Faf du Plessis urges his team to take lessons from the defeat

South African captain Faf du Plessis would be a tense man right now. The team is in England for close to 2 months now and this tour has been full of disappointments for the Proteas. First, they lost 3-match ODI series 2-1 to the hosts. After this short ODI series, they played the Champions Trophy. South Africa were hoping to shake off the chokers tag but they even failed to get past the group stage of the tournament.

After that disappointment, they played England again in the 3-match T20 series. England overpowered them again, edging the 3 match series 2-1. Soon after the conclusion of the limited-overs format, South Africa must have been hoping to give a better account of themselves in the longest format of the game. Beating England in England is never easy for any team, so getting off to a good start in the series was important. But the Proteas suffered an early blow, as they were missing their captain Faf du Plessis.

Faf had ruled himself out of the first match of the series at Lord’s, following the birth of his first child. South Africa failed to fight and folded up for only 119 in the fourth innings to lose by 211 runs. Moeen Ali was the destructor in chief, taking 10 wickets in the match which earned him the Man of the Match award.

Faf du Plessis urges team to work on basics

The South African captain will be back for the second game of the series starting on Friday. He said that they must focus on the basics if they want to do better in the next matches.

“This Test match was just a lot of errors, a lot of basic mistakes as a team and that will cost you if you’re playing against a strong team like England.So for me it’s just a pretty straightforward thing to focus on this week, get your basics right” du Plessis said as quoted by the sport star

He further added that South Africa should not let their morale dip after this tough defeat.

“It’s really important after this Test match that you don’t almost fall into the mental hangover of the tour that we’ve had so far, so that will be one of my most important jobs and the senior players this week.Make sure we stay well clear of that and focus on the next Test match.” Faf du Plessis further said.