India’s Exceptional Ruthlessness Made Us Mentally Weak: Faf Du Plessis

Mumbai: After being whitewashed by team India, 3-0 in series the visitors which has most of younger players have lost their confidence. Losing by high margins like last test match in Ranchi by 202 runs it affected mentally, Faf du Plessis says.

“How I see my journey unfolding with this team is to help with the transition period,” du Plessis said at a press conference after the Ranchi Test.

“That’s something we spoke about before that wasn’t necessarily the case before. Graeme Smith was a successful captain for a very long time and then after that, it was like, ‘what now, who is going to captain the side, what’s going to happen?’ This period is to try and make that process a bit smoother, identifying the next leaders, identifying the next captains, working with them, and then when the time is right, that time will be right.”

He claimed that “I found the tour really tough, We have had a very mature Test team for a while, guys that have played 30, 40 and more Test matches. Now you look in the dressing room and its five, six, seven, eight, ten Tests.”

“It’s just a relentless, ruthlessness the way they put big totals on the board every time. The effect it has on you mentally as a batting line-up takes a lot of energy and it takes a lot of tolls and that’s why you can see towards the end our batting was mentally weak. You don’t want to be mentally weak,” he said.

“Our next journey is to try and make sure we get a lot stronger as a cricketing team mentally. As you can see, a tour like this reveals that there is a lot of mental scars that can happen and then obviously it’s difficult to come out of the hole. We played our best match in the first match and the consistent pressure that was on us made us weaker with every Test match that we played. It tells me we are not mentally strong as a team and that some work is required in that department,” Faf said.

“The process will probably take a little bit longer. So, for me, our next journey now is trying to make sure that we get a lot stronger as a cricketing team mentally. So, if there’s work that needs to be done in that department, then so be it,” he concluded.

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