Mirpur: South Africa captain Faf Du Plessis sportingly admitted defeat hailing Indian team’s superb performance. He even lauded India’s top performers and despite the defeat to his team he feels it was a good game of cricket.
“To chase down a 170 plus total in the last over, that’s a good game of cricket. It was a fantastic knock from Virat (Kohli),” said Du Plessis, who tried his best to by top scoring with a half century.
Lauding Kohli, he said: “We all know how good he is, he’s done it so many times. As a fielding captain or on the bowling side, you always know in the back of your mind that Virat is a real danger, a real threat. So we tried to get him out but tonight he was too good for us, he played a really good knock, paced the innings really well and he saw them home, so we have to give credit to him. He’s a really good batsman and he played some really good shots. He deserves all the credit he gets.”
Talking about his team’s drawback, Du Plessis said: “If you’re looking to win a World Cup it’s really important that you do the small things and the basics well. We gave nine extra balls, not just the extra run but you have to consider the amount of runs that they score from that extra ball. When the pressure is really high, you can almost afford five wides but as soon as it goes to the nine-ten mark you’re under pressure from the word go. Unfortunate it didn’t happen for us today; you can’t blame the ball it was just a little bit of ill-discipline.”
Du Plessis also praised India’s Ravichandran Ashwin who took three wickets. “Ashwin bowled well tonight and he was tough to hit. But he’s a really good bowler and he’s done this so many times in IPL. He has so much variation, he’s a match winner. It’s tough, you have to be at the top of your game to play him when he’s bowling like in this manner,” said Du Plessis, who defend his star bowler Dale Steyn who failed to strike. “It’s hard to expect Dale every time to be a match winner. He’s also human. He’s going to have days when he’s not just cleaning guys up. Dale bowled well tonight, but the batsmen were up to the task and they played him very well. You have to give credit to them. Dale and Imran (Tahir) are our danger men, and India’s batsmen handled them very well. Their batsmen out-skilled us tonight.”
