Ashwell Prince laments early wickets in New Zealand loss for Proteas
17th July 2025
By
Proteas batting consultant Ashwell Prince has blamed the early wickets for their 21-run loss to New Zealand, in their second match of the T20i tri-series in Harare.
Chasing 174 for the win, South Africa lost the wickets of Lhuan-dre Pretorius, Rubin Hermann, and Reeza Hendricks in quick succession for just 50 runs, and this – according to the former opening batter – was their downfall against the Black Caps. They ended up being bowled out for 152 in just over 18 overs at the Harare Sports Club.
"Nah I felt it was incredible, it was a good pitch, we obviously lost a few wickets earlier on, it put us up against it. Managed to get something going while Dewald Brevis was there as well as a chance but we kept on losing wickets all the way through and eventually fell just short," Prince said.
"We didn't get any rhythm going really going with our batting, particularly early on in the batting department and I think that's quite key when you are chasing the score. Just getting some sort of rhythm going in the batting line up, get a partnership earlier on.
"Obviously, if you don't do that, you're kind of behind, you are always trying to catch up. We know that we have the power to catch up, keeping it high on the difference between runs required and balls left and we managed to bring that down nicely but at the same time we kept losing wickets.
"So, it's just about finding that balance when you're chasing that score."
Prince did, however, concede that they had put out a fairly new team out there in order to test combinations.
It was a vastly inexperienced line-up, with Pretorius, Hermann, Senuran Muthusamy and Dewald Brevis all with less than 10 caps combined.
"I think today's lineup was maybe a little bit experimental as well in terms of left, right combinations, all those types of things that you try and put in place to try and maximise the short boundary,” he added.
“Next time we play it might be in the middle of the pitch, you don't make a decision like that. So, it will be different, next game you play what's in front of you and we know that we have the firepower to win every game in the series but we also respect our position and we are also beatable, we take it one game at a time."
