‘Opportunity to learn is the most exciting thing’ – Faf du Plessis
Instead, he is looking forward to giving as many members of the 15-man squad a chance to get a feel of the conditions as South Africa look to finalise their combination and build their side for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.
Not too many of the South African ODI players have played in Dambulla – or even in Sri Lanka – before, and the squad has two uncapped members in Reeza Hendricks, the top-order batsman, and Junior Dala, the paceman.
“We will try and give everyone a game if possible. Once again it comes down to the combinations of our team and trying to find the best balance. It was nice for me to see a few guys put their hands up in the warm-up game,” said du Plessis ahead of the first ODI, to be played in Dambulla, on Sunday, 29 July.
The practice game du Plessis alluded to was against a Sri Lanka Board XI, where the captain himself top-scored for his team with a 60-ball 71, and David Miller (40), Hendricks (59) and Willem Mulder (56) batted well. Mulder was also strong with the ball, returning 3/12, while Dala (2/45) and Tabraiz Shamsi (3/41) were also among the wickets.
“For me, the opportunity to learn is the most exciting thing,” said du Plessis. “I personally don’t look at winning the next few series as the be-all and end-all. It is trying to find out how we can give guys opportunities, how they can learn, how they can get experience and what they can learn from different scenarios. That will aid us and make us stronger to where we want to be in a year’s time.”
The Test series went the way of the Sri Lankans, quite convincingly at that, as the South African batsmen failed to cope with the skills of the home team spinners.
“The Sri Lankan team will still have good spinners (in the ODIs), that won’t go away. I think it’s exciting, especially having a young team here. There are guys playing in these conditions for the first time, that excites me,” said du Plessis.
“It’s about them experiencing the conditions for themselves and figuring out a way of playing against the spinners. Whether it’s by making mistakes or doing well, that is OK, it is about learning.
“A tour like this, all we are trying to do is to make sure we can get better as team in a year’s time, that is how I see the next three or four months unfolding. As a one-day team it is about identifying the areas where we can get better, and spin is one of those areas. How we learn to deal with that is the challenge over the next few months.”