Consigned to an embarrassing defeat within two days by hosts Australia in the first Test, South Africa are thirsting for revenge and will go into the second Test starting here on Monday with aggressive intent and revive their chances in the series, says Proteas pacer Anrich Nortje.
In trying to rattle the host’s batters, they could unleash bouncers against the host batsmen.
Nortje said the Proteas will have to be aggressive to get the better of the Australian batsmen. However, he believes the South African bowlers will have to work hard on the Melbourne Cricket Ground unlike the Gabba at Brisbane which offered ample support to the bowlers and resulted in 34 wickets falling in two days.
“We’ll have to wait and see. You can’t really go into history too much, but it seems like a good wicket in terms of pace and bounce. I don’t think there will be as much side movement as there was in Brisbane so hopefully, we’ll just be able to stick to the basics,” said Nortje, according to News24.
“I know it’s simple to say but that’s what we’ll be hoping to do and use our bouncers as a bowling unit. As a bowling unit, I don’t think there are going to be massive demons in the wicket. I’ve never played here, so I can’t speak from experience, but we think it will be a good contest,” he added.
Though South Africa lost the first Test at Gabba by six wickets inside two days, Nortje Nortje doesn’t feel that the Proteas suffered a big defeat and felt the Brisbane result would not impact the South Africans mentally.
“When we look back at the last game, it was just a matter of probably half a session, not even a session, and the game could have been different and we could have been in a winning position…that’s how quick things were happening,” Nortje was quoted as saying in the report.
“So you can’t look at losing by six wickets and say it’s a big margin on that wicket, it might have been a very small margin. So it’s hard to say we’re not really focused on the last game, we’re focused on what’s going to come up now, trying to prepare again.
Everyone’s in a really good space mentally and physically, so we’re just looking forward to getting on and starting the game now,” he added.
