Joburg Super Kings coach Stephen Fleming believes his team’s quest to reach a SA20 play-off spot has now become a “mental” challenge.
The Super Kings were primed to book a spot in the knockout stages prior to meeting a revamped Pretoria Capitals side at Centurion on Tuesday evening.
A victory would have ensured JSK’s qualification, but instead, the Capitals reversed the result with a bonus-point win that kept the highveld rivals very much in the reckoning for the next round.
The Super Kings don’t have any time to over analyse the blow-out which saw them reach just 99/9 in their allotted 20 overs, with league leaders Paarl Royals waiting in the wings for the next encounter this evening at the Wanderers (5.30pm start).
With such a short turnaround, Fleming and the rest of the Joburg coaching staff have to strike a balance between trying to fit in a training session to fine-tune skills and simply keeping the players physically fresh.
But having witnessed a Capitals side, which featured five changes, come out with great motivation and desire to arrest their own slide, Fleming believes it’s mostly now about personal motivation.
“It was a poor performance really (against the Capitals),” Fleming said.
“Batting first seems to be a bit of a challenge, not just because of conditions, but maybe a little bit of players’ mindset and their ability to work their way out of tough situations.
“Unfortunately, the trend of the modern-day player is if it’s too hard, they don’t find a method for long enough. They’re very keen to hit their way out of trouble.
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“We could have had an opportunity, but we were sloppy with the fielding and probably not as accurate as what we need to be with the ball. So, we’re zero for three in our skills... pretty poor day.
“It’s now a real fine balance between making the players work a bit harder or just looking for improvements mentally. I think at this stage, most of it’s mental. It’s just being prepared for the next game.”
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Charging in with pace! 🏏🔥
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The Paarl Royals, meanwhile, have no such concerns, having already booked their place in the play-offs and are virtually ensured of finishing in the top two places that take them to Gqeberha for Qualifier 1.
They do, however, leave their fortress Boland Park – after becoming the first team to win all five home league phase matches – for the highveld, where they will need to adapt their usually spin-heavy game-plan.
England international Joe Root – who is set to play his last SA20 match for the Royals before heading back to international duty – believes the Paarl outfit have shown already that they are adaptable, especially on the batting front, where they chased down over 200 at Centurion earlier in the tournament.
“I think the fact that we’ve had to be quite dynamic and be able to assess the different surfaces and conditions that we faced, only losing one game to this point, means that we’ve had to adapt to different surfaces already,” Root said.
“So, I think that shows that we are trying to be really smart about how we make the most of what’s here in front of us, and we’re staying present in each and every game, which has served us well to now.
“When we’ve had the opportunity to play on something slightly flatter, we’ve recognised that pretty early and managed to go on and buy that Cape Town game and have gone on to win the game.”