ICC World Cup 2019 | Overthinking about 350 score resulted in my bad performance, says Lungi Ngidi
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Lungi Ngidi has stated that he was overthinking about what could be a par total on The Oval surface and that resulted in his bad performance. Ngidi has also added that he was content with the teamās overall performance and England bowling was disciplined enough to keep them in check.
South African bowlers did well to put up a fine show with the ball, especially in the slog overs to restrict England's powerful batting unit. However, their failure to take the benefit of the new ball resulted in Jason Roy and Joe Root stitching together a 106-run partnership which set the game for the explosive English middle-order. Ngidi added that he could have bowled well in the powerplay overs but overthinking about the English pitches took him away.
"We believed we could have kept them to under 300. Even when they got to 311, I thought they were below-par. I was very disappointed with my bowling performance upfront. I might have been overthinking it. All the talk was how they post totals of 350 so maybe that was at the back of my mind,ā Ngidi was quoted as saying by ToI.
"There were a few opportunities in the Powerplay, where they nicked it through the slips and I started to think, 'These people are humans, just like me'. I kicked into my rhythm from there. I listened to what the wicket was telling me. Slower balls were working so I stuck to that. Even though they were trying to come after me, they couldn't seem to get it away.ā
Ngidi finished with figures of 3/66 and took the crucial wickets of Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Moeen Ali, but by then the wicket had been deteriorated a fair bit and had become even faster. Ngidi stated that he would have preferred two up front but credited English pacers for taking the advantage.
"We realised it was not an easy wicket to bat on, having bowled all those slower balls at the back end. And they kept us on the back foot. They kept throwing punches at us. Hashim retired early which was unfortunate for us. When he came back on, batting with the all-rounders and the tail, he was probably less effective than he would have been up front.
"Every game is important. Everyone had hyped up their first game to the point where you started feeling as if it was the final already but we didn't let that get to us. We know what we need to do in order to get to the semi-finals," Ngidi said.
