WE DIDN’T HIT SO LET”S GIGGLE AND MOVE ON
After the way they’d dominated all opponents with the exception of Afghanistan and set themselves up as the team to beat in the T20 Cricket World Cup, the Proteas’ humiliating exit at the hands of their previous nemesis at this stage of global tournaments was disappointing.
However, before people embrace the ‘C’ word as a lazy way of explaining how once again the national cricketers have fallen short at a semifinal, let’s do a reality check. Before the toss I had the South Africans as 60/40 favourites. You can’t ever be too overwhelming favourites when playing a playoff in the shortest format of the game, particularly not when you are playing another good team.
But the toss was always going to be decisive at an Eden Gardens venue where the dew factor always has a big role to play in a night game. When New Zealand captain Mitch Santner called correctly it was obvious he would insert Aiden Markram’s team as the chasing team has a massive advantage due to the impact the dew has on both the field and the pitch in the second innings of the game.
To me when the Kiwis won the toss, 60/40 to SA immediately became 50/50 or even 55/45 to New Zealand. And that misgiving was quickly vindicated when it became evident that the ball was holding up and the early match conditions suited the fielding team. SA, aware that a big score was needed to test the team batting second on what would improved batting conditions, were under pressure.
Indeed, it reminded me of another semifinal SA played at Eden Gardens - two-and-a-bit years ago Australia fielded first in the CWC ODI semifinal and effectively won the match when their excellent bowling attack exploited the favourable conditions in the first hour.
That’s how it is in limited overs cricket sometimes, in fact in all forms of cricket - the toss can be huge when you play in a test too, which is why I always prefer a longer series as a means to establishing the superior team than a one-off test or two-game rubber.
In that ODI semifinal the Proteas dug in with a rearguard century from David Miller but in a 20 over game there is obviously less time to adjust, and they were facing a double whammy in the sense that while playing most of their games on the true surface in Ahmedabad had helped them up to that point, the sudden switch of conditions for their first knock-out game was a hindrance.
Marco Jansen did give them a chance with his long levers but 169 was never going to be enough given the way the wicket became more and more batting friendly as the game endured. Indeed, the Kiwis admitted during the break that they’d been encouraged by how it had appeared to ease up when Tristan Stubbs and Marco Jansen were charging towards the end of the SA innings.
Their small chance of winning was dependent on them having some luck during the power play and they had none. The New Zealand openers got off to a flyer and their momentum just fed more momentum and the match was effectively over as a contest after those six overs.
The Proteas were a pale replica of what they had been for most of the tournament by the end of it but no team is unbeatable in this format, and I said to mates before the start of the playoffs that SA had already what should have been their target by making the last four.
T20 is so unpredictable that the best you can do really in a T20 global tournament is make sure you make the top four. After that your fate is in the lap of the gods.
I’ve become a bit more vested in T20 than I used to be, it has grown on me a bit, but it is still more “hit and giggle” in my book than the other formats. If you offered the chance to trade last year’s Cricket Test Championship trophy win for the T20 World Cup, I think the Proteas players who play both formats would laugh at you.
And now that it’s over we can laugh too. It would have been an achievement to celebrate had the Proteas gone on to win the final, but that they didn’t isn’t a reason to don the sackcloth and go into mourning. It was a day the Proteas hit just didn’t come off so rather just giggle and move on.
NEXT YEAR’S ODI WORLD CUP IS THE BIGGIE
Maybe it is apt that the Proteas missed out this time if it means they have an opportunity to break their white ball duck in CWC’s on their own soil. Yes, next year is the biggie - the ODI tournament, which is where the South African’s have suffered the most hurt and have the history that everyone refers to, will be played here in 2027, and the Proteas do have the players to go all the way.
Indeed, if you have the time to watch a game in the CSA One-Day Cup, which I have because sometimes I think this column’s title should be changed to ‘The Life of the Idle Rich’, you might notice the depth there is in the local game currently.
When we are talking the longer format of white ball game, there are talented players like Matthew Breetzke who have already excelled at international level and are reminding us of their abilities at domestic level. I watched one of the men who missed out on the T20 World Cup because of injury, Tony de Zorzi, batting at the Wanderers at the weekend and it provided a reminder of why he was selected.
It was in the ODI World Cup that the Proteas were so cruelly denied by rain in the first one they participated in, in Australia in 1992 and where the biggest scar of all was created when Allan Donald was run out with the scores tied in the 1999 semifinal at Egbaston.
In fact, to my mind they were also denied by the rain interruption in the 2015 semifinal in New Zealand. They were flying before the rain came when they were batting first and apart from the break in momentum the DL adjustment meant the Kiwis had a more reachable target that suited the crash and bash opening style of their then captain and current England coach Brendon McCullum.
Apart from all the history, the ODI World Cup is played only every four years, whereas the T20 World Cup comes up every two years. But if there’s a tournament where a ghost needs to be laid to rest it is in the ODI version, and it will be apt if it is here in SA that it happens.
And in a format that to me anyway makes the better teams less slave to fate, vulnerable to one sublime knock of just a few overs of slogging, than the shortest one is.
THE LOWEST MOMENT CUED THE ENTRY OF JOHN CLEESE
That 1999 tie against Australia, which saw the Aussies go through because they’d won a group game against SA (also very closely fought), was probably the closest I have ever come to be sent in to a proper fit of depression because of a sporting result.
When the rain came in Sydney in 1992 the odds were still against the Proteas winning, and when later in 1999 the Springboks lost in agonising fashion to Australia in extra time of a Rugby World Cup semifinal at Twickenham, remember the Stephen Larkham freak drop-goal, the disappointment was assuaged by my view that the Wallabies were the better team.
Extra time only came about because of a stupendous pressure penalty kick from Jannie de Beer that levelled the scores off the last play of normal time.
The Proteas should have won that June 1999 game after the most fraught day spent with the rest of the SA rugby media crew who were covering the Italy rugby tour of SA (on the Saturday the Boks beat Italy 101-0 at Kings Park under the captaincy of debutant Corne Krige.
We were in Durban, my parents were away, I opened up their double story house in Durban North for an all day party around watching the cricket.
It was the days when we all got quite handsome daily allowances from our companies, so let’s just say there was lots to eat and drink when the fires were lit later in the evening as the Egbaston game wound towards its tense conclusion. There was a stage when we thought the game had been won and the celebrations started, only for it to prove premature.
What happens on tour stays on tour but let’s just say that the disappointment that enveloped the early part of the evening, and it really did feel like someone had died, gave way to a wild night that those who were there have never forgotten.
What my mate Mike Greenaway, long time scribe at The Mercury, will particularly remember, is a conversation he had with John Cleese. Yes, that John Cleese, THE John Cleese, he of Fawlty Towers and Monty Python fame.
Mike’s girlfriend at the time was a Kiwi nurse working in London. Cleese was in the hospital she worked at for a minor procedure. Cleese spent that day watching the cricket on television and afterwards, after the bizarre ending, he muttered aloud that he wondered how South Africans were feeling about it, he wished he could speak to a South African now.
Mike’s partner told him he could do that, and phoned Mike, who couldn’t believe he ended up having to describe his feeling of utter desolation to Basil Fawlty in an international phone call.
THE KIWIS WOULD FLIP IF RASSIE GOT JAMIE TO TEAM UP WITH BROWNIE
Okay, so the one thing that might be irritating about the T20 semifinal loss was that it was once again against the Kiwis. South Africa have tended to dominate that nation on the cricket field since the return from isolation, but not when it comes to head to head battles in World Cup knock-out games.
My money says most Kiwis would happily trade those cricket wins for at least one win in the two Rugby World Cup finals the All Blacks have lost to the Boks (1995 and 2023), but nonetheless Rassie is the perfect person to get back at them. And he doesn’t need to wait until ‘The Greatest Rivalry Series either’.
Despite the Springbok attack coach Tony Brown’s assurances to the contrary, I felt he might well be swayed by his good mate and long time partner in the coaching box Jamie Joseph had the former All Black flanker been appointed as the replacement for the recently axed Razor Robertson as New Zealand’s national coach.
Now that Dave Rennie has been appointed instead it won’t happen and that is probably something that irritates some Kiwi pundits who have witnessed the impact ‘Brownie’ has had on the Boks over the past two years.
Rassie’s management team is already big enough but seeing that Joseph is reportedly “miffed” at the decision, it would be excellent irritation value, and don’t tell me Rassie’s sense of mischievousness doesn’t extend to an enjoyment of irritating people, if he recruited Jamie to join Brownie in his coaching team.
JAMIE IS RIGHT IN SAYING APPOINTMENT PROCESS WAS NONSENSE
Apparently the reason Joseph was miffed was because he was an outspoken critic of the way the New Zealand rugby administration was going about the process of determining the new coach. He had members of the appointing committee come and observe his training sessions and sit in on his team meetings, and also had to go through an extensive interview process.
He is quite right for thinking it’s bollocks given that his body of work that qualifies him for the job should be plain to see - his success with lightweight Japan at their own World Cup in 2019, guiding the Highlanders to a Super Rugby title, being the coach of the All Black XV last year etc etc.
I’ve never understood the requirement in the corporate world for an extensive interview process and red tape to be cut through when the appointee has clearly shown publicly what he can do. I’m not a rugby coach, but I also do a job, like Joseph does, where your ability or lack of ability should be easily gleaned by just looking at your body of work.
When I moved from the Mercury in Durban to the Argus in 1994, the Mercury editor sent me to Cape Town because he thought the Argus editor, Andrew Drysdale, would want to interview me. It coincided with a test at Newlands between the Boks and England, so there was method to me wanting to go to Cape Town, and I was quite happy when I arrived to find that Drysdale had made it clear no interview was necessary.
He’d seen my body of work, it was why he was hiring me. It was in the Mercury every day, it was there for him to read on the wires. When I took up employment at the Argus, it was at least a week before I eventually went into the editor’s office to meet him face to face for the first time.
Yes, obviously some negotiation had to be done around payment and working conditions, in both Joseph’s case and mine, but Joseph didn’t need people to come and observe him at work. Surely his work spoke for itself.
THE BOK INTERVIEW PROCESS BACK IN THE DAY WAS RIDICULOUS
I think I have written before about how South Africa’s first post-isolation Bok coach, Professor John Williams, was appointed. There was no interview for him. He was told by people who’d read it in the newspapers, and only had it confirmed when he phoned the SARFU general manager Arrie Oberholzer to ask him if the rumours were true.
If there was a coach who should have been put through a thorough interviewing process it was Carel du Plessis. The Prince of Wings, as he was known, had little coaching experience outside of an advisory role at UWC when he was appointed as Bok coach in 1997. When there is no body of work, then there should surely be a thorough interview process.
There was a brief interview around payment and conditions of employment after he was appointed, but Carel told me when I interviewed him for my book on the Springbok coaches, The Poisoned Chalice, that he wasn’t even asked about his rugby philosophy.
If there was one coach who should have been interrogated about philosophy it was Du Plessis, because he had a very different outlook to previous Bok coaches.
What he tried to do when he took over at the Boks was completely new and it didn’t just take the players by surprise, but also the people who employed him. It was one of the reasons he didn’t even see out his first season as Bok coach.
Had there been a proper interview a decision could have been made over whether SA rugby wanted to go in the direction Carel proposed taking the Boks. If they decided they were on side with his approach, they could have helped him more than they did.
Joseph though, unlike Carel, has been a coach for many years. Yes, there should be negotiation, and obviously the appointment committee would want an assurance you aren’t as a coach going to be bring in something radically off-beam, but I have to agree with the New Zealand Herald columnist Gregor Paul, and by extension Joseph, that the New Zealand appointment process does seem a bit archaic.