South Africa cannot afford any more mistakes at the World Cup and will need to win almost all their remaining seven games if they hope to qualify for the semi-finals, former all-rounder Jacques Kallis has said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Africa lost their tournament opener to England by 104 runs before they suffered an upset 21-run defeat against Bangladesh on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think you\u2019ll need six wins, maybe five with a really good run rate, to finish in the top four,\u201d Kallis said in a column for the International Cricket Council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The top four teams from the new round-robin format qualify for the semi-finals and defeat against India on Wednesday could also potentially affect South Africa\u2019s net run rate, which will decide the final standings if teams are tied on points and wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t get any easier though against India but it\u2019s their first game and our third, so maybe that could give us the edge we need,\u201d Kallis added.\u201cThey\u2019ve not played for a week and maybe there will be some first game nerves, whereas we\u2019re settled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cStrange things happen in this sport and if we can get a win then I think we can go on a streak and we are still good enough to be a contender.\u201dKallis criticised captain Faf du Plessis for the lack of a backup plan during Bangladesh\u2019s innings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great having a game plan but you need to have a back-up when it\u2019s not working, I felt we were one step behind the entire match and just tactically a bit off,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to be a bit smarter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Injuries to South Africa\u2019s pace attack have also thrown a spanner in the works with experienced Dale Steyn yet to fully recover from a shoulder injury and Lungi Ngidi injuring his hamstring against Bangladesh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe injury to Lungi Ngidi certainly didn\u2019t help Faf,\u201d Kallis added. \u201cHe\u2019s a world-class player and a big part of our attack. You\u2019ve got to play Dale Steyn against India now, and hopefully he is close to fitness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa cannot afford any more mistakes at the World Cup and will need to win almost all their remaining seven games if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62879,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62880,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62878\/revisions\/62880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}