Victorious Vettori

One of the more remarkable statistics that came up during this game was that neither side had ever won a World Cup knockout game before, although partial mitigation lies in the fact that this is only the second World Cup to feature quarter-finals, the first being in 1996. Both sides have, of course, been close before: New Zealand were narrowly beaten by England in the 1979 semi-final and South Africa came close in both 1992 and 1999, but that was it. Something, therefore, was going to change.

It is, of course, impossible to write about this match without mentioning the dreaded word ‘choke’. Matthew Syed, in his rather hit and miss book ‘Bounce’, writes well about his experiences in the Olympics when his game completely disintegrated, the consequence, in his view, of being too obsessively prepared and of the end result meaning too much, thus stifling his natural game. By this definition the actions of the opponent are largely irrelevant, since the problems lie exclusively in the head and, therefore, the body of the choker. This was not the case here.

Sporting fan culture now sees any defeat of a favourite as a choke, which is to do the opposition a disservice. South Africa’s batting line-up, with Smith out of form, Duminy struggling against test playing nations and Botha ludicrously high at number seven, was very reliant upon one of Hashim Amla, Jacques Kallis or AB De Villiers making a significant contribution but none, for various reasons, did. It is easy to be wise after the event, but the decision to omit Mark Boucher from the squad left the lower middle order short of experience and steel and, although the selection guaranteed the strength of the bowling attack, they were vulnerable to a collapse.

Hashim Amla’s dismissal was freakish, a hard underedge rebounding an extraordinarily long way from Brendon McCullum’s clearly well padded toes to Daniel Vettori at slip, and the out of sorts Smith unsurprisingly fell without having made a significant contribution. The loss of form of the captain hit South Africa hard both in this game and against England since he has often been the rock upon which successful run chases have been built and it left a significant burden on Kallis and De Villiers.

At 108-2 all looked plain sailing and the various online commentaries were basically counting down to South Africa’s inevitable victory, but the ensuing collapse, with one notable exception, containing only one real brain fart, the rest was a consequence of some good bowling and fielding to batsmen who weren’t really up to the job.

Kallis’s dismissal looks crass now, but as he hit the ball everyone assumed that he had regally dispatched another boundary. It was only when Jacob Oram made up a significant amount of ground and used every inch of his height that that view changed. Had Nathan McCullum been fielding where Oram was we would have been praising a glorious shot from Kallis – such are the fine margins of cricket. Duminy’s dismissal was unimpressive but then so is his batting in general – he certainly looks a shadow of the player who burst onto the scene with his test winning hundred in Australia. Even after he had gone South Africa should still have been in control, needing just to keep a cool head as Yuvraj and Suresh Raina had the day before. This was the brain fart moment – an absurd attempt at a single to Martin Guptill, who had fielded brilliantly throughout. Had Faf Du Plessis and AB De Villiers batted together for another ten overs then surely the game would have been won, but now the lopsidedness of the South African batting order was revealed. Botha and Peterson had slogged merrily to win the game against India, but it is asking a lot for tailenders to come to the rescue too often and they simply weren’t up to the task. To put this into some sort of content, none of South Africa’s bottom five average over twenty in ODIs and don’t have a single half century to their name whereas New Zealand’s numbers eight and nine boast sixteen fifties and a hundred.

Even so, the end came quickly, almost in a blur. Du Plessis tried hard but he isn’t from the higher echelons of international batting and it was too much to ask for him to take South Africa home on his own. The selectors, again, need to ask themselves if he was really the best choice that they could have made.  

South Africa’s woe, however, was New Zealand’s joy. After their limp defeat to Australia I wrote a post writing them off as no-hopers but now they find themselves in a semi-final. They are a versatile, superbly captained, lot who will scrap for everything. It seems likely that Sri Lanka will be a step too far, but they have delighted in proving people wrong thus far and will be determined to cause another upset. No praise is too high for their performance in this game. I am also conscious of the fact that I wrote them off in the preview to this game – I am more than happy to eat humble pie (although I should point out that I originally tipped South Africa to go out in the quarter-finals, so all is not quite lost).