Power banks, chewing tobacco and “offensive/political signage” are among the 21 items, or categories of items, spectators are banned from bringing to matches at the men’s World Cup in India. Reporters, too, sometimes have to explain what should be covered by the accreditation pass hanging prominently around their necks.
“But why do you need a laptop,” a deeply suspicious man on the gate in Dharamsala asked a duly accredited journalist trying to get into the ground to cover the match between the Netherlands and South Africa. Maybe he knew something we didn’t. Adequately analysing the South Africans’ abject failure to launch in that game would need more computing power than could reasonably be carried in a backpack.
The question wasn’t asked of the media as they reported for duty before the second semifinal at Eden Gardens on Thursday. Perhaps it should have been, and for the same reason. It was again difficult to make sense of South Africa’s performance.
When you’ve seen them not play like they did in a match of Thursday’s stature too often, that is. A team that had disappointed too many times in the past did not do so. They lost, by three wickets with 16 balls remaining, but they should not be scarred. They will be unhappy they didn’t win but satisfied that they gave it their all in that cause. Most importantly, they did not play below themselves. The other team, who have won five of the dozen World Cups yet contested, who have something like the Springboks’ killer instinct, simply played better.
But first there was reason for them to be buoyant. Temba Bavuma seemed to give the coin extra heft – or was it hope? – as he flicked it into Kolkata’s sludgy sky. “Heads,” Pat Cummins called. It came down tails up. The Australians, Cummins said, would also have taken guard first. All present knew South Africa had yet to lose batting first in the tournament.
That truth aged about as well Bavuma, Quinton de Kock, Rassie van der Dussen and Aiden Markram did at the crease. South Africa’s top four had made seven centuries between them in the tournament going into Thursday’s match: they were dismissed in 11.5 overs with only 24 runs scored.
Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood settled on a challenging length immediately and found swing and seam movement to burn. They were ably supported by a fielding unit that threw themselves about with abandon and commitment. Consequently South Africa eked out 18/2 in their powerplay, their lowest score in the first 10 overs since March 14, 2008. Or 266 ODIs ago.
It was that long gone that the match involved Herschelle Gibbs, Graeme Smith and Alviro Petersen, who cobbled together 32/1 in the opening 10 against Bangladesh in Dhaka. The one-day game was different then, largely because the IPL was a month away from exploding most ideas of how to bat in white-ball cricket. Besides, the South Africans were chasing 144 that day. They coasted home by seven wickets inside 35 overs.
Things were more complicated on Thursday. Bavuma edged Starc stiffly and was caught behind off the sixth ball of the match, or before any assessment could be made on the state of his hamstring. In the sixth Quinton de Kock skied Hazlewood to long-on, where Cummins waited an age to take a catch that was a fine study in focus.
South Africa have lost their first two wickets earlier in the innings during the tournament, but never with only eight runs on the board. One of those two partnerships have been century stands four times, and two of them were worth 200. Indeed, De Kock and Van der Dussen put on 154 against almost the same Australian attack in Lucknow on October 12.
This time South Africa were 44/4 after 14 overs when the merest shower of rain delayed play for 45 minutes. We knew the interruption’s moments were numbered when Michael Gough, the reserve umpire who was on the field doing whatever it is reserve umpires do on the field during breaks for rain, furled his umbrella and used it to practice his golf swing.
David Miller and Heinrich Klaasen were both 10 not out when the rain came. They didn’t tee off anywhere near as easily as Gough imagined he was in a stand that grew to 95 off 113 before Klaasen played past a delivery from Travis Head that he should have had covered. Head’s next ball turned sharply to trap Marco Jansen in front.
With that a part-time off-spinner wearing Allan Border’s moustache ended South Africa’s recovery and jolted them back to the reality of their predicament. At 119/6 a total that would give their bowlers something to aim at was far away. Lucknow’s conditions are different to Eden Gardens’ but it bears saying that Head’s inclusion – ahead of Marcus Stoinis – was the only difference from that XI.
Still, as long as South Africa had Miller they had a reasonable chance to post a respectable lump of runs. He stayed until the 48th, when he heaved Cummins to Head on the square leg fence. Two balls before, one of them a wide, Miller put Cummins away for six to reach a century that deserved to be remembered for more than the fact that it was scored in a losing cause.
Miller doesn’t often come to the crease as early as the 12th over, and when he does the opposition are on top. So his opportunities to score centuries are sparse. But it’s one thing to be given the opportunity and another to take it, especially on so big a stage and against such high quality bowling and fielding. His 116-ball 101 was a masterpiece of mature, measured strokeplay. It was also the first time a South Africa player had scored a century in a men’s World cup semifinal and only the fourth instance of them reaching 50.
But Miller couldn’t stop South Africa from being dismissed for 212 – a single run fewer than they had made in the famously tied 1999 semifinal against the Aussies at Edgbaston. Would the ghosts of 24 years ago be set aswirl despite both camps saying they had been exorcised?
That didn’t seem likely while Head and Warner were indeed teeing off like Gough in their stand of 60 off 38. But when another part-time offie, Markram, turned his first ball past Warner’s bat and into his stumps, and Kagiso Rabada had Mitchell Marsh stunningly caught in the covers by a diving Van der Dussen – at 34 the oldest player in the squad – Australia were 61/2 in the eighth. Something was swirling, surely. But what?
Head was there to steady the innings with what became a belligerent half-century. He slapped the second ball, bowled by Jansen, from one knee for a four that bounced close to the cover point boundary. He was dropped by Reeza Hendricks – who was on the field for Rabada – rushing forward and low off Gerald Coetzee’s first ball of the match. Then he sent a delivery from Tabraiz Shamsi screaming just past Klaasen at slip.
It took Keshav Maharaj’s first delivery for Australia to lose their Head. The ball zigged through the gate and bowled him, and then a curious thing happened. Maharaj, who in March celebrated taking a wicket in a Test against West Indies at the Wanderers so fervently he ripped his Achilles asunder, did nothing of the kind. Instead he walked demurely towards mid-on. There were no ghosts in his head.
Shamsi had Steven Smith spilled, a difficult chance for De Kock, and looked on his way to a game as deflating as his outing against India at the same ground on November 5, when he lost his line and took 1/72. And more so when he had a referral for Marnus Labuschagne’s wicket turned down because the impact of the ball on the pad was deemed outside the line by dint of umpire’s call. But Shamsi had his revenge when Labuschagne, given out lbw trying to reverse sweep, stayed that way – also by dint of umpire’s call, this time because the ball would have trimmed leg stump.
A bellow to the sky was how Shamsi greeted that success, but it was as nothing compared to what he did in his next over after he nailed a pulling Glenn Maxwell’s leg stump – when he set off on an Imran Tahiresque roaring run into the outfield. Shamsi’s joy at having taken out of the equation the kind of monster from the bog innings Maxwell visited on Afghanistan at the Wankhede, where he scored an undefeated 201, was plain.
When Smith hoisted a steepler off Coetzee, which was well held by De Kock, Australia were six down and still 39 runs away. And 20 away when the same bowler – who bowled his last eight overs unchanged – splayed Josh Inglis’ stumps. Again something swirled. But what?
Another trip to the final for Australia, it turned out. Maybe going all the 1,617 kilometres from Kolkata to Ahmedabad to be smashed, probably, by a side who haven’t yet looked like losing isn’t worth the bother.
Who were they again? An Eden Gardens crowd that numbered 47,825, many of them dressed in the same colour of blue that coursed up the pillars in the stands, chanted their name: “India! India!…”
