South Africa can win the World Cup, says Whatmore
Charlie Austin - 6 December 2002
Sri Lanka coach Dav Whatmore believes that South Africa have a good chance of winning the World Cup next year.
Speaking after South Africa eased themselves to a six-wicket victory and a 4-1 series triumph against the Sri Lankans, Whatmore said that Shaun Pollock's team has the necessary ingredients to be successful.
"I think they have a very good chance of being successful," said Whatmore. "They are a good team playing in their own conditions."
"To win a World Cup you need inner belief, they certainly showed that against Sri Lanka – we will have to see if they have got it against other teams."
But Whatmore has not given hope of Sri Lanka winning the tournament.
"When a World Cup starts everything that happened in the past is history," he said. "It's a special winner-takes-all tournament and whoever plays best on the day will win."
Sri Lanka captain Sanath Jayasuriya also tried to be upbeat, claiming that were positives to be garnered from the one-way series.
"There were some plus points and some players are getting used to these conditions, particularly Marvan but also Sanga today," he said.
Whatmore sees potential in his bowlers.
"As a bowling side there is potential, we just need to get the ball in the right areas more often," said Whatmore. "You have got to remember that some of guys have very little experience – they just need to play more games."
South Africa coach Eric Simons was pleased with side's performance but warned of a tough five games ahead against Pakistan.
"We did set a 5-0 target but on the whole I am happy – we achieved a lot of the objectives that we identified before the series," said Simmons.
"The Pakistan series promises to be quite fiery, we will have to prepare differently than we did against Sri Lanka. They seem to have a bit of a buzz about them at the moment after wins against Zimbabwe."
He praised the efforts of the man of the series Jacques Kallis.
"His batting is so technically solid that he is very consistent. One-day cricket is about match-winners and he is obviously a key player for us."
© CricInfo
