South Africa have become the unloved Birmingham of world cricket

Twenty years ago, Hansie Cronjé’s team came to Edgbaston and were tattooed with the ink of fear and failure. Faf du Plessis’ team returned to have the same tattoo touched up. It hovers fresh and tender on the skin once more, restored to its full and cruel indelibility.

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TELFORD VICE in London

BIRMINGHAM is not a pretty place. A gleaming new railway station, a soulless, bloated shopping mall, endless stretches of bricked up suburbia, the hotel where professional racist Enoch Powell made his anti-immigrant, pro-fascist “rivers of blood” speech in 1968, a decent pub, at least — The Plough, in Harborne — and that’s about it.

It is cold, drab, often wet and windy and generally sunless, and owes the reason for its status as England’s second city to the fact that it is bang in the middle of the country. Birmingham is the Dubai of Britain — a place to pass through, maybe grabbing a flaccid sandwich and a watery coffee on the way, but not a place to stay, much less to live.

Whether it can rightfully be regarded as a place at all could fuel a decent debate over a few pints at The Plough.

But Birmingham has something else. Something cricketminded South Africans prefer did not not exist. It’s Edgbaston, stupid.

Twenty years ago, Hansie Cronjé’s team came here and were tattooed with the ink of fear and failure. On Wednesday, Faf du Plessis’ team returned to have the same tattoo touched up. It hovers fresh and tender on the skin once more, restored to its full and cruel indelibility.

Hang on a minute, you say. The climax of the 1999 World Cup semi-final against Australia was a singular brain fart in cricket history. What happened between Laurel and Hardy, aka Allan Donald and Lance Klusener and the calamitous runout that tied the match and put Australia in the final, which, of course, they won, cannot be compared to Wednesday’s game against New Zealand.

For a start, it was a league match and not a knockout. And it wasn’t as if South Africa blew it. They simply didn’t play well enough to win. The New Zealanders, notably Kane Williamson and his undefeated 106, did.

Superficially, yes. But if all that was wrong with Birmingham was a bleakly modern train station or a nondescript shopping centre or communities diluted by too much low density housing or the scene of a hateful speech delivered 51 years ago, it would still be a place, and not a bad place. But pile all of those factors into the same few square kilometres and things are different. Behold, the non-place.

Similarly, had South Africa not batted like muppets against England or India or bowled like muppets against Bangladesh — Banglabloodydesh! — they would have been able to live with coming second in a proper scrap with the Kiwis.

But six games into their World Cup campaign the only islands in their stream of sorriness are a washout against West Indies and a win over Afghanistan.

“It’s disappointing, of course,” Ottis Gibson said after Wednesday’s game. “We didn’t do what we left home to do. It’s still quite raw.”

When the squad was announced Faf du Plessis spoke so sincerely about how this South Africa side were not as good as those who had gone before that he managed to transform weakness into strength: players are weak, teams are strong.

But perhaps it was always going to be this way. Maybe Hashim Amla being hit in the head barely four overs into their first innings of the tournament was a sign that South Africa were less in control of their destiny that ever before. Maybe the revelation that AB de Villiers wanted to come back to the fold after ditching his teammates for less cricket and more money did their heads in. Maybe heads were buried under the dressingroom duvet when Dale Steyn’s return home with a shoulder injury followed Lungi Ngidi’s hamstring problem, which followed Anrich Nortjé’s broken thumb.

“There are a lot of world-class players in our dressingroom but for whatever reason it seems the guys have been hampered in putting their best forward,” Gibson said.

“In bilateral series we’ve played very good cricket, but we haven’t been able to do it here and thats something as a coach I need to think about.

“We’ve spoken the language of being positive and aggressive and taking the game forward for a long time.

“To see, when we come to this stage, guys going into their shell is a little but surprising.”

Pakistan loom at Lord’s on Sunday. They have also won only one game, in their case in five attempts, and it’s difficult to know whether Wednesday’s news that Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) committee head Mohsin Khan has resigned after eight months in a job in which he held a scant three meetings will make them more or less dangerous opponents.

But we do know Pakistan are taking their World Cup woes seriously. PCB managing director Wasim Khan has taken over from Mohsin and has already announced a review of the team’s performance in the last three years. It will start immediately after the tournament. Are you listening, Cricket South Africa?

Next Friday South Africa will be up north to take on Sri Lanka in Chester-le-Street, and eight days after that they will reach the end of this wretched lurch through England when they play, of all people, Australia at Old Trafford.

At least, that should be the merciful end. But if South Africa beat Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and all sorts of miracles happen in other games, they may yet have to take on the Aussies with a place in the semis still within reach.

The Lankans, who also have a solitary win from five matches but are two places higher in the standings than West Indies, South Africa and Pakistan because they have had two washouts to those teams’ one, are eminently beatable.

Not so the Australians, a rumbling juggernaut of a side just itching to prove to the world that all that petty nonsense about ball-tampering last year was just that: nonsense.

It’s a measure of what a mess South Africa are in right now that the very thought of a sudden death clash against the yellow menace comes laced with horror.

What are the chances? None if South Africa lose on Sunday. Say it quietly if you must, but say it: Pakistan! Zindabad!