Pakistan can win the Champions Trophy: Duminy

By Rahul Bajaj
for Cricketain.com

Published: September 29, 2009

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Johannesburg: With South Africa knocked out of the tournament with a 22-run defeat against England, middle order batsman Jaen-Paul Duminy feels that Pakistan look good enough to win the Champions Trophy.

“With us now on our way to our respective homes, my tournament prediction for the final is: Australia vs Pakistan. I’m not much of a betting man, but I’m going for Pakistan. They are looking like the form team of the tournament,” he said.

Duminy said that he was hugely disappointed as South Africa once again failed to make the finals of an ICC event. This is the third consecutive time that South Africa has been knocked out of a major ICC event which is being held on their home turf starting with The 2003 World Cup, then the World Twenty20 in 2007 and now the Champions Trophy this year completing the dreaded hat-trick for the Proteas. Three global events on home turf, and not even a semi-final place to show for it!

“… another failed ICC campaign. The disappointment levels are huge, especially coming so close on the back of the T20 World Championship exit. I took that defeat very personally, but this one has really hit as a team. After all the hype of coming into the Champions Trophy as the No 1 team in the world, and then to end last in our group is hugely disappointing. We know we have let a lot of people down. The tournament is in our backyard and we really wanted to give the people of South Africa something to celebrate,” he wrote in his column for ‘Independent Online’.

“We’ve got no excuses because as a team we knew what we had to do. All we can do is learn from these demoralising defeats and hope when the next time comes around we can implement our skills under pressure,” Duminy said.

Duminy, though, was all praise for his captain Graeme Smith who fought a lone battle in the match against England. The story could have been totally different if even one batsman had supported the magnificent performance by skipper Graeme Smith, who made a career best 141.

“Oh captain, my captain! What an innings by Graeme last night. The skip must have played one of the most outstanding One-Day International innings of all time,” Duminy said.

When asked, Smith said that it was disappointing to bat like that and still end up on the losing side. “It’s kind of difficult to sum that up right now. I was batting and also on the field all day. Obviously, words like disappointment come to mind. It’ll need a day or two to consider what happened. It’s disappointing when you’ve played a knock like that not to get over the line,” he said.

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