Aiden Markram: Proteas tried their ‘absolute best’

Youthful Proteas skipper Aiden Markram admitted on Friday night after his team had been hammered 5-1 by India in the ODI series that the captaincy had probably taken him out of “the zone” in terms of his batting.

The 23-year-old Markram was handed the captaincy in just his third ODI, against the toughest opposition in the world and without the luxury of several senior players who were out injured. While there was little more he could have done as skipper, Markram did not have the impact he would have liked with the bat, scoring just 127 runs in the six-match series.

“I probably didn’t play my usual game, I was probably not quite in the zone and worrying about other things as captain. It was obviously tough, but it was always going to be and I looked forward to the challenge and I did still enjoy it. I learnt a lot, which is not a bad thing at this stage of my career.

“I will take the lessons from it if I ever captain again, but it grew me as a player, dealing with all sorts of pressures. As captain you can only control so much and you still have to look after your own game, make sure you’re not having thoughts of the captaincy while you’re batting,” Markram said after the eight-wicket hiding in the final ODI at Centurion on Friday night.

While admitting that the 5-1 series result was an ugly one from a South African perspective, Markram did not feel his team needed to be embarrassed.

“I think ‘embarrass’ is quite a harsh word. Obviously we’re really disappointed but we put in a lot of hard work and we gave our absolute best. India played incredibly good cricket and they just outplayed us. It’s obviously a step back for us but rather it happen now than two or three months before the World Cup.

“It’s crucial that we learn from our mistakes. As a batting unit, we didn’t structure our innings well and our confidence has definitely taken a knock. But there were a lot of lessons taught by how India constructed their game, having one of their top three always in at the 40^th over for instance, and we can learn a lot from the Indian team as a whole.

“They also bowled very well in the middle overs, they controlled those, and were able to strike up front. I’m happy it’s happened this way, we have lots of points to learn from, we will work harder and it will make the victories much sweeter. There’s an exciting 18 months coming up before we get to the UK, and the guys will be very hungry,” Markram promised.

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