South Africa head coach Rob Walter doesn’t want to spend time debating whether India holds an advantage by being based in Dubai, saying that he would rather focus his energy on his team’s performance in the Champions Trophy. India are playing all their matches in Dubai, and even the semifinal and final will be held there if the team goes the distance, while the rest of the teams have to travel across Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi in Pakistan for their matches. “If we spend our energy worrying about a disadvantage, we spend less energy thinking about ourselves and what we need to be doing,” Walter said on the eve of South Africa’s final group game against England.
“The scheduling is the scheduling. India obviously have been in Dubai in the same venue, in the same place, and other teams haven’t. Whether that turns out to be an advantage or not will remain to be seen.” South Africa, who sit on the top of Group B, are in a three-way battle alongside Afghanistan and Australia to qualify for the semifinals.
“We have to concentrate on spending all our energy thinking about how we’re going to get through our next step which is England and then wherever that takes us from there.” The Temba Bavuma-led side competed in a Tri-series in Paksitan alonside the hosts and New Zealand. It lost both the games but Walter was quick to point put that the Proteas were without most of their first team players in the fixture.
“I think any experience in the sub-continent is valuable. The Tri-series was valuable for us, albeit that there was a large portion of the squad that wasn’t there, but they have been to Pakistan before.
“Certainly, would have loved to have had one more game in that final, just to sort of tick it all off. But as we’ve learned with cricket, conditions change all the time. There’s no one way, and there’s no one condition. It’s really about being adaptable.” Heinrich Klaasen has recovered from the elbow injury that sidelined him for the opener, and Walter believes the destructive batter is a”piece of the puzzle”.
“He’s a super player isn’t he? And I think that you probably notice his strength also based on who the guys are around him that allow him to play that way.
“He’s got a skillset at the moment that is right up there with the world’s best, I think we all agree with that. And it’s great to have him in your team because you know how destructive he can be.
“But I know that the way he plays and the destructive nature of his game is also based on the confidence of the people around him and the way that they play.
“And so, the whole piece of the puzzle is important in allowing him and freeing him up to play the best version of his game and be his best version. We are certainly hoping for a number of those knocks in the next 10 days or so,” he added.
South Africa are set to host the ODI World Cup in 2027 and Walter said the team management has been working on blooding the new talent.
“In terms of our young talent, we’ve kind of been working on that for two years already. And we’ll continue to do. We have been very outspoken about developing the breadth of our talent and exposing our younger talent to international quality experience.” He stressed the need to be adaptable.
“It takes a while to gain experience, but also we don’t want to just lean on that and think that that’s the only thing. Building our skillsets in different conditions is important, but you only get to do that if you expose those players in different countries against different oppositions, in different contexts.
“Trying to get all of that right but still remain a winning team is the juggling act and we potentially haven’t got it right in the lead up to this tournament, but we’re certainly chipping away and doing our very best to make sure that we’ve got a wider group of players.
“We understand retirements, we understand league commitments and the lure of league money, we understand all of that, and managing our players well. So, we’re working hard and getting all those things right,” he added. PTI APA AT AT AT
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