NEWS
Follow UsSince Mark Boucher took over as the head coach in December 2019, South Africa had lost eight of their 11 series across all formats. On Saturday, the Proteas overcame West Indies 3-2 to win the T20I series in the Caribbean, but there is still criticism regarding the team's batting performances.
However, Boucher is not bothered by his unrelenting detractors as it is a part of his job.
"Criticism comes with the job," Boucher told a press conference on Saturday. "I couldn't be too bothered about the guys criticising me. If you're here and you see what we're trying to do and how we're trying to work things out, I don't know if you would have the same mindset."
"A lot of people wrote us off before we even started playing this series," the wicketkeeping great said. "As much as you can talk to players, they've got to go out there and produce a result. After the first game - when we didn't play well - we learnt a couple of lessons. We put that into practice and we won the next two. We didn't play well in the previous game and we had a really solid game today. We've got a team that, if we rock up on the day, we could possibly beat anyone."
South Africa won the Test series 2-0 comfortably, but they had to put on a tough fight in the T20Is. Boucher pointed out the positives from the series while admitting there is still room for improvement.
"If you're winning series against a strong team with a couple of guys out of form then you must be doing something right," Boucher said. "I think we were very smart in difficult conditions. The West Indies were playing their brand of cricket and we were playing our brand of cricket, and the guys bought into that. You've got to try and find a way to win and that's exactly what we did. We need to get some guys in form so we can finish off innings better, but there are so many positives."
The 44-year old also felt playing on dry pitches in the Caribbean will help his team in the upcoming T20 World Cup in the UAE, where conditions could be similar.
"We're probably going to playing in conditions like this in the UAE," Boucher said. "The wickets, after the IPL, are going to be dry. We took a lot of lessons out of how to play in these conditions. You've got to be skilful and you've got to be smart."
"If anything, conditions are going to go further towards the extremes of what we would have had in the subcontinent. They're playing the IPL there and there aren't a lot of grounds. So those wickets are going to be worn, and the scores are going to go down. It's going to be tough to bat, especially at the end of the innings. The IPL will give us an idea of what sort of scores we will see and which combinations work."
