Faf du Plessis Calls for Team Revamp After Dismal Show in ICC Cricket World Cup 2019

The South Africa cricket team has endured a miserable ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 campaign. What also did not help matters was the issue of former batsman, AB de Villiers begging to return to the side. However, they may need to take him up on his offer, given their poor performance of late.

To turn their fortunes around in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, South Africa skipper, Faf du Plessis believes that a complete team structure overhaul is needed. His comments come on the back of a four-wicket defeat against New Zealand at Edgbaston. As a result, the team is now on the precipice of elimination.

This will most likely be the last World Cup for a number of senior players including Du Plessis himself. In light of this, the 34-year old realised that CSA selectors will be in a tough spot regarding the future.

Speaking on the issue, du Plessis said, “I think that will happen naturally with quite a few guys at the end of their careers. So you’re probably getting three or four guys getting away from that. And then you will. You know, depending on cricket South Africa, I feel in terms of what they believe is a good way forward, they might want a complete change,”.

“For me, it’s just finding – we’ve got some young players, so there’s a future there. The young guys, I’ve really backed them this tournament. I think they’ve got a great future ahead of them,” he said.

“What will naturally happen is you’ll probably lose six or seven players after this tournament. Whether you want to change more than that, no, I don’t think you need to do more than that.”

Since their World Cup debut, South Africa always looked like contenders, only to choke towards the end. In fact, in the last three editions of the World Cup, the Kiwis always had the measure of the Proteas. In the wake of their latest loss in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, Du Plessis felt a sense of deja vu. To be precise, it was almost similar to the scene in 2015 at Auckland, when South Africa lost to the Kiwis in the semifinal.

“Very disappointed. You know, it almost feels like fours years ago against New Zealand again, where we actually played a good game of cricket. I can’t fault the game that we played today. We threw everything at New Zealand.

“We’ve been saying, and we’ve been hard on ourselves in that as well. We need guys to stand up and put in performances that will win you games. That has been where we’ve been short in the innings we’ve played so far,” he said.

Talking about what went wrong for the side, the skipper said: “The wicket wasn’t as flat as you would have thought it would be. Those first 15 overs felt exactly like Auckland. The ball was hooping around corners there.

“So we felt like we did the whole work, and we thought it would be easy, but they kept getting a wicket every time there was a 50 partnership, 60 partnership, and you need that to go to 100, and you need one guy to bat through the innings.”