Australia vice-captain David Warner held a heart-to-heart with Cameron Bancroft following the embattled opener's early dismissal on day one of the first Test against South Africa.
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Bancroft had trouble playing the off-stump when coming up against James Anderson and Stuart Broad in The Ashes, and more doubts were raised after he edged behind off Vernon Philander on just five in Durban.
The 25-year-old had already survived a review for lbw off Morne Morkel in a disjointed knock, while Warner and Steve Smith battled to make fifties as South Africa restricted the tourists to 5-225.
Despite his struggles in the middle, Warner is backing Bancroft to come good in five-day cricket.
"We had a good conversation today. We sat upstairs for quite a while and I spoke to him about the way he approaches it," he said.
"[I asked him] 'do you feel like sometimes you have to go after the ball or is it nervous energy?' He was quite insightful with what he was saying to me and I understood him and where he was coming from.
"He puts in the hard work at training and prepares as well as he can. You look back at the [Sheffield] Shield [runs] he scored against us and [the New South Wales] bowling attack at Hurstville [in November]. It's one of the best innings I've seen from him to date.
"I always talk to him about going back to that and thinking about 'how did you go so well?' and 'how can you replicate that on the big stage here?'.
"It's a different game, there's a lot of pressure about. I know he's so focused on his preparation, you can't fault that.
"It's just not happening out there at the moment. It will happen. You just need a bit of luck in this game."
The umpires have called it, that's stumps on day one. Your thoughts on the opening day's play?
— cricket.com.au (@CricketAus) March 1, 2018
Scorecard: https://t.co/OCM4Rg9T0K #SAvAUS pic.twitter.com/ln8rmVvg4h
On the state of the match, Warner added: "We're probably two down too many. We didn't assess for reverse [swing] in the first day - not after 24 or 25 overs. I think the wicket is quite two paced.
"There were a couple of short balls bowled which were obviously not getting up and then the odd one was taking off but it was - not that the bowling was slow, but it was slow off the wicket - so I think come day three or day four it's probably going to err on the low side and I think definitely spin is going to play a role in this game for sure."