• Mpitsang: AB still retired as far as I know

    With the T20 World Cup on the horizon, national convenor of selectors Victor Mpitsang and the Proteas management team are exploring every avenue to make sure the best team goes to India, but he would not be drawn into a conversation on AB de Villiers’ availability.

    Whether De Villiers or Chris Morris will be the plane remains to be seen, with Mpitsang unsure about their respective situations.

    ‘Chris Morris is still available to play for SA, he’s not retired yet, but AB has retired from international cricket. As far as I am concerned he’s not availed himself to play for South Africa – unless he’s told someone else something different.

    ‘It’s fair to say, if AB avails himself to South Africa, that is a different conversation, but at the moment, as far as I know, he’s retired from international cricket. Morris is not retired, so that is a different conversation.’

    Meanwhile, Mpitsang expressed his concern about how batsmen went about their business in the recent CSA T20 Challenge in Durban.

    The former fast bowler would have wanted to see more batsmen embrace the conditions of Kingsmead to score quicker and post bigger scores.

    ‘In those conditions a few batsmen really struggled to adjust and to adjust quickly. I would have wanted to see batters dominate more,’ he told IOLSport.

    ‘Guys who adjusted quicker were the ones who were successful. But guys couldn’t dominate immediately because of the surface. A guy like David Miller, his strike rate was 130, he adjusted well, he felt he needed to be there at the end [of an innings], so found a way to stay in and could then hit the ball and that comes from experience.’

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    Andre Huisamen