South Africa’s truth, real and imagined

“For me, if we win this World Cup, that will be the first World Cup that we win.” - Aiden Markram, a 2014 under-19 World Cup winner.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

IT says something that the temporary ground near New York for the men’s T20 World Cup can accommodate more spectators than South Africa’s biggest cricket stadium, the Wanderers. It says something, but what?

The same is true for Ireland, the Netherlands and Canada, who will also be among the eight teams in action in Nassau County. None of those four sides are likely to draw a full house unless their opponents are India, who will meet Pakistan there on June 9. That explains why provision has been made for 34,000 fans.

On this scale, then, South Africa are in the lesser half of the eight teams. By another measure they are only just in the majority, and not in a good way — India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are the only teams going to Nassau who have won a senior men’s World Cup, T20 or ODI.

The odd men out are Bangladesh, who have grounds bigger than Nassau but have never lifted a World Cup. They have reached only one knockout game — the ODI quarterfinals in 2015, when India hammered them by 109 runs in Melbourne. South Africa have had 10 knockout games and won just one: also the quarterfinals in 2015, when they thrashed Sri Lanka by nine wickets in Sydney.

Cricketminded South Africans will balk at their team being consigned to a similar category of minnowhood in global events as Bangladesh, nevermind Ireland, the Netherlands and Canada. But they can’t avoid that suggestion. Maybe the fact that even Nassau’s crowds could be bigger than the Wanderers’ says South Africans tend to talk a better game of cricket than they play. Or that cricket isn’t as big a deal in South Africa as its aficionados would like to think, and like the rest of the world to think. Bums on seats don’t lie: South Africa’s biggest rugby stadium holds more than twice as many fans as its cricket counterpart and its biggest football arena over three times as many.

The truth is that the country’s only cricket World Cup success remains the 2014 men’s under-19 version. More than 10 years on from South Africa’s singular triumph, the captain of that team is preparing to lead the senior side in the coming days. Could anything from then be of use now?

“I don’t take too much from it,” Aiden Markram told a press conference on Thursday. “I see it as a completely different level of cricket. There is a small element of belief and confidence you could potentially take from it. For me, if we win this World Cup, that will be the first World Cup that we win. That’s not to disregard what we did at under-19 level at all. It was a massive achievement for us and one that we are still incredibly proud of, but this one would mean a hell of a lot more.”

Markram’s role is vastly changed from what it was in 2014: “The off-field responsibilities that you have as a captain at ICC events are more hectic and more busy. It’s about managing that, but we’ve got a great team in place to make my life a lot easier in that regard. It allows me to focus on the cricket side of things; managing energies into the right areas that will ideally allow the team to do really well.”

Markram is among seven South Africa players who didn’t join the World Cup squad until Wednesday — five days before their tournament opener against Sri Lanka — because the IPL took priority. That might look like more evidence that the South Africans are in the second division of international cricket, but only the ECB had the clout to withdraw their players from the Indian tournament. Besides, the piecemeal plan for assembling international squads promises to become more frequent given the cluttered franchise tournament schedule.

“Doing things how they used to be done, in terms of doing a proper build-up as a squad, might get more challenging moving forward,” Markram said. “We want to be together as much as we can before any series or any World Cup, but you go with what you get given time-wise and preparation-wise. We are getting more used to doing things like that.”

Rob Walter was on the same page when he was asked, at a press conference on Tuesday, about the contrast between England’s and South Africa’s approach to their IPL players. “We’re in a different position to them in terms of having access to those players,” Walter said. “There’s a number of reasons for that, and some of them are well about my pay grade.

“The ideal is to have your players together. You have a nice lead-in, you do things the way you want to do them, and you get yourself ready for a World Cup. That’s not our reality, and I’m comfortable with that and the maturity the players have. I certainly would have liked to have had the players together for more time, but that’s not our reality.”

Reality. That’s what this is about. Under Walter, South Africa have veered closer to it than ever before. In Markram, they have someone who knows the reality of winning a World Cup. When realities collide big things happen.

Cricbuzz