South Africa head coach Shukri Conrad wasn't the happiest and how would he be right after his side suffered the heaviest defeat in ODI history, by 342 runs against England in Southampton on Sunday, September 8. Thankfully, it was the series finale and the Proteas had already sealed the assignment but it's two series in a row now that the visitors have won the first two games, pocketed the series, and all hell broke loose in the final games with Australia amassing 431 a couple of weeks ago while England posted a huge number of 414.
However, chasing it, the Proteas' bags were packed for just 72, their second-lowest ODI score ever and Conrad reckoned that the defeat was indeed "slightly embarrassing."
"Any excuse is better than none. We were definitely off today. And against a top side like England, when you're not on top of your game, you do get exposed," Conrad said at the post-match conference in Southampton. "A similar thing happened in Australia, where after going 2-0 up, it was a complete aberration. They got in excess of 400 as well," Conrad added but did note the fact that both times such performances came in dead-rubber games, which was the only solace he could take from the result.
"But if we were going to be poor at something, we'd rather be poor at games that aren't clutch games. We're not making light of today's defeat. That was slightly embarrassing," he added while suggesting that complacency may have crept up since the series was done.
The focus will now shift to T20Is for both teams and the likes of Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen will return for the Proteas, strengthening the bowling resources. Conrad mentioned that Rabada was touch-and-go for the series finale but winning the series at Lord's itself helped them to delay his return, straight into the T20Is, with the shortest international format being the priority now, with the World Cup six months away.
"The T20 is the priority for us. When we earned the right to give him another rest, we definitely exercised that because with the T20 World Cup looming, we want to make sure that we get a good take on that. We've obviously got two massive Test series [against Pakistan and India] coming up," Conrad mentioned.
