'The toughest period'

Having presided over South Africa’s first away series loss in nine years, Hashim Amla’s disappointment was understandable. The soft-spoken South African skipper termed the conditions for this series as the “toughest” he has encountered in his career though he managed keep to Indian spinners at bay in the second innings along with Faf du Plessis. Excerpts from his media briefing.

On if these were the tough days in office: Yeah, definitely. Probably three of the toughest I have experienced in my Test career. The surface was probably the toughest I have had as well, and the cricket itself was really difficult. So credit to India, they kind of bowled well and unfortunately we ended up on the wrong side of this game.

On the disappointment of losing series: Very disappointing. Fortunately, throughout my career, we’ve been travelling away and managing to play very good cricket. I suppose one kind of consolation would be that the conditions we’ve had to play were probably never like we’ve had when we’ve played away from home, and that type of challenge we’ve never experienced before.

On if he has managed to find way to tackle Indian spinners: Firstly, in terms of not throwing our wickets away, I think we could have still ended up all out for 70 or 100 in the second innings. There were so many plays and misses, edges that could have gone to hand, so it’s easy to say that, how we batted in the second innings, we could have batted in the first innings, but I think the circumstances were different. Some balls go to hand, some balls don’t go to hand. And us scoring, we scored very slowly, so I don’t think we were as positive, but it was disappointing, the first innings, not to get a score closer to them.

On SA batsmen’s technique against spin: If you look at both teams, would the same criticism be for the Indian team? That’s an important point for me, to take into consideration. I don’t think many guys would say that Virat (Kohli) and Murali Vijay are not good players of spin. Obviously they are very good players of spin, but in this series so far they have also managed to find some difficulty. So yeah, there might be something, but when you look at it in perspective, I don’t think there was much in it. Quality of the Indian spinners, certainly exceptional in these conditions, and you’ve got to give it to them.