Wiaan Mulder of Durban’s Super Giants plays a shot on Friday night as coach Lance Klusener challenges his batters to switch on. Sportzpics
After back-to-back losses the Durban’s Super Giants need to take a hard look at their batting performances of late, according to head coach Lance Klusener.
The Sunrisers Eastern Cape, who won the toss and batted first, walloped the DSG by 58 runs at Kingsmead on Friday night.
This despite tight bowling by the home team, with Noor Ahmed taking the player of the match award for his spell-bounding 4/25 from four overs.
“Noor has been an outstanding performer for a good couple of years now, he’s done it in the IPL. I bumped into him when I was coaching Afghanistan,” said Kluesener.
“He has been difficult to pick through the air and I think now many batters can read him.
“The quality of batting we have is outstanding, unfortunately batting is not played on paper, it's played on a surface.
“We need to be better with that. If we look at ourselves, our batters got started on that surface but, we didn’t kick on.
“If you look at the last game, there were batters who got starts but didn’t kick on. When we did, which was in the first game, we were able to get over 200.
“So, batters are not getting started and building partnerships. I think we got behind the rate a little bit and that surface was really difficult to come back against some quality spin.”
Klusener also commended SEC’s performance, especially for coming off the back of three straight losses since the start of the league.
Conditions at Kingsmead on Friday were no walk in the park for batters on either side, as spinners had their way with the match by controlling the middle of the innings and keeping the run rates low.
SEC’s pace bowlers Ottniel Baartman 2/17 and Richard Gleeson 2/12 were also difficult to face on the Durban pitch.
DSG’s Ahmed was not the only spinner to enjoy the match, with SEC’s Liam Dawson and Simon Harmer taking crucial wickets.
One such crucial wicket was that of multi-award winning Heinrich Klaasen, who fell cheaply in the seventh over.
Klaasen’s body language after getting caught by Markram on Friday night may be indicative of the season’s start he’s had so far.
In three starts, Klaasen got out for two ducks and a 29 (17) against JSK last Tuesday.
Kane Williamson also fell early in the innings, leaving no anchors at the crease and no creative batting on the other end.
The Durban team will need their star batters like Heinrich and Williamson to enter Defcon 1 in coming fixtures if they hope on reaching another final.
A disappointed DSG coach insisted there was no issue with the batting, but rather that his team needed to learn how to punch first instead of waiting for a mistake.
“I think we’ve got a proud record from last season playing at home so, absolutely disappointed,” said Klusener.
“I think we are a better outfit than how we turned up in the last two games.
“It’s been really difficult to bat in the second innings so ideally we would just like a better surface.
“Not making any excuses, I think we are a better unit than that but we just lacked a bit in terms of pulling the first punch.’