Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE, Cape Town
YOU couldn’t forget it if you tried, but in case you have tried ... the ball went from Damien Fleming’s hand to Lance Klusener’s bat to Michael Bevan’s dive and flick, then back to Fleming and into Adam Gilchrist’s gloves. Game over, but not the nightmare.
A nation sat on its couch and waited for what surely had not happened to be undone. A runout? Like that? Se moer. Any moment now, the umpires were going to douse the celebrating Aussies’ spontaneous combustion and tell them to shut the hell up and bowl. Fifteen years on, we’re still waiting.
In those few seconds Australia went from nowhere to a place in the 1999 World Cup final. SA shambled into a fog of oblivion that has yet to lift.
Whatever they have or have not accomplished in the six World Cup tournaments they have played, SA have adhered to the cardinal rule of life: it shall not be boring. They have raged against the dying of the floodlights; always in vain but never going gently into that good day-night.
They have never been allowed to limp out of a World Cup. Instead, they have been discarded like a cigarette butt from a speeding car - smouldering impotently where they have been rudely deposited, glowing with the hurt of what might have been.
If the World Cup magnifies and emphasises what is good about teams like Australia - who have featured in six of the 10 finals and won four of them - the bad in sides like England - who have lost three finals - it brings out the ugly in SA; the kind of stuff we see when we walk into the wrong bathroom at the wrong time.
The only team with a hard-luck record comparable to SA’s are New Zealand, who have been in the semi-finals six times but never in the final. But New Zealanders know they can play rugby better than any nation on earth. Their cricketers sometimes begin their answers to reporters’ questions with, “Rugby is the premier sport in our country ...” Cricket matters to the average Kiwi about as much as the price of a flat white. Down there, cricket really is just a game.
That Sri Lanka won in 1996 and India in 2011 had less to do with those teams’ superior knowledge of the conditions and more with the wave of public will that loomed at them from all sides. The players could either be crushed by it, or clamber to the top and ride it all they way to the podium. The latter was their only choice. England have never won because they think too much.
South Africans are different. We know we have a team playing in the World Cup every four years. So, we want to know, why aren’t they World Cup champions every four years?
Australians are similar. Except that their players, management and administrators make sure they stay a step ahead of that challenge. The World Cup imposes itself on SA. Australia impose themselves on the World Cup. The difference is more subtle than it seems. It involves a mental shift more than anything else and until SA learn to effect it they will not win the damned thing.
SA were anointed the best test team long after they believed they were exactly that. They had to earn an accolade they knew they deserved, and they did so without complaining. They have yet to take that attitude to a World Cup. When they do, we will be able to get off the couch.
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