Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE, Cape Town
PRESSURE. It keeps tyres hard, sparks heart attacks, saves the lives of snake-bite victims, and creates diamonds from coal. It has also inspired some righteous rock and roll: “It’s the terror of knowing/What this world is about/Watching some good friends screaming, “Let me out!”
Sport stars know that feeling, and SA’s cricket team know it even better than Queen and David Bowie did.
Six World Cups. No trophies. That’s an unhappy scoreline whichever way you spin it, especially in a country where the rugby team have twice won their version of that title and even the mediocre football team once got off their backsides well enough to win something in the shape of the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations.
The pressure that comes with living with that truth - there are no harsh truths, only truths - has unscrewed SA’s courage from its sticking place too many times.
This week, as the marketing mavens tried to overwhelm us with the underwhelming fact that the 2015 World Cup was 100 days away, Steve Waugh took the chance to stick the knife in.
“Every player in the world wants to play in and win a World Cup,” Waugh, who captained Australia to triumph in 1999, said. “England, SA and New Zealand have never managed it and they will be desperate to change that next year.”
Which hurts more - being lumped with the snotty, overblown Poms and their SA-born mercenaries or with the perennial piranhas who are the willing but wanting Kiwis?
Tough choice, but for a team who are usually among the favourites - only to refuse to play accordingly - to have to share a dismissive sentence with the likes of England and New Zealand does not sit well. Not for the first time, Mr Waugh has hit an insecurity squarely on its unfunny bone.
Ah, pressure. Already it builds. SA are under it again on Sunday having made the Aussies look silly in the first T20 on Wednesday only to look not so clever themselves in the second game on Friday.
Yes, it’s only a T20 series. No, it doesn’t matter in the bigger scheme of things. But if SA win the decider on Sunday, which cricketminded South African is not going to breathe more easily about the World Cup? Conversely ... well, we don’t need to explain that to ourselves, do we.
Which is the best reason to squeeze the last smidgen of value out Sunday's game as well as the three T20s SA will play - along with three tests and five one-day internationals - against West Indies this summer; provided, of course, they turn up.
SA should heap as much pressure as they can stand on themselves to win their T20s, and convincingly - all the better to arrive at the World Cup not knowing how to blink when the going gets tough.
The five ODIs AB de Villiers’ team will play in Australia, starting in Perth on Friday, are the best conventional preparation for the tournament SA could hope for. But they will have the feel of practice matches; a nudge here, a wink there, and all sorts of fiddling with combinations and contrived situations.
T20, in which a game is won and lost in the time it takes to say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, does not allow for faffing about. It is bombastic and bastardised, but players have to trust their gut and their skills to win. In that sense, T20 is cricket at its purist.
“Not much thinking goes on; it’s just about playing,” JP Duminy said after Wednesday’s win. Damn straight, skipper.
Thinking will matter at the World Cup. But doing - not thinking - defeats pressure, and that wins matches.
Why do the Proteas choke? It varies:
In 1996 it was a brain-freeze against the Windies.
In 1999 the only batsmen to show up was Lance Klusener, batting at #9. The luck was due to run out at some point, unfortunately it did so at the worst possible time.
In 2003 it was the limits of thinking-challenged Shaun Pollock's captaincy. Don't get me wrong, great fellow and fast bowler. But captain, not so much.
In 2007 it was hangover of the 438 game: first the Proteas played like they could chase any total the gifappeltjies posted. Didn't work. Then in the semi final we had the hair-brained idea of posting 400+. Suffice to say it was NOT a 400 pitch.
In 2011 we allowed the Kiwis to upset us using the c-word. Hopefully the current team has heard the c-word so much, it has no impact on them.
In 2015 the danger is that we leave the thinking to the coach and limit what captain and players are allowed to try. You need that spontaneous moment of brilliance to win the cup. In AB, Amla, Dale and Quinton we have the players to pull it off - as long as we don't overplan and overprepare...