Ind vs SA | Seniors will have to step up, says Faf du Plessis

On a rather surprising track that offered assistance in the form of bounce and seam movement to the pacers, South Africa went down easily to a magnificent bowling performance by the Indian bowlers, thereby allowing India to win by an innings and 137 runs. South African captain Faf du Plessis was disappointed by his team's performance in this Test and claimed that it is the inexperience in their side that has come back to haunt them in this series.

"I think it's purely a case of inexperience. In my time in Test cricket, looking at Test cricket in general, best Test teams are the teams with the most experience," du Plessis said in a press conference, reported TOI.

Du Plessis stressed again on the importance of experience, claiming that the Indian team had a lot of  Test Matches under their belt compared to that of the South Africans. The entire squad of India together has played 598 Test matches, while two of the 16 members of the South African team are yet to make their Test debut.

"One-day cricket and T20 cricket are different, but when it comes to this Indian team ... there's a lot of experience in that dressing room, there's a lot of Test matches behind their names," he said.

Du Plessis also believed that the seniors must take more responsibility as the South African team is in transition post the retirement of greats like De Villiers, Amla, etc. and that such players are very difficult to be replaced overnight. He believes that patience needs to be maintained in order to build a strong South African core again.

"We're at a stage where we've lost almost all of our experience. (Dale) Steyn, (Morne) Morkel, (Hashim) Amla and (AB) de Villiers all of them were seasoned campaigners. And now it's a new group of guys who've played only a handful of Test matches. You don't replace those guys overnight," he said.

Du Plessis tried to assess the reasons for their disappointing series defeat. He believed that a bit more consistency would have helped them in giving India a tougher fight in the series. He understands that after the good first innings batting performance in Vizag, they didn't follow it up with an equally consistent performance in Pune, which ended up costing them the series.

"Consistency will be one of the things we have to work on. Maybe, we took one big step forward in the first Test and two steps behind in this. I thought we weren't even close to where we needed to be to try and compete," he signed off.

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