South Africa can still challenge despite opening loss says Jacques Kallis

Jacques Kallis (Source - ICC)

June 1 (CRICKETNMORE) - It was never going to be easy playing England in the very first game but I’ve seen nothing to change my mind that South Africa can go deep in this tournament. They will be hard on themselves when they look back on the game, there were too many soft dismissals for my liking, but there was nothing wrong with their performance that cannot be rectified.

This format allows you to make a slower start, it’s a long tournament and playing everyone evens things out in the end. Having three games in six days has pros and cons – with the Dale Steyn injury they’d have probably wanted a bit more space between them.

But it also gives them the chance to establish some early momentum. When you’ve lost, you want to get straight back out there as soon as possible and it’s great they’ve got Bangladesh on Sunday.

Get a win there, and they will rightly go in as big favourites, and they will go into the match with India with their confidence up and then they’ve got a good few days to recover.

They didn’t let England have it all their own way. It was obviously a massive toss to win and throwing the spinner the ball was the perfect start.

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