Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) [India], December 6 : Following his side's ODI series loss to India, South Africa head coach Shukri Conrad reflected on the usage of "grovel" word during the second Guwahati Test, saying that it was "never his intention to cause malice", and he could have "chosen a better word".
Conrad, while speaking about not declaring early in their second innings despite already having a healthy lead heading into it and giving India a massive 549-run target, Conrad had said that the team wanted to make the Indian team "really grovel" and "completely bat them out of the game". While they indeed lived up to this message as a unit, giving India their biggest Test loss by 408 runs, Conrad's remarks did not go well with several fans and people in the cricketing fraternity.
The term "grovel" was first used by England's Tony Greig during the West Indies team's tour of England in 1976, when he expressed his team's intention to "make WI grovel". At that time, the remark was perceived to be a racist one. Conrad's remark was criticised by several Indian and South African players, including Sunil Gavaskar and Dale Steyn as since years, these two cricketing nations have epitomised the word "friendship" through appreciation for each other's game and with Indian IPL team owners' involvement in South Africa's domestic T20 franchise league, SA20.
Speaking after the match in the post-match presser, Conrad said as quoted by ESPNCricinfo, "On reflection, it was never my intention to cause any malice or not be humble about anything. I could have chosen a better word because it left it open for people to put their own context to it. The only context I ever intended it to be was that we wanted India to spend a lot of time in the field and make it really tough for them. I have got to be careful what word I use here now because context could be attached to that as well."
"It is really a pity. Maybe what it did do was spice up the ODI series, and especially with India winning that now, the T20 series becomes even more so. The unfortunate thing is, with all the noise that that word caused, I still think it is a perfectly good English word, but I just left it open to too many interpretations. What it did was take away the gloss of what was a really special win for our Test team. It is unfortunate, but there was definitely no malice intended," he added.
Also, Conrad admitted that being humble is the "cornerstone" for all of the South African teams.
"It is unfortunate that the noise and the talk became around the coach. People should not really even know who the coach is. It should be about the players. That is the unfortunate bit, and I would like to think that it is going to be put to bed now," he concluded.
Coming to the match, India won the toss and put SA into bat first.
Proteas lost Ryan Rickelton for a duck and a 113-run stand between Quinton de Kock (106 in 89 balls, with eight fours and six sixes) and skipper Temba Bavuma (48 in 67 balls, with five fours) followed.
Quinton also had a 54-run stand with Matthew Breetzke (24 in 23 balls, with two sixes), and the Proteas stumbled to five wickets down for 199 runs, with Prasidh Krishna (4/66) causing some mayhem. Dewald Brevis (29 in 29 balls, with two fours and a six) and Marco Jansen (17 in 15 balls, with two fours) tried to counter-attack, but a fine spell from Kuldeep (4/41) sunk them to 270 all out in 47.5 overs from a solid position of 234/5.
India chased down the target in 39.5 overs, with Rohit (75 in 73 balls, with seven fours and three sixes) putting a 155-run stand with Yashasvi Jaiswal, who got his maiden ODI ton. Jaiswal, who ended with 116* in 121 balls, with 12 fours and three sixes, had put another century stand with Virat (65* in 45 balls, with six fours and three sixes) to end the series in a dominant fashion.
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