Talk of 'choking' annoys Kirsten

[SLICKR392]

Kirsten admits South Africa choked

In his final act as South Africa coach, Gary Kirsten did not shy away from the team's uncomfortable history of failing at pressure stages in major events, admitting they "choked" against England, a term he called "horrible", and that it does not reflect well on his time as coach. "I think we did choke in the game," he said. "It's an uncomfortable word but you've got to make yourself comfortable with it. It's a horrible word, it does get used, we've spoken about it, we are open about it. "We let ourselves down. You've got to accept that's what it is. They bowled exceptionally well but that doesn't mean your batting line-up should be 80 for 8. "If we had the secret recipe to turn it around, we would certainly have packaged it and be selling it. We give it our best shot in our preparation, we try different things. It's definitely a dark mist that hangs over South African cricket in knockout events. "At some point we are going to have to try and cross the line. It's going to require some real charisma, some real guts and glory to get over the line. It might not be pretty but at some point we are going to have to do it. It is an unfortunate thing. It's not for lack of trying. It does require an enormous amount of resilience, maybe certain types of individuals who can do it for us." "These guys play really good cricket year after year. At some point, you need to cross the line because people will continue looking at you and saying you can't do it. I don't think as individuals they get emotionally hijacked because they play brilliantly for other teams. It will require some really tough individuals to overcome it."

http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc-champions-trophy-2013/content/current/story/643565.html

[vvvslaxman]

http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc-champions-trophy-2013/content/current/story/643565.html

Good they admit.. some are still trying to sugarcoat with "we didn't choke " "we were never in the game" blah blah.. Fact is they have world's no.1 no.2 ODI batsman in their side. Came up with a total of 175 which is Pakistan's range.