Dav Whatmore: Hats off to South Africa

We have won 76% of our one-day matches in 2000 and it was thus very disappointing to lose two on the trot in South Africa. Preparations had gone well, but when it mattered, we failed to deliver. Hats off to South Africa though, they played superbly, especially in the second one-day international.

The first game was more disappointing because the match could have gone either way. We were in the game right up until Jonty Rhodes and Lance Klusner put on an excellent seventh wicket partnership to guide South Africa home. In the end we were about 15-20 runs short of a winning target.

The batsmen failed to develop partnerships and occupy the crease for sufficient periods of time. Whenever we looked to be getting on top we lost a wicket. The longest partnership in the innings only spanned ten overs. There were two of these, but for the rest of the innings, we lost wickets at regular intervals. This prevented us from building up any real momentum.

Romesh Kaluwitharana and Kumar Sangakkara both batted well and occupied the crease. I was pleased for them but unfortunately we kept losing wickets at the other end.

The total of 220 still gave us a chance because bowling under lights in South Africa provides the bowlers with a little assistance. Their innings progressed in a similar fashion to ours and they too failed to put on any long partnerships until Rhodes and Klusner came together. Nevertheless, on occasions, we didn't bowl as tightly as we needed to. On the positive side the fielding was brilliant.

The next day we headed off to East London determined to level the series. However, the pitch was superb for batting first, we lost the toss and, despite picking up a couple of early wickets, we saw the real strength of the South African batting. They are very difficult to bowl out and when they have wickets in hand, they can really turn it on. It didn't help of course that we dropped McKenzie relatively early on in his innings.

It left us chasing a total in excess of 300, which was always going to be tough. To their credit the South African bowlers didn't give us an inch of width or err length. They really did bowl tightly and it was very difficult for our batsmen to score runs. The run rate soon climbed to over seven runs per over and to get that, someone would have had to play a blinding knock.

We probably needed a quick start from Sanath to give us a realistic chance. If you look at his statistics they are very revealing. When he scores in excess of 40 runs, we win 75% of the games. The manner in which he bats allows us to get on top of the opposition. However, this time round he didn't get going and we struggled accordingly.

In a way we have been lucky in that the focus has now shifted and we can prepare for the test match series that starts on Boxing Day. It's given us a chance to re-group and recuperate.

We won a one-day match against Natal, that gave us an opportunity to give the reserves a run out and, more importantly, got us back to winning ways. We now have to continue that in the three-day game against Natal and in the all-important first test match, which is only days away.