getting ready to seal a slot in the semi-final. When asked whether their huge victory over India had sent a warning to all the other teams, Bailey said: “I am not sure if it will send tremors through the rest of the field but it was a great win. It puts South Africa under pressure because they know that they need to win their next games. We now have that buffer. But having said that, I don’t think we will get any easy game in this competition.”

South African skipper AB De Villiers admitted that his team are under pressure following their narrow defeat to Pakistan. “We are under big pressure now. We have to now win both to go through,” he said.

“The positive thing about the Pakistan game was that we were not 100 per cent — we were well below par and we still competed. I am very proud of the way the boys fought back after the first 10 overs with bat in hand. People tend to forget that we actually fought well ourselves to get us into a winning position.

“It’s very easy to look at the one or two overs that we lost the game with ball in hand, but we played unbelievable cricket to get there. I am proud of the way we fought and I think we stand a really good chance of playing good cricket again in the next two matches. We can only go up from here.”

Australia want to guard against the repetition of any thrashing like they received at the hands of the West Indies in the league round of matches. “The pleasing thing for us is that we continue to improve on our first two games and particularly some of the things that came out of that West Indies game. For us to nail the things that we talked about, particularly in our bowling performance, that was the most pleasing thing. If we keep continuing to play as consistently as we have done, I can see that making it hard for other teams,” said Bailey.

For De Villiers it is not a matter of consistency, but a mental block that his players have to overcome to win big tournaments and close contests. The South Africa team have repeatedly been called ‘chokers’ and, referring to the narrow defeat to Pakistan, he said: “I am very proud of the way we played. A lot of people will say we choked again, but I thought we played good cricket out there. We held our heads high when we walked off the field because of the way we played. We will come back in the next two games and, if we play better cricket in both of them, we will go through to the semi-finals. There won’t be any choking there, that’s for sure.”

Bailey is once again hoping for his star all-rounder Shane Watson will come good. “Watson has been outstanding, that’s a no-brainer. Whether he can continue to play like that, I don’t know. The way he prepares, there is no reason why he wouldn’t produce another top performance. I know he has really set himself to be the man of the tournament.”