Proteas ‘rejuvenated’ and ready to fire against England, says Maharaj

Though he admits they felt gutted after a surprise defeat to the Netherlands earlier this week, spin bowler Keshav Maharaj says the Proteas have collected themselves and are ready to face England in a key fixture on Saturday at the Cricket World Cup.

Having been handed their first loss of the tournament, Maharaj said yesterday they were confident of regaining their momentum against the defending champions in Mumbai.

“After the (Netherlands) game the boys were hurting, but it’s part and parcel of being a professional sportsman. I think we woke up the next morning and the guys were rejuvenated and ready to go again,” said Maharaj, who scored a career-high 40 runs with the bat and took his fifth wicket of the tournament against the Dutch side.

“It’s a massive game for us against England, so the boys are ready to hit the ground running.”

Turning the ship around

The experienced spinner claimed they had not taken a mental knock after losing to the Netherlands (ranked 14th in the world), insisting it had done little to dampen the SA team’s title hopes.

“You’ve got the strongest 10 teams in the world playing in this event and you can’t really deem a team to be a ‘lower’ team,” Maharaj said.

“Any loss in the World Cup does hurt significantly, but as professional athletes we’ve got to dust ourselves off and realise the next day the sun is going to come up.

“We’ve got to stick to our processes and discipline, be true to our team culture and make sure we turn the ship around.”

Still on track

After losing to the Netherlands at last year’s T20 World Cup, the Proteas crashed out of the tournament.

At the 50-over showpiece in India, however, they had six games left in the round robin stage and remained on track for a spot in the playoffs.

Maharaj said they hoped to make amends for their shock loss by recovering against England, who were also handed a surprise defeat by Afghanistan earlier in the tournament.

“The last time we lost to Netherlands it knocked us out of a World Cup,” Maharaj said, “but this presents us with another opportunity to try and rectify that and hopefully get back to winning ways this weekend.”