Gibson urges South Africa to learn from England blueprint for next World Cup

• The Proteas finished their tournament on a high by beating Australia at Old Trafford
• Head coach Ottis Gibson believes the future is bright for South Africa in one-day cricket

South Africa should use the disappointment of their ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019 campaign as motivation to turn their ODI strategy around, according to coach Ottis Gibson.

The Proteas defeated Australia in their final game of the tournament to finish seventh in the standings after the round-robin stage, with three wins from their nine matches.

And they need look no further than the country they are leaving for an example of how it can be done, with Gibson highlighting semi-finalists England as a blueprint for South Africa to follow.

“I worked with England after the last World Cup. It didn’t go right for them and they decided that they needed to change,” Gibson said.

“Trevor Bayliss came in in 2015 and he had from 2015 until now to build the team. Over the course of those four years, you’ve seen what he has done for the team.”

England crashed out of the 2015 World Cup in the group stage and used the four years after that to build a team that entered this year’s tournament as the world’s top-ranked ODI side.

Gibson worked with England for some of that time, as their bowling coach between March 2015 and September 2017, before he joined South Africa as head coach.
He only had 18 months to implement a philosophy that South Africa could apply at this tournament and believes he was working against the clock to embed the right mindset.

“We tried the whole positive and aggressive brand of cricket but you need time,” he said.

“When we try to play this positive and aggressive brand of cricket, sometimes it’s not going to work but you need time for that to bed in, for people to understand what it is that you are trying to get across and for people to understand their roles.

“You also need players to be confident to take on the risks that you see England playing with.”

Like Bayliss, Gibson aimed to encourage South Africa to play fearlessly and put aside the pressure that comes with never having won the World Cup. But that plan backfired.

South Africa lost their opening three games before their rain-affected match against West Indies was abandoned, leaving them needing to win their remaining five fixtures.

They beat Afghanistan to stay in the running for a place in the top four but further defeats to New Zealand and Pakistan eliminated them before their final two matches.

And Gibson identified the Pakistan match, which ended in a 49-run defeat at Lord’s, as the lowest point of the campaign after it confirmed South Africa’s exit from the tournament.

“When we played against Pakistan we still had an opportunity to keep ourselves in the tournament,” he said. “That game was the biggest disappointment in the whole thing because we had a chance to save ourselves and we didn’t do that on that day.”

South Africa went on to beat Sri Lanka and Australia to end the tournament on a morale-boosting high, though it was too late to turn things around.

“The losses in the first week really set us back confidence-wise,” he said. “Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we’ve gained a lot more confidence.

“We always said you don’t necessarily want to be playing your best cricket in the first week but if you’re playing your best cricket in the last week then you still have a chance but we didn’t give ourselves a chance.”

This is only the second time in eight World Cups that South Africa have been eliminated before the knockout rounds, with their previous failure coming in 2003 when they hosted the tournament.

On that occasion, South Africa were tripped up by Sri Lanka in their final match and subsequently took the radical step of appointing a 22-year-old Graeme Smith as their captain.

This time, there is talk of wholesale changes both tactically and across team management, especially with Gibson’s contract ending in mid-September.

But whatever his own future holds, Gibson believes South Africa have the resources to become a formidable force in the global game once again in the future.

“There is a lot of talent in South Africa. Whether that talent is ready to take the next step is what we need to see over the next 12 months,” Gibson said.

“If you are thinking in the white-ball sense, around the World Cup, we’ve got four years to plan for a World Cup, which gives you a lot more time.”