Now it’s been some time since I put finger to keyboard and wrote from the heart but they say time heals all wounds. It’s been almost a week since South Africa’s exit from the World Cup, I’ve given myself time to reflect with the assistance of numerous substances and I find myself in a place of relative clarity. The dissections have begun, the CSI’s have scoured the scene and every armchair critic and his parrot have had their say, so why not one more. I’m not here to kick these men while they’re down, I could see the pain etched on their faces in Dhaka. I just want to put out my reasoning, however flawed, behind our seemingly inexplicable demise.
A phrase comes to mind when I think of the match, “Shit happens!”. I feel we had all the ingredients, planning, preparation, make-up of the team but on the day we were beaten by the better side. Now that’s a bitter pill to swallow as favourites, but as an experienced armchair critic I’ve seen my fair share of favourites getting beaten by a better team on the day, but the “C” word has never come up. Imagine calling Man Utd chokers when they lost to Leeds in the FA Cup. Sir Alex would probably come to your house and piss on your cat. So lets start at the beginning, we lost the toss of all tosses. Batting second on low, slow, subcontinental wickets is as hard as it gets. The results in the semi-finals only seem to help make my point. Yes, Sri Lanka won batting second, but it was considerably harder and they would’ve fallen short had New Zealand added 15 or 20 to that score. We bowled and fielded brilliantly to restrict New Zealand and it must be said that Graeme Smiths captaincy was almost flawless whilst out in the field. He used his bowlers well and never let the Black Cap batsmen get into a rhythm.
Now my “Shit happens” comment can be attributed to the first over of our innings when the cricketing gods inexplicably struck out Hashim Amla in one of the most ridiculous dismissals I’ve seen in my cricket watching career. I sensed it then. Deep down, that feeling was there. To lose the best one day batsmen I that manner, that is a game changer. Make no doubt about it, when you bank on your top 4 to do a majority of the scoring and 1 of them gets out in that manner, it has an impact. Couple that with the run-out of AB and we’ve lost the two best batsmen in the world in unnecessary circumstances. We did recover admirably until in 5 overs we contrived to throw the world cup away, but what can be said is New Zealand played their part in assisting us. To say we choked doesn’t give the Black Caps credit where it is due. We were outplayed, plain and simple, lets stop crying about it, stop the enquiries and move on. A new coach, a new captain, a good young side that will play in many more ICC events. It could be worse, we could be Australian...
