The philosophy of not taking things overly seriously is a thinner, more brittle veneer with every passing press conference.
Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE in Southampton
IT’S rarely a good sign when Mohammed Moosajee turns up as the wing man at a press conference. And there he was, at Faf du Plessis’ elbow in Southampton on Tuesday, the day before South Africa’s match against India, to tell us more about what we had learnt minutes earlier — Dale Steyn was going home.
Moosajee, South Africa’s manager and doctor, was on hand to explain that the shoulder injury that had decided Steyn’s fate wasn’t the same shoulder injury that had kept him out of the games against England and Bangladesh.
Steyn had brought that problem with him from the Indian Premier League (IPL), and as such couldn’t have been replaced in South Africa’s World Cup squad if that was his reason for leaving the tournament.
That’s what South Africa’s World Cup campaign has become: damage control. They need injuries to patch the holes left by other injuries.
On Thursday, the day after India inflicted South Africa’s third consecutive loss, Nathan Coulter-Nile — whose place Steyn rushed to the IPL to take after the Australian was ruled out with a back injury — walked to the wicket at Trent Bridge on Thursday with his team 147/6 in the 31st over against West Indies.
Coulter-Nile hammered a career-best 92 off 60 balls to boost the total to an eventual 288, and Australia won by 15 runs.
There was also news from South Africa’s camp on Thursday. Apparently AB de Villiers had made himself available for selection for the tournament — either 24 hours before the squad was announced or during the first week of the IPL in March, or even when he retired in March last year, depending on who you believe — but was given the cold shoulder by the selectors. Cue opprobrium on all sides.
It doesn’t look like fun being part of South Africa’s squad right now. The philosophy of not taking things overly seriously is a thinner, more brittle veneer with every passing press conference.
So much so that Hashim Amla, talking about the blow to the head he took from England’s Jofra Archer during the first match of the tournament, had to explain that he wasn’t being entirely serious.
“My friends said, ‘How can you do a concussion test on someone who’s been slow all their life?’. That’s a joke, by the way.”
Amla also had hope to offer: “The last two World Cups that we went to we started off pretty well, and unfortunately we didn’t win. Maybe this is going to go the other way around.
“That’s the belief I have. Get a win here [against West Indies in Southampton on Friday], get some momentum and change things round.
“It’s not how you drive, it’s how you arrive.”
Another joke? Or is that what being desperate sounds like? And is that a good thing?
“Desperate? I don’t know. Six out of six [wins from here] gets you [to the semi-finals].
“Whether being desperate makes you play better or not may be the next question sports psychologists disagree about.”
Tabraiz Shamsi was also doing the math: “We’ve only played one third of the tournament. Obviously it’s not ideal that we didn’t get the results; three [losses] out of three is not great. But we’ve still got two-thirds to go.”
He saw silver in the gloom: “A lot of guys are hurting, but that hurt is going to bring positive results. When this team’s hurting they do great things.”
What these comments tell us, if we didn’t already know, is that there are no straightforward answers to the questions that have been asked of South Africa.
It isn’t about the technical bits and bobs of holding the seam like this instead of like that, or declining to play a particular stroke when facing a particular bowler. South Africa have batted well and bowled well during this World Cup, just not in the same match.
Du Plessis has won the toss all three times, but his decision to bat against India seemed influenced by his choice to field first against Bangladesh at the Oval last Sunday — when the Tigers put up 330/6, their record total in a one-day international.
Thing is, India have a gun seam attack in Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya, and the rest was history. South Africa’s 227/9 was never going to be enough to hold India.
If the coolest, calmest captain in cricket is struggling to think straight, what chance his team are?
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