What Windies taught SA about their World Cup prospects

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Brisbane

TONY Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, has explained how he had managed, a long, long time ago, to hold down a place in a cricket team: “I couldn’t bat. I couldn’t bowl. I couldn’t field. But, by God, could I sledge.”

Talking a good game is prized by Aussies, but not by South Africans. For them, doing is all that matters. SA players are too aggressive to star at something so subtle as sledging. When their aggression fails them, the rest of their game does, too.

So, for all the talking SA did after their anemic performance against India in Melbourne last Sunday - when they suffered their biggest loss in Word Cup history, by 130 runs - it was what they would do about it in their next match, against West Indies in Sydney on Friday, that would matter.

Not that their challenge was simply to beat West Indies. That, South Africans knew from the 4-1 hiding their team handed the Palookas of the Caribbean in a one-day series in SA in January, they could do. They needed to thrash them.

And thrash them they did, by 257 runs, which equaled the biggest ‘klap’ yet administered at a World Cup.

The nation, then, can breathe easily. It would be more difficult for AB de Villiers’ team to struggle against Ireland, who they play in Canberra on Tuesday, than beat them convincingly. Pakistan, their opponents in Auckland on Saturday, are lurching from one internal disaster to the next. SA’s last group match is against the United Arab Emirates in Wellington on March 12. Useless Arab Emirates? Who said that?

So, it is plain-sailing from here to the quarter-finals.

That SA could, in the space of six days, go from woeful to wonderful was due in no small part to further confirmation of De Villiers’ genius. His 162 not out against the Windies was the kind of innings the crowd would have paid exponentially more to see. Imran Tahir, too, was worth the price of admission for his celebrations alone - nevermind his haul of 5/45.

But SA know they can depend on players like De Villiers and Tahir. What they might not have known before Friday was that Rilee Rossouw, who scored 61, can play like his life depends on it and not like the rich kid from Bloem that he is.

“We play football games for warm‑ups, and he’s one of those guys you don’t want to be around when it gets tense,” De Villiers said. “He’s very competitive, and I like to see that. I just like the look of him.”

De Villiers said it was Rossouw’s positive play that helped him shrug off the effect of a bout of gastro.

“I didn’t feel too good when I was walking out to bat, really flat, and he had a lot of energy about him, a lot of intensity.

“He was getting into really good positions and making the pitch look flat out there, which wasn’t the case the previous 10 to 15 overs.”

South Africans would also have been pleased to learn that Kyle Abbott - who removed threats Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels in the space of seven of his deliveries - wants, more than anything, to be part of this team. That much was obvious from his raw yawp of joy at those successes. Don’t give that man a Bell’s - give him the ball.

“He looked like a really experienced bowler out there,” De Villiers said. “He looked like he knew that he was doing, and that’s just great to see.”

Rossouw and Abbott were replacements for the injured JP Duminy and the axed Wayne Parnell. Would they keep their places?

“It would be difficult to leave them out. But it’s great for the team - 15 guys in good form.”

Not so fast, skipper. Quinton de Kock is not the player he was before his ankle injury, Farhaan Behardien needs to do more than rotate the strike and Dale Steyn is a dragon who has mislaid his fire.

But, unlike Tony Abbott, they can bat, bowl and field, and they know it.