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'Aggressive bowling won it for SA' - Graeme Smith

Graeme Smith, the South Africa captain, has singled out his team's aggressive bowling as the factor that clinched a 67-run win in Dominica for the visitors and enabled them to take an unassailable 3-0 lead in the five-match series

Cricinfo staff
28-May-2010
AB de Villiers continued his successful run with the bat  •  Associated Press

AB de Villiers continued his successful run with the bat  •  Associated Press

Graeme Smith, the South Africa captain, has singled out his team's aggressive bowling as the factor that clinched a 67-run win in Dominica, which gave the visitors an unassailable 3-0 lead in the five-match series. West Indies put in a spirited performance with the ball, bowling out South Africa for 224 in a must-win game, but capitulated during the chase in the wake of attacking bowling from Morne Morkel, Dale Steyn and Charl Langeveldt, who shared eight wickets between them.
"The bowlers today must take the credit. They bowled with real aggression and intensity and today it's their win," Smith said after the match. "I thought we let ourselves down [with the bat] with some poor cricket, especially in the last 20 overs - a bit of awareness levels and making some bad decisions under pressure. But we knew the wicket had a bit in for the bowlers.
"We spoke in the meeting yesterday about being more aggressive with the ball, particularly with a few of their players. Today the surface really allowed us to do that, especially once the ball got older. It got a bit two-paced once you hit the deck hard - one would go through, one would stop. It really allowed us to play aggressively. Credit to the guys, they took it on board and it worked for us."
The series win, in addition to victories in the Twenty20 games on this tour, marks a positive turn of events for South Africa after exiting the World Twenty20 during the Super Eights earlier this month. "Only five or six games ago, we were in a very disappointing place," Smith said. "We had to bounce back and we did that."
Smith's counterpart Chris Gayle had West Indies' batting to blame for the defeat. While admitting there was a huge reliance on him to get his team off to a good start, he also called on the others to shoulder the responsibility. "We started well, restricting them to 224 was a good effort but not getting there was a lot of disappointment," Gayle said. "The bowlers have been doing a wonderful job for us. The area we have to work on is our batting. In the outfield as well, our energy was very good. But we faltered in our batting.
"A lot of guys actually look up to me to try and give them a good start. But if that doesn't happen they should put their hands up and be counted."
AB de Villiers was Man of the Match for his 70, which helped his team post a total it managed to defend quite comfortably in the end. His innings included only two fours and a six, but came off just 80 balls. He has been in prolific form this series with scores of 102 and 41 in his previous two games. "I understand my role in the middle order at the moment, I'm really enjoying batting at No.4," he said. "You've got some class players up front and some class to finish the innings. I'm just there playing my role and batting as long as possible, and trying to get the strike rate to 100% as much as possible."
The first of the two dead rubbers will be held in Dominica on Sunday.