“We want to apologise to the public and the South African fans for letting them down. When you put in performances like that you almost feel ashamed.” - JP Duminy
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TELFORD VICE in Chester-le-Street
JUST like he did half a world away almost 11 years ago, JP Duminy stepped up to take responsibility at the Riverside yesterday. “It is disappointing, yes; it is not the biggest disappointment,” he said about being overlooked for four of his South Africa’s seven games at the World Cup matches.
“The most disappointing part has been our team performance and I think it would be amiss of me not to mention how disappointed we are particularly letting all our fans down back home.
“It's been pretty dismal on our part and we wish we could point to the reason we haven't performed.
“We've put in a lot of effort in our preparation, our strategy, and going out there with a strong mindset.
“But, unfortunately, we haven't been able to produce and execute our plans and that's been the most disappointing part for all of us.
“We want to apologise to the public and the South African fans for letting them down.
“When you represent your country it is always a proud moment and you understand that you represent 50, 60 million people.
“And when you put in performances like that you almost feel ashamed.”
It wasn’t fair on Duminy, considering he has played in not quite half of South Africa’s calamitous campaign, but someone had to do it.
Like he did at Melbourne in December 2008, when he walked to the crease at 126/4 and batted through the remaining six partnerships to take his team to 459 — a key piece of the puzzle that, when complete, was South Africa’s first ever Test series win in Australia.
His 166 was then unarguably the most important and consequential innings in South Africa’s history, and it remains the defining moment in the career of a diamond that has never again dazzled like should have.
And now it’s too late: Duminy will take his leave of international cricket after the World Cup, a wretched sign-off to career of what might have been.
The South Africans have endured the worst of their eight fruitless attempts to win the title.
They have won only one of their seven games — beating lowly Afghanistan — and lost five others, including to Bangladesh.
South Africa play Sri Lanka today in a game that no longer matters to them.
The match does matter to the Lankans, who should reach the semis if they win today and against west Indies on Monday and India next Saturday.
No such prize glints for the South Africans, who have forged past 300 only once and have failed to dismiss their opponents five times.
Their batting has been exposed as unreliable, not least because the pace attack that has served to paper over the cracks for years has been decimated by injury.
Worse, despite years of careful planning they have played well below themselves.
But Duminy hinted that the team’s biggest problems went beyond matters of batting and bowling.
“I've always been a big fan of the mental side of the game, so that is an important facet that we need to make sure we cover,” he said.
“Are things put in place for us to be mentally fresh and mentally strong when it comes to the pressure moments of the game?
“Those are kind of things that we want to reflect on.
“In terms of our preparation, were guys fresh? Were guys technically sound?
“There’s a whole host of things that one can reflect on and point fingers at, but I’m always going to come back to the fact that, particularly at this level, you are accountable for your own game.
“There’s a lot of mature guys in this team who have been around for two or three World Cups and, unfortunately, we haven't had the answers to the questions that have been posed to us at this World Cup, and that’s a difficult pill to swallow.
“This has been my third World Cup, and coming here [I was] pretty confident that I could put in big performances for the team, and I’ve not being able to do that.
“I walk away feeling pretty disappointed with that, and I think everybody will have that self-reflection.”
Plenty of reflection has been flung at Duminy and his teammates like dung — much of it by former South Africa players, who seem to have forgotten that they never won a World Cup.
“Those kind of things stay outside of the bubble,” Duminy said. “But certain guys will have relationships with past players, and it can affect certain players.
“But, when you have agendas, that's out of our control.”
Like, Duminy didn’t say, the story of his own career, which will always feel like it amounted to less than the sum of its parts.
“For me, legacy is not in performance,” he said. “I think legacy is the person you are. And, for me, it's about being a good person, it's about influencing people in the right way.
“I don't think a hundred is the thing they remember. They remember the impact you had on their life.”
For a long moment here in the north of England, where the sun shone uncommonly brightly outside yesterday, it was again December 27 and 28, 2008 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
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