If SA are going to play like this, best they come home now

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Melbourne Cricket Ground

SA discovered the hard way on Sunday that this World Cup will not be easily won by any team who have to find a way past India. They also found out that they are capable of playing poor cricket.

Sunday’s defeat, by 130 runs, added to the pressure on SA to beat West Indies in Sydney on Friday. Another loss and a team who started the tournament among the favoured few will be hanging on and hoping hard.

Best, then, that SA learn the folly of the approach they took in the lead-up to this match. They hid in their laager from the admittedly challenging Indian media all week, and when AB de Villiers was finally forced to blink into the light on Saturday he fell victim to petty tetchiness.

Moreover, SA have known for a long time that this would be their biggest match of the group stage. They played like they had known that truth for too long, like they were tired of knowing it, like they would have preferred it not to be true.

They had to give of their best on Sunday. Instead, they delivered a half-baked performance against opponents who handed them the hiding they deserved - the first time in 36 one-day internationals that they have been beaten by more than 100 runs.

The World Cup is no place for an amateurish approach. If SA are serious about trying to win it, they will have to grow up, and fast.

First, the best attack and fielding outfit in the tournament allowed the Indians total 307/7. Then the best batting line-up in the tournament ran out of gas at 177 after 40.2 overs.

The problems started at the toss - not because MS Dhoni won it, but because Wayne Parnell replaced Farhaan Behardien. The latter is no matchwinner, but the mercurial Parnell has the potential to lose as matches as much as win them.

Parnell was unlucky on Sunday, having had a catch dropped and being done for a no-ball that was a legal delivery. But only three times has a a SA bowler conceded more runs than the 85 he went for on Sunday.

Had Hashim Amla, diving at backward point, hung onto to what would have been a wicket for Parnell, Shikhar Dhawan would have been dismissed for 53. Instead, he scored a career-best 137 - the highest innings of the tournament so far.

The century stands Dhawan shared with Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane helped India surge to the seventh first innings of more than 300 runs in the 13 World Cup matches played.

For the second time in as many games, Dale Steyn was driven over extra cover for six. Zimbabwe’s Hamilton Masakadza did so in Hamilton last Sunday. This time, the honour was Rahane’s - and on a ground significantly bigger than Seddon Park.

Given those problems, Vernon Philander’s exit with a hamstring problem after bowling four overs was the last thing SA needed.

Bt worse was to come when batsmen of the calibre and experience of SA’s finest came unstuck against an attack that might look decent at franchise level. A string of soft or self-engineered dismissals and two runouts is not nearly good enough.

Faf du Plessis made a gritty half-century before slapping a catch straight to mid-off, and he and De Villiers shared a stand of 68. And that was the best of it.

SA’s World Cup is a long way from over, but if they keep playing like they did on Sunday they would be better off going home now.