Faf du Plessis admitted that the Proteas need to change their game plan in order to get their campaign back on track.
READ: ‘We’re not good enough at the moment’
The Proteas suffered their second loss of the campaign in the space of three days. First, they were thrashed by England by 104 runs. And then they followed this up by falling 21 runs short against Bangladesh.
Du Plessis said the results boil down to not being able to implement their Plan A or B.
‘I’m extremely disappointed,” said Du Plessis. ‘Gutted to say that all formats of our game are just not firing at the moment. To blame bad luck is not an option for me.
‘Our plan was to try, in both the England game and this game, try and make sure that we target them with aggressive bowling.
‘Plan A is gone because Plan A was those main bowlers playing together.’
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Their injury woes started before the tournament when Anrich Nortje, Lungi Ngidi, Dale Steyn and Kagiso Rabada picked up injuries.
This has come back to haunt the Proteas in their two opening World Cup games.
‘They haven’t played a game together on this tour. Initially, Plan B was Anrich Nortje as an extra pace bowler that we had lined up if we had an injury, to have another X-factor bowler that can bowl 145kmh-plus. He got injured, as well.
‘If Anrich was here, you could say, “listen, Dale, it’s getting to that time now where you need to play or we need to substitute you.” But now we have got two or three down.
‘So now you’re moving into your all-rounder territory. You have two medium pace all-rounders and then you have Chris Morris that sits in between your fast bowlers and your medium pace bowlers.
‘So now we have to really look at what we can do to try to be effective; is it playing all-rounders together, do we play two spinners?
‘Now it’s reshuffling all our cards and see how best we can deal with it.’
The Proteas play India on Wednesday in Southampton.
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Photo: Supplied by ICC
