Times Media
TELFORD VICE, Auckland
THE Australians are getting their retaliation in first. Before either of this year’s World Cup semi-finals has been decided, Damien Fleming has waxed nostalgic about SA’s infamous tie with Australia in the 1999 semi at Edgbaston.
SA had four balls to score the single that would have put them into the final. But a calamitous mix-up between Lance Klusener and Allan Donald resulted in a runout and the Aussies qualified instead.
To Fleming, who bowled the last over, fell the honour of under-arming the ball to wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist - who broke the wicket to end the match.
“I speak about the semi about 50 times a year,” Fleming told the Brisbane Courier-Mail. “When I asked (former Australian captain) Steve Waugh for a quote about it for my book he asked me whether the book would be in the fiction or non-fiction section.”
Fleming wondered whether a team-building session of 10-pin bowling two nights before the semi-final had prompted him to take the safer option and roll the ball along the ground to Gilchrist: “There was a risk I could have thrown it over ‘Gilly’’s head. In the end it was the smartest thing but there is nothing you do at training that prepares you for that.
“I reckon I have signed about 10 000 of those photos with poor Allan Donald dropping his bat. It told a lot of stories.”
Australia went on to beat Pakistan in the final to clinch the first of what became a hattrick of World Cup triumphs, which sealed them into history as one of the greatest teams the game has yet seen. SA, meanwhile, have had to live with the blot of cricket’s most damaging choke as central to their annals.
The South Africans eased some of that pain by beating Sri Lanka in the quarter-finals in Sydney on Wednesday to celebrate their first win in a World Cup knockout match. But the Aussies aren’t going to let 1999 and all that slip quietly off the radar.
“To see what impact that has had on South African cricket to this day, it has been massive,” Fleming said. “Would things have changed if they had got over the line? I am just glad we won.”
South Africans have been asking themselves that question for 16 years, and have yet to find an answer.
Australia play India in their semi-final at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Thursday. The final is at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday.
Comments
No comments yet. Start the conversation.