Proteas bowling coach Charl Langeveldt says the team is recharged and refreshed ahead of their clash against West Indies in Barbados on Friday.

The match against the hosts is effectively a semi-final, with the winner to play Australia in the final on Sunday, June 26.  

‘The mood has been great,’ Langeveldt said. ‘The two days off have given us a breather, conditions are warm here so if you practise every day you will get dehydrated and your energy will be low. Our big thing is to keep the energy levels high and to manage the players well.

‘From a bowling point of view, we are confident as an attack, especially the seamers,’ he said. ‘We have had the odd blip with the no-balls but that’s cricket; you are going to get that. The wides and no-balls have been a big improvement from the T20 World Cup, where we were sloppy.’  

Langeveldt, who took over from Allan Donald as bowling coach in 2015, says the versatile bowling attack has worked tirelessly on the execution of their skills, but more needs to be done.   

‘When I arrived, I made a conscious effort to uplift our skills, especially in ODI and T20 cricket,’ Langeveldt said. ‘It has come up in leaps and bounds but it still remains a work in progress. In the nets I try to encourage the players to work on their various skills. Hopefully in a few months, we will get to a point where everyone has a different slower ball, everyone can bowl a slower-ball bouncer; that is the ultimate.’

The last time Langeveldt ran up at the Kensington Oval, it was in glory following his sensational hat-trick to seal the series during South Africa’s tour in 2005. His last-over heroics gave the Proteas an unlikely one-run win in one of the most remarkable comeback performances to date.   

‘The ground has changed a lot since then, but the memory is still there,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t thinking about a lot, I wasn’t thinking about the outcome because as soon as you start thinking about the outcome you are not going to execute the way you want. After the first ball the pressure was on them, in the last over there was no pressure because we were expecting to lose the game. Once I got the first wicket I knew that we were in with a chance.’

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