“You almost go into survival mode. We've all been there.” - Mickey Arthur on South Africa’s plight.
TMG Print
TELFORD VICE in London
MICKEY Arthur has been there and done that with South Africa, Australia and, now, Pakistan.
So he had empathy for South Africa’s plight in the wake of helping to plot their downfall at Lord’s on Sunday — when Pakistan beat them by 49 runs to end their hopes of reaching the semi-finals.
“I watch South Africa with a real fondness; they are my second team, and it is sad for me,” Arthur, a Johannesburg-born former Griqualand West and Free State opening bat, said.
He took his turn behind the microphones after Faf du Plessis had been grilled by the press.
Had South Africa’s captain known a worse performance by his team than Sunday’s?
Was his legacy tarnished?
Was this the lowest point of his leadership?
It wasn’t pretty, but it had to be done.
And it was tame compared to Arthur’s ordeal at the hands of the Pakistani press, which started with a demand to know why six catches had gone down and veered to a bizarre complaint that Haris Sohail had “looked exhausted after [batting for] 70 or 80 minutes”.
Arthur would have been justified in asking whether his inquisitors were taking the Mickey.
That his team had won seemed to have been forgotten, as had the fact that Haris hammered a breathtaking 89 off 59 balls.
Du Plessis had got off relatively lightly, but Arthur offered him a shoulder to lean on nonetheless.
“I listened to Faf's press conference, and it's a team that's just a little bit short on confidence. Every team goes through that.
“I think now is a time to just try and get behind those boys.
“They are trying incredibly hard. I know what they are going through.
“I had a quick chat to ‘Gibbo’ [Ottis Gibson] after the game.
“It's really tough where they are. They will be going to training every day hurting like any other team hurts, and trying to get it right.
“But I watch them with a lot of interest, and I do feel deeply disappointed for them at the moment.”
Arthur was South Africa’s coach when South Africa they beat Australia in the 438 game at the Wanderers in March 2006.
How could a team who had risen so high fall so far, even accounting for personnel changes and fluctuating form? Where had their confidence gone?
“It happens so quickly,” Arthur said. “You lose a game; you lose another game.
“It’s a World Cup — there’s media scrutiny and public expectation, and then you almost go into survival mode. We've all been there.”
Then Arthur ventured what some would consider south of the border, especially as these days he is in job Bob Woolmer held when he died during the 2007 World Cup.
“Last Sunday I wanted to commit suicide, but it's only one performance,” he said, apparently not seriously.
But the stakes are higher when that performance is delivered in cricket’s earth-stopping fixture: India versus Pakistan.
Pakistan shambled to an 89-run Duckworth/Lewis defeat in that fixture at Old Trafford last Sunday.
Happily for South Africa, considering the state they’re in, they don’t have mountains that high to climb.
But how might they scale the comparative molehill of their remaining games at the tournament, against Sri Lanka and Australia, considering they have lost five and won only one of their seven matches?
“They need ‘KG’ [Kagiso Rabada] to run in and knock over three with the new ball, or ‘Quinny’ [Quinton de Kock] to go in and get a quick 50 just to get it going, and then they will feed off that, and that will turn around very, very quickly,” Arthur said.
“You're either a hero or a villain and it only takes one performance to get back to where you need to be.
“I'm confident that they can because there's a hell of a lot of talent in that dressingroom.”
In that dressingroom in the dying of the light at Lord’s on Sunday, they would have struggled to believe him.
ENDS
Comments
No comments yet. Start the conversation.