A 14-year-old Bloemfontein boy, tall for his age, singular in his ambition, watched Grant Elliott launch Dale Steyn down the ground for six at Eden Park to send South Africa crashing out of another World Cup. In the coming days he would read about CSA’s crass and thoughtless interference in the selection of the XI for that semifinal.
Four years later in England, when the boy was just old enough to vote and drink beer legally, South Africa shambled through their worst performance at a World Cup, losing five of their eight completed matches. They have also failed to win any of the three editions of what is now the men’s T20 World Cup since the now 23-year-old has been paying attention.
And yet Gerald Coetzee, who grew up so obsessed with cricket that he played no other sport from the age of 11, hasn’t been scared away by events on and off the field from trying to help win the country’s first senior global cricket title. “Not at all,” Coetzee said. “It’s a great opportunity. You want to be put in those positions. We cannot wait for Thursday.”
This Thursday, he meant, at Eden Gardens – where South Africa will take on Australia in the second semifinal of this year’s tournament. “We’re talking about winning a World Cup, but we understand that it’s cricket and that’s a difficult game,” Coetzee said. “There’s no dishonour in losing. We’re coming to play. Whatever happens will happen. That is out of our control. But we’ll pitch up and play our best cricket. If we lose, we lose. If someone wants to call us chokers, that’s outside our control. But we’re playing to win.”
The 2015 clash with New Zealand was the first World Cup semifinal Coetzee watched: “Everyone backed the Proteas to win the World Cup that year, and they didn’t. Someone has to lose on the day, and they played really good cricket. It’s the beauty of sport. That’s why people keep coming back to watch it.”
Coetzee beamed with positivity and energy as he spoke, a cocker spaniel puppy in human form. First-hand veterans of that helter skelter, harem scarem night in Auckland eight years ago couldn’t help contrasting Coetzee’s bright and bouncy presence with the wreck of a human being AB de Villiers was at the post-match press conference.
The 2015 script was written immediately when CSA’s bloodless suits demanded that Kyle Abbott, South Africa’s most successful seamer at that World Cup, be axed in favour of a half-fit Vernon Philander. Both players, in a way, ended up being victims. Some of the authors of the catastrophe have moved on. Others, incredibly, still prowl CSA’s corridors of sheltered deployment, nameless, shameless, and, as far as they’re concerned, blameless for the mess they made.
De Villiers retired from international cricket in May 2018, but the story of his all too casual offer to make a comeback at the 2019 World Cup – without a commitment to play in South Africa’s matches before the tournament – broke during the tournament and helped derail that campaign. Unlike everyone else involved in the saga, De Villiers walked away unscathed.
It will help Coetzee’s state of mind, and that of all the seven members of the current squad of 15 who were not there in 2019, much less in 2015, that they don’t carry the scars of those dramas. Similarly, the infamous tied semifinal against the Australians at Edgbaston in 1999 would barely register with them.
They probably have a better idea where they were when Springbok captain Siya Kolisi lifted the Webb Ellis Cup after the Rugby World Cup final in Paris in 2019 than when Lance Klusener and Allan Donald got themselves into a fateful tangle trying to take — or not take; it wasn’t clear — what would have been the winning run in Birmingham 10 years previously. Coetzee has no memory of one of those events: he wasn’t born until October 2000.
But he does know, having been told, that his haul of 18 wickets is the most by a South Africa bowler in any edition of the World Cup. “It feels special, but when you come to a World Cup you don’t play for those accolades,” Coetzee said. “They’re nice, but you hope to continue to make an impact for us to win the World Cup.
Besides, he didn’t say, “Our bowling line-up is so strong. Someone has to take the wickets, and the other guys play crucial roles – Keshav [Maharaj], KG [Kagiso Rabada], Lungi [Ngidi], Plank – Marco [Jansen], sorry – anyone can take wickets on their day.”
Indeed, Plank is one strike away from equalling Coetzee. Maharaj is just four of that pace. On the other side of cricket’s eternal equation, Quinton de Kock needs one more century to equal Rohit Sharma’s World Cup record of five, set in 2019.
A World Cup semifinal would seem a good place to see how far the South Africans can stretch that narrative, and a semi against Australia better still. Besides the 1999 epic the teams also met in the final four in 2007, when the South Africans were reduced to 27/5 on their way to a total of 149 and defeat by seven wickets.
Coetzee does not, cannot see things that way. He is living another reality, one founded on the truth of South Africa winning the last four of the six ODIs they have played against the Australians since the first week of September this year – most recently in Lucknow on October 12. “There isn’t a lot of mystery about what’s lying ahead,” he said. “We can get calmness out of that, knowing what to expect.”
It’s a long way from Eden Park to Eden Gardens. In kilometres, 11,179. In attitude, immeasurable. In South Africa’s World Cup narrative? We’ll find out on Thursday.
