Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE, Auckland
“I treat you like I treat my own children,” Adrian Birrell said to Quinton de Kock as SA’s practice session at Eden Park’s No. 2 ground wound down on Saturday.
Birrell is 54. De Kock is 22. So they are easily within range of each other as a father-and-son equation. De Kock, being the relative kid he is, protested Birrell’s friendly assertion.
“Nah,” Birrell said. “You just need some discipline.”
Then, after Birrell announced, “another training session done!”, they walked off towards the team bus together. With a naughty smile, De Kock, still wearing the brace that has been wrapped around his left ankle for almost two months, resolved to call Birrell “grandaddy” forthwith.
Birrell smiled. Whatever it is assistant coaches of national teams do, clearly it was working.
No player embodies SA’s stunning revival in their World Cup quarter-final over Sri Lanka at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Wednesday as obviously as De Kock.
Just as SA crumbled under pressure before that match, so De Kock would have struggled to gather runs if they were shells on a beach. In Wednesday’s game, he scored 78 of the shiny things.
And SA delivered their most convincing performance in a must-win one-day international. It has taken them 535 games in the format to reach this point, but a nation is relieved that they have.
Quite where De Kock found the touch and timing to turn the corner was as unanswerable as where SA found the confidence to refuse to allow the Lankans into the match. How did they go from KO kids to sexy semi-finalists?
“I take my hat off to AB (de Villiers),” Kyle Abbott said on Saturday. “He has been fantastic with us and has led by example. His hunger to succeed and his passion for the team is contagious, and the guys are biting onto that.
“We showed every bit of that on Wednesday. There was so much commitment in the field. Rilee (Rossouw) was outstanding at backward point - making efforts for balls that he was probably never going to get to, but at least he made an effort.
“That’s what AB asked from us. He said he wants us to create chances and that’s what we did. We gave ourselves every chance the other night. It’s just a confidence thing now that we actually can do it and take it to the next level.”
Abbott spoke hours before New Zealand played their quarter-final in Wellington on Saturday to decide who SA’s opponents on Tuesday will be. Not that it makes sense to ask which of those two sides SA would rather be up against ...
“I don’t think it matters,” Abbott said. “We have had success against both teams in the past. We beat New Zealand in a one-day series here last year, and we’re coming off a 4-1 series win in SA against West Indies.
“So I don’t think it makes any difference for us. The key thing for us is to reset from Wednesday and focus on how we prepare for a game and take on the opposition who come our way.
“In the last couple of days there seems to be a spring in our step that we actually could (win the quarter-final) despite all the critics and everyone saying that we can’t. It’s gone the other way.
“The guys aren’t going to sit back. This is going to take us to the next step and make us believe even more, whatever the conditions and whoever the opposition, we can do it.”
Bring on ODI No. 536.
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