SA vs IND 2018: Kagiso Rabada Still Upbeat for a South Africa Comeback

Hosts South Africa had struggled to cope with the Indian wrist spinners and hence are trailing the six-match series by a 0-2 margin and face the prospect of losing there first ever bilateral series against India at home.

They surely need to pull their socks up to harbour any hopes of making a comeback in the series. To add to their woes, they have been severely pegged with injuries which have ruled out skipper Faf du Plessis and Quinton de Kock from rest of the series.

South Africa’s problems seem to be piling. However pacer Kagiso Rabada is still upbeat and not panicking yet. He hardly gets flattered, and it was evident from how he spoke ahead of the 3^rd ODI at the Newlands in Cape Town.

“There are a few problems. I wouldn’t say there’s a lot,” he said. “Sometimes when you do badly it seems like there’s a lot more going wrong than what really is happening. Failure is going to happen. It’s going to happen again.”

South Africa held an optional training session where they tried batting against many wrist spinners to counter the lethal spin threat from the visitors. 13 wickets have been picked by Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav in the first two matches which proved their dominance against their batters.

The hosts meanwhile also held lengthy discussions to plan well ahead of a must-win encounter.

Rabada feels the team must take the challenge in their stride despite losing the first two matches.

“When you’re losing it’s tough to find an answer. There are so many answers that you can throw out there,” he said. “You need to speak the right language in your mind, be really strong mentally, and all you can do is strive to perfect your skills on the pitch. The most important thing is for us to stay positive and try not to seek too many answers. When you’re winning, you don’t ask yourself too many questions. We need to stay positive and try to change the momentum.”

The Proteas can take heart from the fact that a couple of years ago they lost the first two ODI’s against England but came back strongly to win the series by winning the last three games.

“In an ideal world, to get close to the perfect game, you need a lot of people score runs, or a lot of people take wickets. Or you need individual brilliance. We’ll take either. We know cricket is a game of ups and downs. We need to go back, see where we’re going wrong, calm down and do our business on the field,” he said.

Rabada also conceded the fact it’s not acceptable the Proteas have been outplayed in all three departments of the game in both the matches.

“We clearly haven’t come to the party. It’s not acceptable at all,” said Rabada. “But India are a strong team. They’ve just beaten Australia comprehensively. I know they’ve been playing all their games at home, but they’ve been playing good cricket. They reached the final of the Champions Trophy, so they’ve had a good foundation for quite a while. It doesn’t help that we have been going through a few changes and not been in the best form since the Champions Trophy in one-day cricket. We are still trying to catch up at the moment. Hopefully, it comes pretty soon.”

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