Bavuma admits SA panicked, but delighted with win

Temba Bavuma. Pic/PTI

South Africa captain Temba Bavuma admitted on Friday night that despite some good batting exploits, his team lost control of the match against 1992 champions Pakistan who all but overcame the Proteas.

For South Africa, No.9 Keshav Maharaj (7 not out off 21 balls) and No.11 Tabraiz Shamsi (4 not out off 6 balls) proved to be excellent crisis men and secured a thrilling one-wicket victory at the MA Chidambaram Stadium.

"Yeah, I think that's the word there… control. We didn't show that control. I think I've said this probably 50 times.

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"We've spoken about our brand of cricket being positive but I think probably in situations like that, there is room for us to maybe be a bit more calculative, maybe identify where the risks are and how we can have low risk options in terms of coming up against whatever the challenges are," Bavuma said during the post-match press conference on Friday night. SA were chasing Pakistan's 270.When asked about the collapse, Bavuma said: "We lost those early wickets with Quinton and myself. A partnership started to form between Rassie and Aiden. I guess those partnerships just weren't long enough for them to be a clinical performance.

"And then obviously at the end, that's where I guess the panic, I would say kind of set in. I haven't chatted to the guys yet, so I can't say what they were thinking at that point in time." With five wins from six games, SA are leading the points table with a better net run-rate of 2.032. But Bavuma reckoned that they haven't played their best game so far.

The SA skipper said, "I think as much as we've played well, we recognise that there are areas that we can improve within our batting, like we've spoken about in terms of chasing, probably within the bowling as well.

"I think the bowling was a lot more clinical when it came to the death phase. So, I think there's improvement that we're making. We haven't played our best game of cricket yet."