“Eight out of eight victories for India! India victories in line! Quickly click number nine!” - The Great Indian Tambola
Telford Vice / Ahmedabad
HOW much about their performance against India at the Eden Gardens on Sunday can South Africa have shrugged off in Kolkata? The West Bengal capital is 1,617 kilometres from Ahmedabad, where Temba Bavuma’s team play Afghanistan on Friday in their last league match of the men’s World Cup. In India you need to go further than that to escape your demons.
You could travel 2,933 kilometres from east to west in this country. Or 3,214 kilometres from north to south. The three-hour direct flight the South Africans took to reach Ahmedabad — longer than any they could board at home — won’t have put enough daylight between them and their abjectly poor performance in Kolkata for it to fade from memory by Friday.
Indeed, their disappointing display is grist for the ongoing media mill of Diwali delights, which includes Fever FM’s Great Indian Tambola blasting loud and clear from cab drivers’ radios in Ahmedabad. Tuesday’s midday edition had the announcer booming forth in a manner Ravi Shastri himself would have appreciated.
Listeners, voluntary and others, were treated to a salute to Virat Kohli for scoring 101 not out to equal Sachin Tendulkar’s world record of 49 ODI centuries: “Virat, congratulations aplenty! Number 20!” There was also a nod to the bigger picture: “Eight out of eight victories for India! India victories in line! Quickly click number nine!” Victory number eight was emphatic, more so because it was achieved against the second-best side in the tournament.
Denied the opportunity to flex the muscles they had built by batting first, their proven strength, South Africa conceded 91 runs for the meagre reward of a solitary wicket during India’s powerplay. Keshav Maharaj’s introduction in the 11th changed things. He produced a ripper with his third ball, a delivery so good Shubman Gill couldn’t believe it had bowled him after drifting beyond leg, where it pitched before zagging past his outside edge to nail the top of middle. Neither, it seemed, could Kumar Dharmasena and Paul Reiffel credit what had happened: they referred.
Maharaj didn’t go for more than three runs in any of his first five overs, and — with the help of Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi and Tabraiz Shamsi — he kept the damage in the second 10 overs of the innings down to 33 runs. The next 20 overs yielded 115; not watertight but tidy.
Only for 87 to come off the last 10, which took India to 326/5 — a target well out of the South Africans’ reach against India’s crack attack. They crashed to 83 all out in 27.1 overs to suffer their heaviest defeat in all 667 of their ODIs.
“The boys are hurting because it’s not what we stand for,” Maharaj said after Sunday’s match. “But it’s a good eye opener for us. It’s probably a good thing, a blessing in disguise to make sure we iron out the glitches in the system.
“We played four good games on the bounce [to beat England, Bangladesh, Pakistan and New Zealand], which is not to make excuses for this performance. But it’s an indication of what we need to do better in this tournament as we build up towards the semifinal.”
South Africa seem bound for a semi against Australia in Kolkata next Thursday. If that is how the cookie crumbles, Eden Gardens won’t be filled with fans passionately supporting India. Would that make the prospect of a return less daunting? “I don’t think it was intimidating,” Maharaj said of the atmosphere at a ground where Sunday’s game was the first World Cup fixture involving India since the 1996 World Cup semifinal against Sri Lanka was ended prematurely because of crowd violence. “You have to embrace it. It’s something that we’re not used to, and that’s even more reason to soak it up.”
South Africa were criticised for picking Shamsi, who didn’t help his own cause by straying down leg too often and conceding eight runs in wides and no-balls in his return of 1/72. He has not been more expensive in any of the 24 ODIs in which he has bowled all 10 of his overs. But Maharaj said selection wasn’t the issue: “The pitch did turn and was quite slow. So the decision [ti include Shamsi] was correct. The execution, at various points, was where we could have been a lot better.
“We bowled too many bad balls, which gave them too many scoring opportunities and took the game away from us for a period. On the batting front we showed a lack of intent from the start, and there were a few soft dismissals. We get paid to play cricket, so we’ve got to find a way.
“It was a good trial run, if we do progress from the semifinal, to identify areas where we can get better.”
What if they do make the final and their opponents are, gulp, India at Ahmedabad’s gargantuan arena that can accommodate, gulp, almost double the number of spectators as the Eden Gardens? “India find a way to play really well in their conditions,” Maharaj said. “Everyone knows their gameplan and they’re executing really well. They do look like a force to be reckoned with.”
They do, and they will be again if they reach the final. As, ominously for South Africa, they should. They can leave the defeat at the Eden Gardens, but good luck discarding in the dressingroom reminders of that dark day/night. No matter how far it is from Ahmedabad.
Cricbuzz
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