However, the pinnacle coach cautions towards knee-jerk reactions following the 1-Three T20I series defeat towards Pakistan
Head coach Mark Boucher has accepted “a massive amount of responsibility,” for South Africa dropping eight out of their 11 series in his time in cost to date however believes the nationwide males’s workforce is “on the right path.”
Speaking after their 1-Three defeat to Pakistan in the lately concluded T20I series, their second towards this opposition in this format this yr, Boucher cautioned towards knee-jerk reactions to South Africa’s poor type, which has seen them win just one trophy out of a attainable six this summer time.
“I take a massive amount of responsibility and I should. I don’t shy away from it,” Boucher mentioned. “I am hurt, I am extremely hurt at the moment, as is the rest of the management and coaching staff. We put a lot of hard work and effort into this. But there’s no panic from me yet because I do understand that we have been given some trying circumstances over the last period of time and we will continue to put in hard work.”
South Africa have been with no core group of gamers for each T20I series towards Pakistan for causes past Boucher or anybody else in the help workers’s management. In Pakistan, South Africa needed to ship dwelling members of their Test squad earlier than the T20Is in anticipation of dwelling Tests towards Australia, which didn’t occur. Then, towards Pakistan at dwelling, South Africa have been with out 5 gamers who departed for the IPL, primarily based on an settlement between CSA and the BCCI, and captain Temba Bavuma missed your entire series with a hamstring harm. “I am not going to make excuses,” Boucher mentioned. “We’ve still got to try and win with whichever players we put on the park but it has been tough.”
Despite that, Boucher was capable of see a silver lining. “There have been a lot of positives. With the opportunities that have been given, a couple of guys have come through with flying colours,” he mentioned. “It’s given us a better view of what our depth is like, so I’ve got a fair idea of a larger squad we can look at.”
Now, Boucher hopes to make use of the winter – which is able to embrace a yet-to-be-confirmed tour to the West Indies consisting of two Tests and 5 T20Is (rescheduled from last yr), a white-ball go to to Ireland and a attainable journey to Sri Lanka forward of the T20 World Cup – to distill the larger group into its strongest parts with a concentrate on main tournaments.
“We have to get our squad back together, get all of our players fit and available to play. We always earmarked the West Indian trip as being when our full squad needs to be together,” Boucher mentioned. “Going forward now we need to start looking at the World Cups and start building on a formula we want to play. It’s a matter of getting all the guys together and getting them used to each other and hopefully used to winning a couple of games together.”
He acknowledged that South Africa’s outcomes haven’t been ok: “I am a guy who wants to win and we haven’t won series which is frustrating for me, the coaching staff and no doubt the public,” he mentioned.
Asked if he feels strain from the mounting scrutiny of his time in cost, which now stands at 18 months with greater than two years nonetheless to go, Boucher mentioned he trusts in the plans he has put in place.
“We’ve stuck to our guns with what we believe is the right way to go about the set-up. We’ve spoken to the players. The players were the ones who originally actually came up with the way that they want to play which is a very nice position for us to be in and we are just going to try and guide them in that direction,” he mentioned. “As I said from the start, there’s a lot of hard work to be done and we are still working very hard in all aspects of our game as well. The pressure is going to be there no matter what. When you get to this level in international sport, you must expect the pressure. If you can’t handle it, then you need to get out of the kitchen. We understand that the public wants to win. We are sticking to our guns.”
For now, that implies that South Africa aren’t seeing the following two months as an off season, however a interval in which they should correctly put together themselves for the challenges of the season to come back. “I don’t see this little break that we have as any sort of off season. It’s another opportunity for us to get stuck in and really upskill ourselves and get to where we need to be,” Boucher mentioned.
Firdose Moonda is ESPNcricinfo’s South Africa correspondent