Amla: Don't only blame the batsmen

Cape Town - Tuesday morning's result that saw the West Indies beat Australia by four wickets in St Kitts was good news for the Proteas in the ongoing Tri-Nations series. 

It means, if South Africa win against the West Indies on Wednesday, that all three sides will go into the final round of fixtures having won two, lost two. 

But, should the Proteas lose on Wednesday, they will be rooted to the bottom of the log, facing an uphill battle to make the tournament final. 

The obvious concern is that the Proteas top order is yet to fire in the West Indies. 

That can be attributed to the Guyana wicket in the first two matches, but on Saturday night South Africa lost their way horribly while chasing 289 for victory against Australia. 

The Proteas lost their last seven wickets for 42 runs, and despite all of the top five getting starts nobody could bat through. 

In the end, South Africa were 36 runs short. 

Opener Hashim Amla, though, does not think you can simply blame the top order batsmen.

"You have to always look at things as a whole and as a team … it’s not necessarily the batsmen or the bowlers," he said.

"It’s a collective effort in the field as well as with the bat.

"We’re all extremely hungry to turn it around and get back to winning ways and leave this competition as winners. It’s still early and we just want to take it game by game."

Reflecting on the run-chase against Australia, Amla said that it was disappointing that nobody in the top order got the job done.

"We got ourselves in a very good position to win it and didn't quite take it through and that's very disappointing,"he said.

"As a team we've always back ourselves to have somebody in the top six bat through and take it deep but it wasn't to be.

"We lost some wickets at crucial times and that kind of cost us, hopefully we don't make the same mistake in the next game."

Wednesday night's match starts at 19:00.