Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg
AS every cricketminded South African has known for months now, SA’s World Cup campaign starts against Zimbabwe in Hamilton next Sunday. But, as a former coach of the national team, Graham Ford is a big step removed from the rest of us - and he reckons you don’t need to get out of bed at ridiculous hours for another five-and-a-half weeks.
“There’s absolutely no problem; they’ll cruise through the group stage,” Ford said. “Qualification for the quarter-finals is almost automatic.”
It is indeed difficult to imagine SA coming short against three-legged terriers like Zimbabwe, the fighting but flaccid Irish and the non-entities of the United Arab Emirates.
West Indies will give SA a mite more trouble, but only if they do not play like the West Undies they were on their tour to the country this summer. They won just three of 11 games and looked unhappy to be alive.
Pakistan are ominously bipolar, but SA have found ways to counter their craziness effectively more often than not.
India have the batsmen but not the bowlers to scare SA. One-day cricket is a batsman’s game to an embarrassing degree. However, it is still up to bowlers to win matches.
“The emphasis in the 50-over game these days is on the need to take wickets early on because if the opposition have a lot of wickets in hand going into those last 10 or 15 overs, you will be under an unbelievable amount of pressure,” Ford said.
With Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Vernon Philander and Imran Tahir, in SA’s ranks, no team at the World Cup is better equipped to face up to that challenge.
At the other end of that equation, who would want to have contain a batting order bristling with the varied threats posed by Hashim Amla, Quinton de Kock, Faf du Plessis, AB de Villiers, David Miller and JP Duminy? Individually, they are wonderful players. Collectively, they should be a juggernaut.
All of which means SA could secure their quarter-final berth halfway through their group matches. Or, at a stretch, four of the six. So, go back to sleep until the sharp end of the tournament looms into view.
The first quarter-final will be played in Sydney on March 18. The semis are set for Eden Park and Sydney on March 24 and 26, with the final in Melbourne on March 29.
Not that South Africans will blink at 3am and 5.30am starts to watch their team in action, whatever the importance of the match. Too much hype has been created for that to happen, much of it by the marketing gone mad that accompanied the squad’s announcement and farewell.
If Cricket SA’s aim with all that jazz was to bring the players closer to the public who support them, they succeeded. But, at Wednesday’s departure jamboree in Johannesburg, enough of them spoke in overly emotive tones of their reception by the fans to know that it is crucial to SA’s chances that the tournament is being staged in a faraway place where they are just another team, not everyone’s champions-in-waiting.
In Australia and New Zealand, SA will be able to focus on the here and now of what they have worked so hard to accomplish.
“They’ve played a lot of good cricket recently and our conditions aren’t far off what they’re going get over there,” Ford said. “They’re really well prepared and there’s a lot of confidence in the camp, which is the most important thing.
“They’ve got an outstanding chance with the quality of batting they have, and they have a real strike bowling force.”
It is not, of course, the round-robin stage that has been SA’s problem at the World Cup. In fact, they have topped their group three times in their six visits to the tournament. What happens next is the hurdle SA have not cleared: played five knockout games, won none.
SA have always taken quality teams to the World Cup, and they have always come unstuck when it matters most. Why should this time be different?
“The more players you have that can win the game with a special performance, those are the teams most likely to come through,” Ford said. “When you look at the superstars that SA have, you’ve got to think they have an excellent chance.”
From Ford’s lips to the cricket gods’ ears, a nation will dream next to their primed alarm clocks.
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