Feel it, it is here - SA’s perfect performance

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Sydney

FOR once, they were the headlights and not the rabbits. For once, they were bigger than the occasion. For once, what the other team did mattered not a jot.

And the wonderful thing, for SA, is that they have finally won a World Cup knockout match. And in style. And, yes, they are in the semi-finals. And, no, nothing can change that.

And who does JP Duminy think he is taking a hattrick? A hattrick! In a World Cup quarter-final! And has Imran Tahir stopped running yet after claiming four of the seven wickets he shared with Duminy?

And since when do a side like SA undo subcontinental opposition with spin? And that in a tournament in which the flavour of the moment is left-arm fast.

And welcome back Quinton de Kock and your gutsy, power-driven, fearless 78 not out. Where the hell have you been?

But there can be no quibble with SA’s performance. It was as close to the perfect cricket match as any team could play.

In fact, this was less a performance than it was a wonder, something we will hold up to the light of our memories forever like a child gazing on a favourite marble. How it shines.

Not that it started that way. When Angelo Mathews called correctly a groan would have gone up in front television sets all over SA: their team would have to get the job done the hard way.

Except that the way was never hard, what with the Lankans lapsing to 133 all out in 37.2 overs - the lowest total in a completed innings in the tournament by a test-playing team who are not England - in the face of rasping bowling and tigerish fielding. SA answered emphatically with 134/1 in 18 overs.

Who knows how much the spectator who clambered out of the Victor Trumper Stand and dashed onto the field - where he dropped his shorts and proceeded to hump the ground - as Morne Morkel prepared to bowl the 37th over distracted Kumar Sangakkara from raking the personal Zen garden he had made of the SCG.

Sangakkara slashed the second ball of the over to third man, where David Miller held the catch. With that, Sanga’s swansong to international cricket was sung. His last innings was a flinty 45, a finger in the dyke of Sri Lanka’s crumbling innings.

With that, too, SA accomplished what the previous four teams Sangakkara had played against had not in eight-and-a-half hours of batting in which he had faced 362 balls and hit 192 runs in fours and 42 in sixes - to dismiss him for fewer than a century.

And then, immediately, before Sangakkara had stepped over the rope for the last time as a batsman in a Sri Lankan one-day shirt, the gods cried big, wet tears of rain for him. But not for long, because this was SA’s day and no-one else’s; no matter how great thou art.

By then, Duminy had removed Thisara Perera, Nuwan Kulasekara and Tharindu Kaushal - a callow debutant thrust into the squad late on Tuesday night after Rangana Herath was ruled out - to reduce Sri Lanka to 116/8.

By the dinner break, SA had paid 40 runs of their nominal debt. It was only just properly dark in this day/night game that almost never was but forever will be, and they were in the semis. Before long, they will turn their attention to Auckland and New Zealand or West Indies.

But, for now, they should enjoy what they have earned. Bloody well done.