SA need to be wary of Zim paradigm shift

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Hamilton

SHAH owes his livelihood to driving a taxi in Hamilton, but he owes his loyalty to Afghanistan. And he reckons the World Cup could have had a thing coming.

“Scotland have been playing good cricket, so I don’t know if we will beat them,” he said on Thursday as his cab sped along the road that weaves through farmland to connect Hamilton’s airport to this sleepy city in the Waikato region of New Zealand’s north island.

“But Zimbabwe! If we were in the same group we could have beaten Zimbabwe - just like we did before.”

Yes. And no. Afghanistan won two one-day internationals against Zimbabwe in Bulawayo last July. But only after the home side had won the first two.

Shift the paradigm and it is clear why SA will have an unusually confident Zimbabwean team on their hands in their World Cup clash at Seddon Park on Sunday.

The sides have met in 36 completed ODIs of which SA have won 34 - a truth that will be as far removed from the Zimbos’ minds as Robert Mugabe is from reality.

Instead, the Zimbabweans will be focused on those two lonely victories. That the most recent of them was achieved 15 years ago and by a far stronger team than the current Zimbabwe side will matter far less to them than the fact that their first win over SA was earned at a World Cup, in 1999.

“We’ve done it before,” they will tell themselves. “We can do it again.”

It’s a decent enough theory if the idea is to put a spring in the step of a team heading over the boundary and onto the field, but putting it into practice will take a leap of faith.

The complication for SA is that their opponents on Sunday, no doubt infected by new coach Dav Whatmore’s aggressive enthusiasm, may have done exactly that.

Zimbabwe have not lost any of the five games they have played in New Zealand since February 2. They reeled off three victories against Northern Districts and when their World Cup warm-up against New Zealand on Monday was washed out the home side had been reduced to 157/7. In another warm-up on Wednesday, Zimbabwe chased down a target of 280 to beat Sri Lanka by seven wickets.

SA, by contrast, had to find a way past the eight-ball to beat Sri Lanka by five wickets on Monday. Two days later, they crashed to New Zealand by 134 runs.

AB de Villiers missed the first of those games with a hip injury while Dale Steyn was rested for the second, in which Hashim Amla did not bat. But SA’s excuses run out right there.

Tillakaratne Dilshan and Angelo Mathews did not bat against Zimbabwe, but Mahela Jayawardene did not take guard against SA. Meanwhile, the same New Zealand top four who took 217 runs off SA’s attack could score only 125 against Zimbabwe - 100 of them by Martin Guptill.

Results of warm-up games are, as SA have protested, irrelevant. But that does not hide the glaring truth that they have played shoddy cricket for much of their two games.

Not so Zimbabwe. SA should beat them, but there’s a taxi driver somewhere who knows otherwise.

SA v Zimbabwe in World Cups

P2 W1 L1 (1992 and 1999)

Highest totals:

For: 185 (Chelmsford - May, 1999)

Against: 233/6 (Chelmsford - May, 1999)

Lowest totals:

For: 164/3 (Canberra - March, 1992)

Against: 163 164/3 (Canberra - March, 1992)

Highest scores:

For: Kepler Wessels 70 (Canberra - March, 1992)

Against: Neil Johnson 76 (Chelmsford - May, 1999)

Best bowling:

For: Brian McMillan 3/30 (Canberra - March, 1992)

Against: Neil Johnson 3/27 (Chelmsford - May, 1999)