Andrew Strauss disappointed after South Africa loss

Saddened by his team’s terrible defeat at the hands of South Africa in the opening Test, England captain Andrew Strauss has said that he was left with a ‘sour taste in the mouth’.

England, world’s number one Test side, were outclassed by the Proteas in all three departments of the game. Batting first, the Englishmen managed to post 385 runs on the board, courtesy of Alastair Cook’s magnificent century.

Jonathan Trott and Matt Prior scored half-centuries, but failed to get to the three-figure-mark. In reply, the South Africans were excellent with the bat. Despite the fact that they lost opener Alviro Petersen in the third over, there was no pressure on
them.

Hashim Amla was star of the show, as the big man became the first South African to score over-300 runs in an innings. Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis also played well and scored marvellous centuries to steer the side to 637 runs.

Failing to get their act together in the second innings, the Poms collapsed on 240 runs, suffering a bitter defeat by an innings and 12 runs.

A visibly dejected Strauss said, "Most of my regrets are that we did not come out with a draw. We should have done that. Losing four wickets last night was a body blow for us. The South Africans did get it reversing today, and with more wickets in hand,
we could have batted out the day.”

“There are a number of areas where we are frustrated. We did not deal better with those conditions and losing four wickets last night in placid conditions made life difficult for us today. There are regrets there but we will learn the lessons and come back
strong next week."

On the other hand, South Africa’s head coach Gary Kirsten is not ready to be complacent. He explained that there is still a lot of cricket left in the series and the guys have a lot to work on.

“We want to become the best cricket team in the world and we know what we need to do to be able to achieve that. This is just one part of the process. We are 30 per cent of the way through the Test series. There is a lot of work to be done; there is a lot
of focus needed. We literally take each day as it comes," he said after the game.

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Posted by Rana Nasir Ghafoor on Jul 24 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry