South African skipper AB de Villiers hails 'rock' Hashim Amla
South Africa captain AB de Villiers hailed Hashim Amla as the team's "rock" after the opener scored his 20th ODI century in the 201-run Cricket World Cup win over Ireland. Proteas posted their second highest total in World Cup history, with Amla and Faf du Plessis (109) forming a 247 run partnership for the second wicket while fast bowler Kyle Abbott finished with figures of 4 for 21 at Canberra's Manuka Oval.
"Amla is still the rock and will always be that for us. He was incredible. Hopefully that form can continue for the rest of the tour," said de Villiers. “It was a good game. We did it our way. We follow our game plans and the guys set it up very nicely up top for our middle order.”
"The guys stuck to their game plan pretty well, There was a great partnership between Ash (Amla) and Faf (du Plessis). When you get a partnership of 200-plus in an ODI, you always get yourself in a good position. We found ourselves in a good position going into the last 15 overs, which gave us a lot of freedom to express ourselves.”
We are taking it match by match: de Villiers
De Villiers was confident that the history could be re-written this time, but preferred not to look far ahead. He also has asked the players not to watch other games and focus on their games.
"Look I have believed for the past year that we can win the World Cup, but we are taking it pretty much match by match," de Villiers said, "I have told the boys to try and not watch other games, just focus on what we have to do. The focus now is to play Pakistan in Auckland on Sunday.”
"When we reach the quarter-finals we will think of the opposition and give it our best shot."
We do things our way: de Villiers
South Africa registered their third win in four games and have now leveled the points with defending champions, India, in the Group B table, having played a game extra, while Ireland were left with four points from three games, leveling with West Indies.
De Villiers said he was very happy with the performance against Ireland and mentioned that they played a fine game fo cricket on Tuesday.
"We ticked lot of boxes today. You can never be exceptionally happy with a performance. But I am very happy the way we did the basics and played a fine game of cricket. Our strength is in the maturity in the side.”
"We do things our way. We are not trying to follow any unique strategy or someone else's strategy. We stick to our game plans and what works for us."