Proteas stuck with chokers tag, says Bavuma

As he surveyed the wreckage of the team’s failure to reach the semifinals of the T20 World Cup, Proteas captain Temba Bavuma admitted the burden of expectation will continue to weigh heavily on the team until they win a major tournament.

Sunday's 13-run defeat to the Netherlands brought back talk about the Proteas being chokers as they once again failed to produce the desired result when it mattered the most at an ICC global tournament.

“It will always be there until we find ourselves in a situation where we get to a final and come out on the right side of the result,” Bavuma said when asked about the weight of expectation on the team at big tournaments.

“We have nothing to blame. Everything was in our hands as a team. We had the confidence, we had the belief and I would say we had the form behind us, but when it mattered we couldn’t do the business.”

In the face of huge disappointment, Bavuma said SA will take their lessons and move on.

“I do think there are elements of learning that we can take from it, especially the younger guys like Tristan Stubbs and Marco Jansen, not to make the same mistakes the older guys have made. Unfortunately with the tag [of chokers], we are going to carry that monkey on our back.”

Bavuma said reasons for their shock loss against Netherlands could be varied.

“With a performance like that you can pick at a lot of things. Probably looking at the toss where we elected to bowl first, and obviously when you make a decision like that you expect us to put them under pressure with the ball.

“We didn’t do that, and that didn’t back up the decision to bowl first. But that being said we still had a responsibility with the bat and we couldn’t get any type of momentum or flow to our innings.

“We couldn’t adapt to the slow nature of the wicket. They made use of the dimensions of the field a lot better than we did as they forced us to hit a lot straighter to the longer boundary.

“You can pick at a lot and it is disappointing for all of us but the most disappointing thing is us not being able to go over the line when we needed to.”

Mark Boucher, who is leaving his post to take over as coach of Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League, said despite the disappointment he ticked every box during his tenure.

“It is not great but I can look at my coaching staff and we ticked every single box we needed to tick. Sometimes you are in control of things and sometimes you are not.

“I think the guys were in a very good space, I think we played some good cricket over a long period of time, especially in T20 cricket. We slipped up the other night against Pakistan and we looked a bit flat today [Sunday].  

“It is not that we over-trained. I think our training sessions have been very short because we understand we are playing a lot of cricket, but the energy didn’t seem there [against Netherlands].

“We didn’t bowl and bat like we should have. The total that was put on for us was maybe a bit more than we expected but definitely one our batting unit should have chased down.”