AUS vs SA | Still have hunger and drive to lead Test team, claims Dean Elgar
South Africa Test captain Dean Elgar has remarked that he still has the hunger and desire to continue the national side in the longest format. Elgar further stated that he needs to get some time off from the sport to get back in touch and score with consistency in Test cricket for the country.
The South African Test team has come under severe scrutiny with their performance in the three-match Test series against Australia. The visitors suffered a series defeat by 2-0 and it might have culminated in a whitewash without the interference of rain in the third Test. The team's batting unit failed miserably and captain Dean Elgar was the biggest disappointment for them as his struggle with the bat continued. Also, his captaincy was criticized for such an embarrassing loss but the captain thinks that he still has the hunger and drive to continue as the leader of the pack in Test cricket.
"We've got two and then potentially a lot of time off for myself for some gully cricket. Then the pressure is off a little bit. But, I enjoy the pressure. If [I was] scoring runs now, it would have been a lot easier to say yes [I want to continue] but obviously you've got to go into it and ask yourself those questions and I have. I still have the hunger and drive, no doubt," Elgar said in the post-match press conference.
Since taking over the captaincy in mid-2021, Elgar hasn’t scored a century and averages just 28.40 which doesn’t go well with his reputation as a solid Test batter. Further, he has no scores above 36 in the last 10 innings. In 2022, he scored just 577 runs from 21 Test innings with an average of just 28.85. The South Africa captain will have a rest now as he hasn’t been picked by any franchise for SA20 and so Elgar thinks that some time off from cricket would help him get back into the grove.
"I am taking as much time off as I want. That's what I need at the moment. There's been a few conversations with me and the batting coaches to potentially do extra work but for now, I just want to get on a plane, and go home, chill out a bit, have a braai and maybe go to the bush and play some golf. Those are the small things that South Africans are deprived of when you go on a tour. I am just going to go home and clutch out a bit,” he explained.
Elgar’s scores in the series read 3, 2, 26, 0, 15, 10 combining for a total of only 56 runs from six innings in the series. Also, the batter was strangled down the leg three times out of six and it looked like a pattern is emerging. Elgar also admitted that he was frustrated for being dismissed in an identical manner multiple times.
"I can accept once, maybe twice, but the third time is something that highly irritates me," he said. "And it's something different for me. Generally, you have a way of going out and bowlers target that. This is obviously something new and 10 years into a Test career, it's foreign territory for me.It's just a bit frustrating that I could never get going through the series,” he confessed.
The majority of the players of the South Africa national team will now appear in the SA20’s inaugural season and the team might see an overhaul in its Test setup in the coming days.
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