Petersen concerned about lack of consistent Test centuries from batters

JOHANNESBURG: Former South Africa cricketer Alviro Petersen is concerned about the lack of consistent Test centuries from the current set of players. He added that the South Africa batters should change their mindset and keep big hundreds as targets.

South Africa lost the first Test at Centurion to India by 113 runs and are trailing 1-0 ahead of the second match at the Wanderers starting from Monday.

"If you look at the SA batting line-up at the moment, I always look at the hundreds scored. I look at guys who can score hundreds, I look at domestic cricket and ask how often do they score hundreds because that is the yardstick when it comes to Test cricket. You need players batting for lengths of time and batting consistently well," Petersen was quoted as saying by Times Live.

In the series opener at SuperSport Park, India had a century-maker in KL Rahul, who made 123 in the first innings. South Africa, on the other hand, had no batter touching the three-figure mark. South Africa's last three centurions since 2021 have been Aiden Markram (108 against Pakistan), Dean Elgar (127 against Sri Lanka) and recently-retired Quinton de Kock (141 not out against West Indies).

"If you look over the past years, there were guys who had lots of first-class hundreds and at the moment you don't see that in the national team. Despite what is the standard of first-class cricket at the moment, players need to be scoring hundreds week in and week out and unfortunately that is not happening at the moment," added Petersen, who played 36 Tests for South Africa, scoring 2,093 runs including five centuries. IANS

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