Temba Bavuma expects South Africa to be more “relentless” as they ramp up preparations for the ODI World Cup.

South Africa were well on track to defend a below-par 222 in the first ODI against Australia and had them at 113 for 7, but an unbeaten 112-run partnership between concussion sub Marnus Labuschagne and No. 8 Ashton Agar saw Australia cruise to a comfortable win. Bavuma, who was not on the field for most of Australia’s chase as he recovered from a cramp he picked up while batting, was disappointed with his team’s inability to dismiss the Australian tail.

“If you get a team in that position, you expect yourself to be able to clean out the game,” he said afterwards. “We speak about being relentless. When you get given a sniff against a team like Australia, you’ve got to take it. If the situations were reversed, they would have prided themselves on cleaning up the game.”

This is not the first time that South Africa’s attack has been found wanting in this new season. They conceded a massive 226 against Australia in the first T20I last Wednesday and were unable to defend 190 in the third on Sunday.

Though Bavuma maintained that the two white-ball formats should be assessed differently because they have “different personnel”, there are some common concerns. Lungi Ngidi and Gerald Coetzee played across both series and South Africa’s insistence on only one seam-bowling allrounder – Marco Jansen in the case of ODIs – means if things go wrong, their resources look thin.

Bavuma was careful not to be too critical and believes there’s still some rust being shaken off after almost five months of inactivity for the national side. “We will get better,” he said. “These are world-class players we have in the team. We don’t expect them to keep making the same mistakes.”

Asked what he thought went wrong specifically in the first ODI – when he was not on the field to counsel his attack and T20I captain Aiden Markram did the job instead – Bavuma tried to keep it vague but made one fair observation. “It was just our inability to create chances in that innings. I would have encouraged the bowlers to use their bouncer a bit more,” he said.

On an unusually slow Bloemfontein surface with variable bounce, three of South Africa’s ten wickets fell to short balls and three of Australia’s seven went the same way. Towards the end of Australia’s innings, South Africa were barely bowling any and let the game drift to an inevitable conclusion.

But it would be unfair to say that’s where the game was lost. It was the contrasting powerplays – South Africa scored 25 for 1 in theirs and Australia 69 for 4 – which set the tone for the innings that came. Bavuma acknowledged his bowlers took too long to find their lengths. “The first ten overs weren’t great. We managed to get wickets, but at what cost? That’s just a mis-execution thing. If you look at our first ten overs versus theirs first ten overs, it was chalk and cheese,” he said.

South Africa have now lost four matches in a row to Australia, but Bavuma is not too worried about what that means. “We’ve lost one ODI game,” he said. “There’s no use referencing the T20s as that’s different personnel. We weren’t good enough and we need to find ways to improve our game holistically. We will challenge ourselves to get better.”

He also played down fears over his own fitness after he received treatment while batting and spent most of the Australia innings on the sidelines. “My hammie (hamstring) felt a bit tight but I think I will be fine.”

The second match of the series will also be played in Bloemfontein, on Saturday.