'Slightly embarrassing' - Shukri Conrad admits South Africa got 'exposed' with 342-run loss to England

South African head coach Shukri Conrad has admitted that he was "slightly embarrassed" by his team's performance in the final ODI of the three-match series against England. After taking an unassailable lead in the series by winning the first two ODIs, South Africa lost the final game by a record 342-run margin.

Conrad underscored the importance of being "on top of your game", and felt that the South African unit got exposed with the way they batted in the final encounter.

"Any excuse is better than none. We were definitely off today. And against a top side like England, when you're not on top of your game, you do get exposed. A similar thing happened in Australia, where after going 2-0 up, it was a complete aberration. They got in excess of 400 as well," Conrad was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.

Conrad, however, was relieved that such a performance came in a dead rubber and not when the series was alive. However, he re-emphasised the resounding nature of the defeat.  

"But if we were going to be poor at something, we'd rather be poor at games that aren't clutch games. We're not making light of today's defeat. That was slightly embarrassing. I'm not offering it as an excuse because it's not supposed to be like that, but the fielding wasn't at the usual high standard that we set. All in all, yeah, it was an embarrassing performance in the field," he added.

Conrad also provided an update on Kagiso Rabada, who did not feature in any of the ODIs against England because of an extended recovery after an ankle injury. 

"The T20 is the priority for us. When we earned the right to give him another rest, we definitely exercised that because with the T20 World Cup looming, we want to make sure that we get a good take on that. We've obviously got two massive Test series [against Pakistan and India] coming up," he added.

South Africa will play three T20Is against England between September 10 to September 14. They will then take on Namibia in a one-off T20I before heading over to Pakistan for an all-format series including two Tests, three T20Is and three ODIs.