Focus on playing better cricket

5 Mar 2009

Proteas' captain Graeme Smith said his squad would be focusing on playing good cricket rather than thinking about being 1-0 down in the series when the second Castle Test starts at Sahara Stadium Kingsmead on Friday.

“We are not looking at the outcome from a position of being 1-0 down,” commented Smith at a media briefing on Thursday. “We want to focus on playing better cricket and improving the little things that we did wrong. We didn't start well in the last game and we obviously want to improve that. We definitely want to be more precise to the point than we were in Johannesburg. At the end of the day the focus will be on cricket again.

“We just want to play to our potential as we have done over the last period of time. We never did that in Johannesburg. Sydney was a different situation and it seems a long time ago now,” he said when asked whether the Australians had gained the momentum after successive victories in Sydney and Johannesburg.

“We had an open-hearted chat when we sat together,” he said. “We were pretty honest about things, about where we were and what we wanted to achieve. The group has come a long way in terms of maturity and honesty, in terms of where we know we are capable of playing and of our potential.

“We weren't satisfied with the way we played in Johannesburg and we don't need anybody to tell us that. We know ourselves that we need to raise the bar and we are looking to do that in Durban.”

Smith added that the team could take a lot of encouragement after the way they fought back in the second half of the Johannesburg match. “We managed to put them under pressure and finish the game quite strongly. The trouble was that we started the match badly and let them get too many runs in the first innings when a par score was 250 to 300.

“It is going to be vital that we start strongly in Durban and put them under pressure from the very first ball. We did apply pressure on their newcomers but we didn't do it consistently and that is an area that has been addressed.”

Smith said that the playing XI would only be finalised on Friday morning but that the Proteas were likely to stick with the team that played in Johannesburg.

The ICC has announced that the hot spot technology will be available for the remainder of the Castle Test series. This is as a result of the producers managing to make two extra hot spot devices available. There wasn't hot spot equipment available for use in the first Test.