South African skipper Faf du Plessis slammed his ninth ODI century against India during the first ODI at Durban on Thursday. But his heroic effort with the bat went in vain as Proteas succumbed to a defeat against India.

Becuase of the lack of partnerships throughout the innings, Du Plessis stated that the score of 269 simply wasn’t enough on the day to put pressure on the opposition. He also said that the failures against spinners will not affect their mindset and the batsmen will need a couple of matches to get accustomed to them.

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Speaking to reporters after the match, Faf said, “Yeah we didn’t bat well today. As a batting unit, for the second top score to be 30 something [37] shows that there weren’t partnerships. And the most basic thing about one-day cricket is two guys getting together and putting some sort of partnership together.”

As quoted in Cricbuzz, he further added, “I thought the Indian spinners bowled well but still we should have been better today against them. We lost too many wickets in that middle period, and if you lose wickets, it’s difficult to create any sort of partnership and put pressure back on the opposition. I think certainly tonight we needed 300. We chased 370 here against Australia. The way the wicket played and the way that our bowlers had to try and get wickets made it difficult for them. If we had got 60-70 more, it wouldn’t have been easier for them out there.”

Du Plessis’ Indian counterpart Virat Kohli (112) also thumped a century, his 33rd ODI hundred, but that came in a winning cause. Talking the same, Faf said, “He’s (Kohli) very good. You know when it comes to chasing he is the main man that you need to get. He is a very good controller of the tempo of the innings. He has obviously done it a lot so he is experienced. He knows when to pull and when to push. So we know, just as in the Tests, he is the backbone. If we get him, you put pressure on them. If he is there, they’re going to have opportunities of putting pressure on us.”

Also read: Review: SA vs Ind (1st ODI)

Reflecting on the average performance by the Proteas batsmen, Du Plessis stressed on the need to play the spinners better. He said, “From a batting point of view, quite a few guys haven’t faced their spinners, so it will take one or two games for them to get used to it. Some of the guys played against these guys in the IPL but not all of them faced them recently.”

The South African skipper concluded by stating the fact that playing against wrist spin is an art, he said, “With mystery spin or wrist spin, it takes you one or two games just to get used to the guys’ actions and their wrists, then hopefully you get better at playing them. We’ll have a good discussion after this game and some feedback on the things we picked up, especially from my side, if there was anything that I can share with the guys that I picked up. And hopefully, in the second game, we’ll play them better.”