The results you would have wanted to be different, but I’m sure after having spent so much time off the field, you haven’t played much in recent months. That’s not the worst performance.
[Harsh Thaker:]
Yeah, I think it could have been a bit better. I feel like we did have a training camp in Sri Lanka for about the past month before we came here. But I think what we learned today was you know South Africa has one of the best pace attacks in the world with all their four guys pulling probably 140 plus. So there’s a lot of good learnings for us. Yes we could have executed better with the ball and maybe restricted them to 180 and with the bat I think we in the middle, I mean obviously at the start we lost a lot of wickets, but in the middle I felt like even me, maybe if I’d not played – I think I got the, the pace was okay for me. I think it was a slower ball that I played a few dot balls with. So just little things that we can learn from but obviously playing against South Africa it’s a massive boost for a country like Canada you know and it’ll just help us in the future.
[Reporter:]
Some rough moments in the game – How do you guys take what you learned today and move on to the next match?
[Harsh Thaker:]
As I said there’s a lot to take, there’s a lot of positives from today. You know Navi’s innings and the way that we built an innings after losing four wickets. Even with the ball I don’t think we were that bad in the start. Yes maybe we could have taken that De Kock catch earlier. Maybe things might have been a bit different. As I said, this is the first time we’re playing South Africa in a T20 international. So it’s unfair, and we haven’t played an international game in seven months. So yes, we could have done better. But we’ll take a lot of positives out of this going into the UAE game and in the games forward.
[Reporter:]
Something on your bowling attack. Last three overs, close to 50 runs conceded. If that would have been avoided, you could have kept them under 200.
[Harsh Thaker:]
As I said, yes, we could have executed better. I think, honestly, the bowlers tried their best. There’s a lot of plans that were made and they did. I felt like sometimes you just played fantastic shots. Like you had Tristan Stubbs and David Miller who were a few of the most dangerous batsmen in the world. So yes, we could have executed better. We will plan better for the next game and come back with better execution.
[Reporter:]
You said you all hadn’t played international T20 for the last seven months. You must have qualified by then. So what was the reason for not playing when you knew that you were going for World Cup and big teams? Then why wasn’t it done? Why you all didn’t play any matches or even warm-up matches?
[Harsh Thaker:]
That’s not, like, it’s not in my control. As a player, I don’t choose the series that we play against. It’s something that we can talk about going into the future. If we make the next World Cup, you know, we can talk about playing more series. As I said, we did go to a camp in Sri Lanka where we played against quality Sri Lankan A sides, and I think we played about four or five games there. We played a game against Oman, also a practice game in Sri Lanka, and then we had two warm-up games here. But yes, I do agree that we could have played maybe a series here and there in the winter, but it’s not something that I can control.
[Reporter:]
Can you tell us what is your Gujarat connection?
[Harsh Thaker:]
I’m actually born in Ahmedabad, so I’m coming back to Ahmedabad. I was born here when, I was born in Ahmedabad, I was born near Maninagar, and I moved out of Ahmedabad when I was nine years old. So it’s like a home comeback for me and my family is super excited for that too.
[Reporter:]
You did mention about the De Kock catch, but we saw three other very fine catches from your team. So considering that you don’t all didn’t have much of cricket leading in, how do you sharpen those skills? And can you talk a bit about how you go about your fielding skills and drills?
[Harsh Thaker:]
I think we’re not bad with the on the field today. I think we took some great catches. Ground fielding could have been a slightly better. Obviously not at the standard that we want to be. I think I know that we can do better than this and but it’s just about executing at the right time in a moment like this. You know we don’t get to play a World Cup every year it comes once every two years for us so we want to take this opportunity to show the world that Canada has talented players and that’s what we’re trying to do yes next game we’ll talk to coach we’ll talk to coaches we’ll talk in the back end and see how we can get better.
