• Proteas coach Mark Boucher said their inability to win big moments has been costly on the Pakistan tour
• South Africa lost the third T20 against Pakistan to lose the series 2-1
• South Africa collapsed to 48/6, but recovered to 164/8 thanks to David Miller’s unbeaten 85

Proteas coach Mark Boucher says his side has been finding stupid ways to lose games during their now-completed tour of Pakistan.

South Africa lost the third T20 against Pakistan on Sunday to lose the series 2-1.

After losing the first game chasing where they stalled against spin, the Proteas were again trapped by spin in the third T20 where they collapsed to 48/6 before David Miller’s spirited recovery saw them post 164/8 in their 20 overs.

Despite Pakistan’s noted weakness in chasing totals of 160 and above, a collective batting effort saw them hunt down the target with more than an over to spare.

Boucher said their inability to win the big moments was costly throughout the tour. South Africa’s collapses against both spin and pace cost them dearly on a tour where they lost four out of five games in all formats.

“You could look back and say that the big moments cost us on this tour, but for me as a coach, we’ve spoken about them and will continue to try and get through to the guys that they need to improve and not make the same mistakes again. If we can do that, we’ll be going in the right direction. The way we played some of the big moments was disappointing. We played ourselves into the game and found stupid ways to get ourselves out of the game again,” Boucher said.

“The nice thing about T20 cricket is that you can analyse each moment. In the first T20, there was a problem with the batting from overs six to 10, so we could have done better there. In the second game, things went to plan but in the last game, losing three or four wickets in the space of three overs was always going to put is under pressure.”

South Africa’s bowling, their one redeeming feature of the tour, faltered in the last T20. While the spin of Tabraiz Shamsi and Bjorn Fortuin prospered, SA’s death bowling left a lot to be desired.

Boucher said the death bowling remains a work in progress, but he was happy with the depth they are building in the absence of first-choice players.

“We’re bowling a lot of yorkers at training, so that’s what is being done about them and we also see the stats on TV. It is something that we continuously work on, but it’s difficult when there’s a lot of dew around. It’s hard to judge the guys on that, but I also think Pakistan’s death bowling also wasn’t that good,” Boucher said.

“We’re also trying to get quite a few players to be options at the death now and the only way for that to happen is to put guys under pressure. The more we can get guys to do this, the more options we’ll have. In this particular tour, we tried out other guys, so we are working on it.”