WELLINGTON // AB de Villiers, the South Africa captain, believes his side are the best in the Cricket World Cup, despite their pool stage defeats to India and Pakistan.
The Proteas, who face the UAE in Wellington tomorrow in their final group match, have twice scored in excess of 400 so far in the competition.
However, they were also soundly beaten by India, and also lost to Pakistan when batting second.
De Villiers says his side were hurt by the losses to the Asian sides, but that their self-belief has not been knocked.
“We’ve moved on from the last game, it is past tense now,” De Villiers said.
“I still feel very confident. I 100 per cent believe we’re the best team in the tournament here.
“Those two losses in the group stages did hurt us a bit and did hurt me a bit, but we’re past that now.
“We know we’re a few games away from taking that World Cup home.
“For now the most important game is tomorrow, but we know we’re not far off, so it’s important to be positive and still believe that we’re the best.”
Ahead of a potential quarter-final with Sri Lanka, De Villiers wants to build confidence via the encounter with the winless UAE side.
“The World Cup is a funny tournament,” he said. “If you look at the standings at the moment, we win the last game, we’ll be in a good position to go with a lot of confidence into the quarters.
“Yes, we would have liked to win those two games, the two big games against India and Pakistan.
“It didn’t happen that way, and there’s no time to sulk about that now. It’s a really important stage of our World Cup moving forward.
“Now it’s important to be confident, and I still want the boys to believe we’re the best, which we are.
“We’re just going to go in with that kind of attitude in tomorrow’s game, and then whatever comes around for the quarters, we’ll take it head on.
pradley@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE
