Lack Of Experience and Exposure, Behind South Africa’s Defeat: Dean Elgar Opens Up on the Crushing Defeat of Proteas by England in the Recently Concluded Test Series

The South African test captain Dean Elgar opened up on the defeat of Proteas in the recently concluded test series against England. In the three-match fixture, South Africa conquered the first game at Lords but later the English team bounced back in the last two games and clinched the series. The captain Dean Elgar and the coach Mark Boucher manifested the reason of small experience and exposure of the English conditions, behind the defeat of the team.

This reason seems to be true as South African team get a chance to tour England almost once in 4 years. In such a big time period almost half of the playing XIs get altered in the international cricket playing nations. New Zealand and Australia are the only two teams who visit and play in the English conditions very frequently as compared to the other teams of the world.

Dean Elgar is the member of South African test team since 2012 but as a player he didn’t tour the country of England many times. Also, the conditions in South Africa and England are totally opposite to each other. South African pitches used to cater lot of bounce on the surface while English surfaces renowned for the green grass.

All though skilled bowlers like Anrich Nortje and Kagiso Rabada could rattled the opposition, but the lack of exposure proved even dangerous for the batting line-up of Proteas. The veterans like Graeme Smith, Hashim Amla and Ab de Villiers and Lance Klusener scored hundreds of runs on English pitches. But the young and new batting line-up of proteas found it hard to even stayed on the crease for the whole day. All these stuffs were quoted by Dean Elgar in his press conference, and he also explained it in detailed manner.

So, while interacting with the media after the third test match, Dean Elgar said, “I think lack of experience and lack of exposure to Test cricket (played a part), the lack of exposure to UK conditions with the ball swinging and nipping. We were also exposed to the type of batting conditions in this Test, especially where the ball was nipping quite a lot.”

“It was up there with some of the toughest conditions I’ve faced, and I have a relatively decent amount of experience. So, I can only imagine how a guy who only has one or two Tests under his belt must feel. It was tough all around.”

Further he talked about the minimum runs required on the board to win test matches in England, “If you have a look at the last top seven batters that came to England and won the last series, I think between them there were 470-odd Test matches, that’s between the top seven. In this series, 10 of the batters used to bat in the top seven, they’re on 170.”

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