I don't think there's too much of a lack of a game-plan says stand-in captain Aiden Markram

Aiden Markram and failed to impress in the second One Day International. India outplayed them with ease as the home team was incurred a heavy loss. Aiden Markram’s first ODI as a captain didn’t go as planned as everything went wrong for him. The two wrist spinners ran havoc through the Proteas batting lineup once again.

Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav accounted for eight wickets in total. The former got his first five-wicket haul in the ODIs as the latter yielded three wickets. It looked like the home team was out there without a game plan and the batters were playing just for the sake. Markram, however, defended his batters and said that credit should be given to the Indian spinners.

We didn’t execute our plans – Markram

Aiden Markram said that everybody in the starting eleven had a plan. However, no one could execute them as India were far superior on the given day. He said that nothing has to change drastically, they have the plans in place and they only need to find a better way to execute them. He also added that the pitch cannot be blamed.

“I don’t think there’s too much of a lack of a game-plan. If you speak to each individual in our top six or top seven, each person has got a clear plan. So it obviously comes down to execution on the day. Like I said, they are two quality wrist spinners and we give them credit.

“But I still think we can execute better, and that’s the nice thing. It’s not that something that’s drastic that has to change – the plans are in place, now we’ve just got to keep working hard to execute that’s all,” added Markram while talking to the media.

We had the intent – Dale Benkenstein

The batting coach said that the intent of the batters was there. The only thing that went wrong was that every shot they played in the air went to the fielders. Aiden Markram and Quinton de Kock got out in a similar way. Both of them tried to hoist the ball out of the park but ended up finding the fielder. Coach Benkenstein backed both of them.

He said that he will rather have batters getting out in that fashion rather than being scared to hit. “Today I thought we had the intent. There were few balls where guys were looking to score and hit it to fielders and got out. I’d much rather them playing that way than being too scared to hit the ball,” opined the batting coach.

Dale said that the Indian batters played spin extremely well. He also said that the home team can take a leaf out of their book. “We can learn a lot from the way the Indian batters play spin. Any loose ball that our spinners bowl, they are looking to hit it for four or six,” said Benkenstein.

The South African batting coach is under fire at the moment. However, he said that it will take time to adjust to all the variations and the change-ups the Indian wrist spinners have in place. There is time and it needs to be utilized according to Dale.

“There is a bit of learning to be done there. The other tough thing is you are playing against two wrist spinners that not a lot of players have played against. It does take time to get used to their change-ups and their variations. Unfortunately, we’ve gone straight from a Test series on quite sporty seaming wickets, straight into ODIs and we’ve come up against a huge challenge,” said Dale.