Pakistan steal SA’s tuk-tuk

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Auckland

TWICE, SA have been tested at this World Cup. Twice, they have failed. Two weeks ago in Melbourne, imperious India brushed them aside like untouchables. On Saturday, Pakistan stole their tuk-tuk.

And that with the quarter-finals looming. Which team SA will have to clear at the first knockout hurdle remains undecided, but whoever it is will fancy their chances against a side who have confirmed their fragility against even low level pressure.

Good thing SA’s last group game is against the inept United Arab Emirates. If they had to play anyone stronger in Wellington on Thursday the quarter-finals may have been out of their reach.

But they are on their way, and barring a weather wonder or a mathematical miracle they will play the loser of today’s game between Australia and Sri Lanka in Sydney.

Australia or Sri Lanka? Who would a wounded team who have been given reason to doubt themselves rather take on in a sudden-death showdown? On the strength of Saturday’s display by SA, there is no straightforward answer to that question.

While this defeat, by 29 runs, will not hamper SA’s passage into the knockout rounds, it will burrow into their minds like a bad dream. India beat them properly, a truth that was as plain as it was painful. But this was the old SA; the team who beat themselves.

Even AB de Villiers could not save them on Saturday. His 77 was a wonderful thing, an innings of dash and dazzle that made him the tournament’s leading runscorer, an accolade Hashim Amla had snatched earlier in the match. But it could not hide the fact that half the top six were dismissed for single figures, two of them for ducks.

The target, revised to 232 off 47 overs by rain - or less than five runs to the over - was well within the capabilities of batsmen of the calibre and class of those who take guard for SA.

Instead, they were dismissed for 202 by a Pakistan side who brought an AK47 to a knife fight, nevermind that they couldn’t field for toffee and were uncomfortably hemmed in by the awkward confines of a rugby field.

Batting was also not the Pakistanis’ strong suit. Sarfraz Ahmed played his first match of the tournament and scored 49, and then equalled a word record by taking six catches. Younis Khan - who was dropped for two of Pakistan’s four previous games - made a gutsy 37. Misbah-ul-Haq, meanwhile, was his hard bastard self for his 56.

But all went quietly into that good day/night, and that was the best of Pakistan’s batting. They sacrificed their last five wickets for 10 runs against a SA attack that, unlike their batting counterparts, knows how to get the job done and does the damned thing.

However, there may be trouble even on that horizon. Having been cleared to play on Friday after an absence of two matches with a hamstring injury, Vernon Philander was removed from the equation in uncertain circumstances before the start of Saturday’s match. Team officials denied that he had failed a fitness test, but what other explanation can there be? And this is no time to be playing silly buggers with the truth.

If SA are to have a future in this World Cup, they are going to have to be more honest - most importantly with themselves. Why, for instance, does De Villiers have to do all the winning?

Having spent their home summer lording it over West Indies, SA have not had to confront these realities. Now, reality is confronting them.