Gayle’s blast a cautionary tale for SA

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Canberra

“COULD be,” Hashim Amla said in Sydney on Tuesday when he was asked whether Chris Gayle’s dry spell might end in West Indies’ World Cup match against SA on Friday.

A few hours later, after Gayle had drilled Zimbabwe’s hapless attack for 215 at Manuka Oval in Canberra, Amla would have been relieved to have got that wrong.

Far rather, for SA, that Gayle fill his boots against some other side than in a game that has grown in importance for AB de Villiers’ men in the wake of their poor performance against India at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday.

SA losing to quality opponents was never out of the question, but that they should be outplayed in all departments and crash to their worst defeat - by 130 runs - in the tournament was not in the script. Suddenly, going deep in the World Cup seemed possible rather than probable for the South Africans.

Not so fast, Amla said: “Things like that happen. You don’t want it to happen, and fortunately over the last few years it hasn’t happened to us too often. We just want to brush it off, take the knock on the chin, and get our heads up for the next game.

“We know we have a few more games in the round-robin phase, and the guys have been playing well. So we don’t want to dwell too much on it. But, going into the next game, we certainly know we’ve got to perform better.

“We know that every game in the World Cup is important, but the round-robin phase does allow you, if you do have a hiccup like we did on Sunday, some time to get back.”

Too true. SA should beat West Indies on Friday and take the points against Ireland in Canberra on Tuesday. That would give them three wins, which might be enough to put them in the quarter-finals.

Pakistan at Eden Park in Auckland next Saturday will be a tougher proposition, but if another victory is required it should come in SA’s last pool match against the United Arab Emirates in Wellington on March 12.

However, the loss to India has had an impact on SA’s approach: “The added responsibility is that if you lose a game, or if you lose two games, certainly it means there’s a lot more riding on the result in the third and fourth games. But it’s still early in the competition so I don’t think there’s any big dramas.”

Gayle himself authored a powerful cautionary tale for SA on Tuesday. In five ODI innings in SA in January, he had a highest score of 41 and totalled 71 runs off 141 balls. On Tuesday, he faced six more deliveries and scored 144 more runs.

“West Indies are always a dangerous team,” Amla said. “We had them in SA and we know they have a lot of matchwinners. We will treat them with respect, like we do all opposition. But, by the same token, we are going to play our best game.”

Or, at the least, a better game than they played on Sunday.