South Africa’s agonising last-gasp defeat to New Zealand in Auckland joins a long list of excruciating near-misses for the Proteas in World Cups.
Their fearsome fast bowler Morne Morkel was in tears on the outfield after New Zealand’s dramatic final-over victory at Eden Park in their World Cup semi-final. South Africa had finally appeared ready to ditch the “chokers” tag that had followed them in the limited overs game when NZ needed 12 off the last over with six wickets down and Daniel Vettori on strike but when the pressure came on, yet again, they let New Zealand off the hook.
Inevitably, the focus will be on the horrendous dropped catch in the penultimate over when Farhaan Behardien appeared set to take a skier in the deep to dismiss Grant Elliott only for JP Duminy, also going for the catch, to dive in front of him, causing the chance to be spilled.
It will have brought back bad memories of previous heartbreaking South Africa World Cup exits. In 1992, against England in a rain-affected semi-final, South Africa needed 22 runs from 13 balls when it began to rain but when they returned faced the impossible task of 22 runs from just the one ball then deemed possible to be bowled, under the rules then prevailing.
In 1996, as one of the favorites,they were eliminated in the quarter-finals before perhaps their most famous self-destructive near-miss, in the 1999 semi-final against Australia at Edgbaston. South Africa needed only one run from the last four balls of the match to win but a mix-up and run-out ended the game as a tie and Australia advanced with a better record in the preceding stage.
Calamity struck again four years later. As tournament hosts South Africa failed to progress beyond the group stage when they miscalculated a run chase in a rain-affected match against Sri Lanka, leading to the resignation of their captain, Shaun Pollock.
In 2007 they crashed out in the semi–finals after being dismissed by Australia for 149 – their lowest World Cup score.
Then in 2011, in a match in which AB de Villiers was a key figure, they were beaten by New Zealand in an acrimonious quarter-final. Asked on Monday what he remembered of that game, De Villiers simply said: “We lost.”
Their conquerors New Zealand are no strangers to agonising failure either, having been beaten in each of their six previous semi-final appearance but in Auckland, in front of their home crowd, they finally came good.
