'Team is moving in the right direction' – Lungi Ngidi

South Africa, who failed to win a trophy against England earlier this year, whitewashed Australia 3-0 in the ODIs after conceding a 2-1 defeat in the T20Is and Ngidi praised the team's efforts.

"The team did a lot of good things this summer and has taken the right direction," he told the reporters. "There is still a lot of work to be done. But it was very good to see a couple of wins against some of the best teams in the world.

"It does show that we have a very strong team. We've got 4-5 new guys coming into the team, so it's a different phase for us. It's moving in the right direction."

South Africa travelled to India after the Australia series to play three ODIs. After the first game was washed out, the remaining matches were called off due to the pandemic that forced the Proteas to return home.

"It's not nice to lose a series at home, so to come out and want to win was one of the main things that drove players towards that whitewash," said Ngidi. "We always believed in ourselves. Winning games gives you the confidence and moving to India you could see belief and it was really exciting to see. But due to the certain events that occurred after that, that's gone now. So we got to start from scratch and rebuild the energy we had."

Frequent injuries have plagued the 24-year-old fast bowler. Ngidi did not feature in any of South Africa's four home Tests after he picked up a hamstring injury in the Mzansi Super League last December. He, however, participated in all of their T20Is and ODIs.

Despite having picked up 24 wickets at an average of just over 15 in white-ball cricket this year, Ngidi gave his own performance a modest rating of 6 out of 10, owing to an economy rate of 8.65.

"If I were to rate my performance over the last summer, I would probably rate it 6. It was good but for me personally it wasn't good enough. There were a few games where I could've gone for fewer runs. I did pick up a few wickets and that is my job. I was happy with that but it's not the finished product and I still feel that I can deliver a whole lot more and a whole lot better."

It's been well over a month since South Africa played their last international match, and Ngidi hopes to see the ongoing crisis settle down and for cricket to resume. "It wasn't a very busy 18-odd months for me. I only started playing in January again. Even though in the short space of time, I played a lot of games.

"It wasn't that hectic for me, but there were guys like Quinton who had been playing for months. I'm Itching to get back on the field but there is nothing you could do. All you can do is wait and see what happens."