England’s bowlers had no answer to the South Africa onslaught © Getty Images
Eoin Morgan said England had to learn quickly from their mistakes ahead of the World T20 as they ended their tour of South Africa with a fifth successive limited-overs defeat.
England slumped from a promising position to be bowled out for 171 in Johannesburg, losing their last seven wickets for 14 runs in 20 deliveries. South Africa then blasted their way to a nine-wicket win with more than five overs to spare, with Morgan calling the bowling performance their “worst on tour”.
Having won their previous six T20s before the series with South Africa, Morgan said the team knew there would be days when things didn’t come together but back-to-back defeats would not be cause for panic.
“I don’t think it’s a huge setback,” Morgan said. “I think the mistakes we made today were pretty simple, as towards the end of the one-day series and the first Twenty20 – they all had to do with the basics of the game.
“The collapse towards the end of our innings, we had the right plan, but our execution was pretty poor.
“The bowling started poorly again, and we couldn’t claw it back. The bowling display, certainly at the start, has been our worst on the tour.”
England had made a change to their line-up after a last-ball defeat in Cape Town on Friday, bringing in Sam Billings to bolster the batting, but their three-man seam attack could do little to slow South Africa as AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla put on 125 for the first wicket, including 88 off the six-over Powerplay.
“Once you allow guys like AB de Villiers to come in and take the game to you … he can really punish you – and he did,” Morgan said.
“We’ve been quite lucky with this team. We’ve had very few setbacks, and knew we would have them at some stage. It’s more important that we regroup, and learn from this as much as we can. The first point of reference is our basics … they have let us down.”
Defeat meant England conceded both limited-overs series to South Africa, having led 2-0 in the ODIs with three to play.
“The majority of me feels we didn’t deserve to win,” Morgan said, “we haven’t really taken our chance to hurt the opposition in either the one-dayers or Twenty20s.”
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo