Ngidi unlikely, but South Africa shouldn’t need him

“You can’t just hope for things to change. Hope’s a very dangerous thing for me.” - Faf du Plessis

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TELFORD VICE in Cardiff

RAIN hammered down onto Sophia Gardens on Friday as South Africa warmed up for their training session with a game of football on the outfield. As the downpour intensified so did the anxiety of other, merely watching South Africans.

Another injury was too awful a thought. So why risk an awkward fall on a wet and slippery surface?

What might the relevant section of the outfield look like once it had been galumphed over by people the size of Lungi Ngidi?

And if it was raining like this 24 hours hence there was no way South Africa and Afghanistan would have a full 100 overs at their disposal in their World Cup match at the ground on Saturday.

Thankfully, someone saw sense and the retreat to the indoor nets was called.

Saturday’s forecast, meanwhile, has improved from plenty of rain to showers that arrive half-an-hour after the scheduled start and are gone an hour later.

What hasn’t changed is that South Africa need to win on Saturday to kindle the already faint flame of their campaign.

All they can do is beat their remaining five opponents and hope that’s enough to keep them in the mix for the semi-finals.

To do so they will have to play significantly better cricket than they have done against England, Bangladesh and India — who beat them convincingly — and West Indies, who reduced them to 29/2 in 45 deliveries before rain ended their match.

So the South Africans need to hope something different happens on Saturday. Best you don’t say that around Faf du Plessis.

“You can't just hope for things to change,” he said on Friday. “Hope's a very dangerous thing for me.

“You need to get yourself out of that space as quick as possible. You either make it happen or you don’t.

“It's about trying to unlock players' best, which is somewhere underneath [the level they have been playing at].

“Hopefully we can see a little bit of that coming out in the next few games.

Our backs are against the wall. Hopefully that will allow the guys to come out and play the way we want them to play and the way we can play.

“If we do that we'll be a dangerous team. But we haven't fully unlocked the potential that we have in our side.”

Ngidi is unlikely to be part of that plan. At least, in Saturday’s game.

“He's got to do some work today and possibly tomorrow as well to make sure that he's 100%,” Du Plessis said.

“Especially with fast bowlers, it's a tricky one. That decision will probably be made tomorrow morning.”

If South Africa think they need Ngidi to beat a team like Afghanistan, who are playing their first World Cup and have lost all three their games, matters have dwindled to a new level. Then again, South Africa are hardly doing better than the Afghans — whose attack is nuclear tipped with Rashid Khan, the top ranked spinner in the world.

But he could be in doubt after being bowled by a ricochet off his helmet in the match against New Zealand in Taunton last Saturday.

Du Plessis had his own injured bowler to think about: “We’re in a position now where we need to win five games out of five. So you want to have your best guys available for selection.

“But we’re trying to make sure that if [Ngidi is] not 100% or even 90% ready for the game, and even if it's going to be a shortened game with a bit rain around, is it worth the risk?

“Probably the right call to make would be to say that if he's not ready, you give him a little bit more time to see if he can play the next four games, which are going to be big.”

And how. Those games are against New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Australia.

But they won’t matter if South Africa lose on Saturday.