Proteas’ Test captain Temba Bavuma wants his team to be a little more ruthless with the bat in the upcoming second Test against the West Indies.
The second Test gets underway at the Guyana National Stadium on Thursday, and the Proteas will be looking to build on from where they left off at the Queen's Park Oval.
The Proteas batted confidently in the first Test as they put themselves in a positive position in a match that saw seven sessions lost due to the bad weather.
Bavuma, along with Tony de Zorzi and Tristan Stubbs all were among the runs, but neither went on to get triple figures. That is what the skipper wants the team to address in the second Test.
“From a batting point of view, probably the batters being a lot more ruthless. The guys who’ve got the opportunity to get in, to really go on and get a big score for the team,” Bavuma told journalists when asked which areas he wanted to see an improvement in.
“That will give us more time from a bowling point of view. The bowlers did as best as they could considering what was in front of them. It was a miraculous effort from Keshav, basically bowling half the overs of the innings,” he said.
“From the bowling side, there’s not much I could ask the guys. I think it’s more the batting. That’s just a case of not having played a lot of Test cricket of late. I’m confident that us batters, if we get into those positions again, we will be able to go and get a big score for the team.”
After pleasing performances with the bat in the first Test, Bavuma said the confidence within the group was growing, especially as the side is a young, inexperienced one.
“Like I said before the tour, it’s a young, inexperienced side, and I think with that, guys need to see themselves performing well in certain parts of the game and then obviously building from that confidence and those performances.
“If I look at inexperience with the bat, a guy like Tony from the front, him going to get a half century in the first innings and backing it up again in the second innings with a 40-odd score, he’ll take a lot of confidence from that.
“Tristan Stubbs as well with his second innings half century. The way he went about it I think is exciting for us as a team. We obviously know that the more and more he plays, he’ll be able to find that right tempo. He’ll be able to play the way Tristan Stubbs can where he can put bowlers under pressure,” said the skipper.
“Those are the little moments within the game we’d like to take. And as just I said, I think it’s about us building on that and putting it all together, which I believe will make us a formidable team.”
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