World Cup: One narrow defeat won't scar South Africa

The opposition — and many South Africans — were quick to jump on the “choking” bandwagon after the Proteas’ narrow six-run defeat against England last weekend, but the result has done nothing to change the likelihood that Graeme Smith’s men will be very strong contenders for this World Cup.

It is far too hasty to write off South Africa just because they fell narrowly short on a pitch that behaved worse and worse. The players themselves believe they will now be better off for the experience of having played on a crumbling pitch in a tense situation, with reverse-swing and spin.

“All the other pitches we’ve played on have been very good, so now we’ve got that experience of a bad wicket under our belt. As all the World Cup grounds have more games played on them, we expect the pitches to become more and more like that Chennai one,” wicketkeeper-batsman Morne van Wyk said.

But the fact that South Africa can still finish on top of Group B — and you can’t do any better than that! — if they beat India in Nagpur on Saturday, plus the uncertainty of who is going to finish where in Group A, means the team is hardly devastated by the defeat.

They have drawn a line under the game. “It’s not the end of the world. It was one bad game, the margin was very small and it could have gone either way. So we’re dusting ourselves off and focusing on the next challenge. We’re not going to be focusing on outside pressures, people have been saying a lot of things about us, but we have strong team values and our management backs us all the way. We’re moving on, there are no excuses, we’ll take the blow on the chin and hopefully, set things right on Saturday,” fast bowler Morne Morkel said.

For South Africa, the saying “the nearer you get to your goal the harder it becomes” has been especially true and the England result may have been faithful to their past experiences in World Cups.

But excellent England bowling was another major reason why they lost. Any batsman would be hard-pressed to keep out the fine deliveries from pacemen Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad that accounted for the likes of AB de Villiers, JP Duminy and Dale Steyn. And then there were the extremely quick reflexes of Ian Bell at short-leg to run out Faf du Plessis and the beautiful spin bowling of Graeme Swann in conditions that were very helpful to his trade.

The South African team will be disappointed, but for the vast majority of them, this was just an arbitrary loss in the World Cup, one that doesn’t really count for anything in the greater scheme of things.

Only four of the 15-man squad — Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis, AB de Villiers and Robin Peterson — have actually played in a World Cup before; for the other 11 players, one narrow defeat is hardly going to scar them. Team manager Mohammed Moosajee is the most reasonable of men, but he is a straight-talker and he said he was now getting bored of the “choker” jibe. “It’s not fair that every time we lose, people say we froze and choked,” Moosajee growled.

There is no doubt that the “chokers” tag does still eat away at the players, if for no other reason than most of them don’t know why they’ve got it.

“It’s an unbelievable burden these guys carry, this whole choking thing, even though just four of the squad have played in the World Cup before. Three-quarters of them have no experience of this ‘choking in World Cups’ thing, but they hear about it all the time. It will be very special to break that hold,” mental conditioning coach Henning Gericke said before the England game.

In winning Test and/or limited-overs series in Australia, England and the subcontinent, the South Africans have shown they have the stomach for battle, the mettle to answer what will be asked of them in the World Cup’s knock-out stages.

Gericke has an excellent reputation as he was the mental conditioning coach for the Springbok rugby team that won the World Cup in 2007, and he is extremely impressed by the excitement within the squad.

“We’re really being a team and we’ve got the team dynamics right, which is vital because everyone’s not the same. There are no issues, even though there are differences at all levels, but we make it work and the squad are happy together. There are lots of good energisers and no energy sappers.

“We’re really making an effort to enjoy what we’re doing, when the pressure games come up, that is even more important. The players need a relaxed environment around them, they need to be emotionally happy. If they are feeling up-and-down, then the focus won’t be there,” Gericke says.

—Ken Borland is a senior cricket writer based in Johannesburg