Extraordinary SA were ‘ready to fight’

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Sydney

IT was, AB de Villiers said, “Just one of the games.” Jason Holder, too, tried to draw a veil of something like ordinariness over Friday’s events at the Sydney Cricket Ground: “I thought we were well in the game when (De Villiers) came to the crease, but he was his normal exceptional self - he took the game away from us.”

But sometimes captains can’t fool any of the people any of the time. SA’s World Cup match against West Indies was anything but ordinary.

De Villiers scored an undefeated 162 in his team’s total of 408/5 - which set a slew of records. Then Imran Tahir took 5/45 as the Windies crashed to 151 all out and victory for SA by 257 runs - prompting another swirl of numbers never yet seen.

In the process, SA improved their net runrate to +1.260 - second in pool B only to India’s +2.060 - and took the possibility of De Villiers falling foul of the over-rate for another match.

All of which helped SA bounce back convincingly from a crushing loss to India in Melbourne on Sunday, and set them up to surge into the quarter-finals. They are heavily favoured to beat Ireland in Canberra on Tuesday. The self-destructing Pakistanis and the uncompetitive United Arab Emirates, SA’s remaining opponents in the group stage, should be dealt with easily.

“It’s great to see the guys like that, hustling around,” De Villiers said. “You could see their eyes were open. They were ready to fight.”

None more so than De Villiers himself, who reached 50 off 30 balls, 100 off 52, and 150 off 64. That’s right: he went from 100 to 150 in the scant space of a dozen balls, and from 50 to 150 off 34 deliveries. He scored 30 runs in the last over of the innings, drilling hapless Jason Holder for two, six, six, four, six, and six.

Did he know when to pull the trigger to set SA’s runrate soaring?

“Not really.” he said. “It’s about assessing the situation constantly.”

How did he ensure the ball kept booming off the very middle of his broadsword bat?

“It actually wasn’t coming off the middle of the bat, not all of them,” De Villiers said. “Sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t.”

It went the way of Tahir on Friday. But how would the leg spinner approach bowling to de Villiers? He wouldn’t, he said. Instead, he would no-ball himself out of the attack.

“Two beamers and I’m out,” Tahir said, waving the match ball in the air to demonstrate: “Goof! I’m gone!”