CSA chief executive officer Thabang Moroe has questioned the Proteas’ ability to perform under pressure.

At the KFC Mini-Cricket National Seminar in George, the CEO addressed an array of issues with South African cricket as well as underlying reasons as to why the Proteas under performed at the World Cup. 

The Proteas won just two matches at the Global showpiece in what was quite an embarrassing turnout. There was also a lack of top-quality batting performances which saw none of the Proteas’ batsmen pass the century mark. 

Five-for’s from their bowlers were also not achieved, as well as, uncharacteristically, some poor fielding from some of their senior players.

All-in-all, it saw the Proteas eliminated from the tournament with two games still left to play. 

Moroe was honest in his evaluation of the Proteas’ shortcomings.

“I think it’s a systematic thing and it’s not necessarily a psychological thing for cricketers. I think for me is how do we tweak one or two things in our system to make sure that we breed strong tough-minded cricketers,” Moroe suggested.

“We’ve had individuals who don’t get picked in a team and instead of giving themselves one more season… or putting the numbers in asked by the selectors or coach… they’ll rather go Kolpak.

“It’s just needing to find a way of tweaking the system and breeding strong cricketers.

“If you look at a team like Australia… after the saga that they had to go through in Cape Town… the team was down and out for a couple of months but if you look at them today it doesn’t look the same team and it’s mentally because Australians are tough.

“You see it with David Warner and Steve Smith walking in to bat, being booed every day and every day they are putting up their hands saying, ‘We don’t care’.

“If I didn’t feel disappointment I wouldn’t be patriotic. We are disappointed, we were hoping for far better results but things didn’t go our way. The guys tried as hard as they could to string up a few performances. 

“It was frustrating witnessing the body language of our team and how we managed to get some of the simplest things wrong but having said that we just need to find better ways of dealing with pressure.”

Photo: Cricket South Africa/Twitter