Times Media
TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg *
As preparation for handling the pressure of tomorrow’s showdown with England, SA’s World T20 match against the Netherlands in Chittagong yesterday was invaluable. As a performance seen in isolation, all that stopped it from being a disaster for the South Africans was that they won by six runs.
Quite what SA thought they were doing in their innings of 145/9 will take serious explaining. Hitting the ball in the air to where fielders are stationed does not constitute batting at this level.
SA’s bowlers, too, looked like they had left their minds at the hotel and were only able to dismiss the Dutch for 139 in 18.4 overs because the men in orange delivered an even less reasonable facsimile of batting than the South Africans.
And there is more bad news in the shape of England’s breathless six-wicket win over Sri Lanka in yesterday’s other match.
The English dropped a slew of catches and couldn’t put the brakes on the batsmen in Sri Lanka’s total of 189/4. But they rose to that challenge in their reply of 190/4 with Alex Hales scoring 116 not out and sharing a stand of 152 with Eoin Morgan.
The pressure, then, will be greater on SA tomorrow. But as much as SA have earned a reputation for crumbling under pressure, so have England. In fact, SA’s winning percentage of 61.19 is the third highest among major countries. Only Bangladesh and West Indies languish below England’s 50%. Then again, West Indies are the defending champions at this tournament.
A happy exception for SA yesterday was Hashim Amla, whose 43 off 22 balls should shut up critics of his scoring rate. “In our domestic T20s, Hashim had the second best strikerate of all players in SA,” Russell Domingo said. “His strike rate for me is not a major concern. He is a quality player. He is always going to find the gaps and the boundaries when it’s his day.”
Imran Tahir, who claimed a haul of 4/21 on his 35th birthday, was the major reason SA’s blushes were spared.
“It’s a great sign when your side doesn’t play at 100% and you can still get across the line,” Faf du Plessis said. “We were poor; we were probably at about 60%. For a team who want to win the WT20, that’s not good enough. The Netherlands should have won.”
The Dutch star was Ahsan Malik, whose collection of not-quite medium pace cutters earned him career-best figures of 5/19 - also the best performance by a bowler from a team representing an associate country against a full member in T20 history, and the best of the tournament so far.
Malik also became the first bowler to reach double figures in wickets taken at this WT20. He now has 12 scalps.
The loss was bittersweet for Dutch captain Peter Borren, especially as it came in the wake of his team being dismissed for the T20 record low of 39 by Sri Lanka on Monday.
“I’m completely gutted like I was the other night, but for completely different reasons,” Borren said. “Normally, you think that if you lose to a better team and you’ve played at 100% that’s OK. But we weren’t anywhere near 100%. If we were, we would have won.”
* Not in Bangladesh
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