England coach Trevor Bayliss says fielding was the biggest difference between them and South Africa after losing the ODI series 3-2.
South Africa won the deciding ODI by five wickets at Newlands on Sunday to clinch the series. It was a great fightback by the home side after England had taken a 2-0 lead after the first two games.
AB de Villiers said he thought the biggest difference between the two teams was hunger and that they wanted it more, but Bayliss thought otherwise.
‘I’d say fielding,’ he answered after being asked what the biggest difference was. ‘I thought the batting and the bowling was fairly even. Both teams relied on three of their batters and the bowling was very similar. They are quite simply a better fielding side than us at the moment. We have to keep working at that.
‘We’ve got a number of guys who’s not the quickest in the field,’ Bayliss said. ‘I think it’s an attitude thing. If you want the ball to come to you, you need the ball coming your way and prove to people that you can field. I just feel at times some of us don’t necessarily want the ball to come anywhere near us, but that’s something that we’re working on and will continue to work on.’
Bayliss praised De Villiers’ match-winning innings of 101 not out to guide South Africa to victory and said his team could learn from that.
‘We’ve got some work to do there [in the pressure situations] for sure and that will come with experience,’ Bayliss said.
‘At some point that experience has to pay dividends. Hopefully the experience here, and the experience of playing against someone like AB de Villiers and the way he went about the innings, hopefully some of our guys learn from that; hopefully it rubs off.
‘Our positive and aggressive mental approach has worked on most occasions. The scores that we’ve made have risen over the last 12 months or so, but I think to win series, we have to take a leaf out of De Villiers’ book in the way he paced his innings and the way he went about it was obviously top class, from basically the best batsman in the series. He did his job and showed everyone else how to do it. ‘
