Some things are certain. Such as the rain in monsoon, the melody in an A.R. Rahman album, the rise of Indian chess... and South Africa’s exit from a cricket World Cup.
Temba Bavuma’s men on Thursday night kept South Africa’s reputation intact, with the three-wicket defeat to Australia in the semifinal at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens. When Gerald Coetzee cleaned up the stubborn Josh Inglis, South Africa must have hoped to beat history, though Australia now needed only 20 with three wickets in hand. At this World Cup, Pat Cummins is proving to be Australia’s wall in the lower-order; along with Mitchell Starc, the skipper took the team home.
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This semifinal between Australia and South Africa wasn’t in the same class as the 1999 one, though there was only a one-run difference between the two first innings scores. It was the Proteas’ inability to win that match at Edgbaston that underlined their tag as chokers (they haven’t reached a single World Cup — ODI or T20 — final yet).
That classic was tied, as Alan Donald was run out off the fourth ball of the final over, leaving his partner Lance Klusener (31 not out, 16b) as probably the greatest tragic hero of a World Cup. Donald, one of the world’s most fearsome fast bowlers, cried for half an hour in a locked room.
Seven years earlier too, in their first ever World Cup, the South Africans had lost in the semifinals, against England, but that was more due to a strange rain rule that asked them, infamously, to score 21 runs from one ball (the target before the rain was a slightly more gettable 22 off 13).
Fast forward to 2003, when they were the hosts: the rain rule had become sensible thanks to the Duckworth-Lewis method, but in their final league match against Sri Lanka, they messed up and failed to make it to the Super Six. Mark Boucher blocked what would be the last ball of the match believing the score of 229 for six was enough, though actually it was only good enough to tie.
They lost in the semifinals to Australia in 2007 and in the quarterfinals in 2011 to New Zealand. In 2015, they were undone by Grant Elliott’s brilliant knock in the semifinal against New Zealand, the joint host.
The South Africans had arrived in India as a formidable team in form, and with the best percentage of ODI wins. They would return home disappointed. Yet again.
