“You’ll see a team who are hungry to win, and who are united to play for each other and represent the country in a respectful and a positive manner.” – Aiden Markram
Telford Vice / Cape Town
RATTLE and Hum is the title of an album of what would now be derided as flabby parental rock. It was released by U2 more than 35 years ago into a westernised world that has since gone gaga over Taylor Swift and whoever invented themselves on TikTok this morning. Rattle and hum also captures how South Africa have played at the men’s T20 World Cup.
The batting has rattled while the bowling has hummed, as Aiden Markram made plain during a press conference on Tuesday: “If the bowlers execute the plan it builds a lot of pressure through dots and results in wickets. A lot of credit has to go to the bowlers. They’ve won us games that we didn’t look like winning. That gives them confidence that any total we set they feel they have the ability to defend it.”
Part of South Africa’s shaky batting is explained by them playing their first three games on Nassau County’s notoriously difficult pitches. They had arrived as perhaps the most feared batting line-up in the tournament but have struggled to recover from their New York State experience. But India also played their first three matches at Nassau, and seem to have moved on from all that. South Africa and India each batted first three times after leaving New York, and the Indians scored 110 more runs in those innings.
South Africa’s overall batting strike rate as a team during the tournament, 106.19, is the lowest among the semifinalists. Their bowling economy rate, 6.63, is better only than England’s 7.48. South Africa’s average total batting first is 146.25 — behind India’s 168.33 and Afghanistan’s 151.25, while England have batted first only once. The South Africans have taken an average of 7.57 wickets per innings, compared to Afghanistan’s 9.00, India’s 8.33 and England’s 6.67.
So how do we explain South Africa reeling off seven consecutive wins to earn a semifinal against the Afghans in Trinidad on Thursday as one of only two remaining unbeaten sides — India are the other — of all 20 who started the World Cup? Maybe that isn’t explicable, at least not in numbers.
“The promise we make to each other as a team is to bring good energy and have a good attitude about the game and excitement about the opportunity to do something special,” Markram said. “We’ve all watched this game enough, but how you see those things happen is important. You’ll see a team who are hungry to win, and who are united to play for each other and represent the country in a respectful and a positive manner. And, ultimately, a team who are free to express themselves and try to be the best cricketers they can be.”
That will make many South Africans queasy. As will this, on the semi itself: “It’s exciting, it’s nerve-wracking, it’s all the emotions in one. But you want to be involved in games like this. It’s a great opportunity for us to take a step further to winning a trophy.”
What is all this touchy feely stuff? This glib statementeering? This baring of not quite the soul, but too close for comfort to that? That’s not the South African way, which is to stay stoic and silent and see to the task at hand. And which has not worked.
South Africa have won only one of their 10 World Cup knockout games in both formats; the 2015 quarterfinal against Sri Lanka at the SCG. Sometimes they have played below themselves — in a word, choked — other times they have been beaten by the better side, and still other times they have been undone by the weather.
Whatever. The truth is that the South African way — booming fast bowling, aggressive fielding, conservative batting — has failed when it has mattered most. When it hasn’t mattered as much, in the preliminary stage of tournaments, they have won 67.57% of their matches. Only Australia, who have a success rate of 71.43% in those games, have been better.
The difference is the Australians have won 18 of their 26 playoff games. They have made it to the knockout rounds of 14 of all of the 21 white-ball World Cups played before this tournament. When they reach the final, look out — they’ve done that 10 times and won seven of them. That’s the Australian way, albeit it didn’t stop them from exiting the current competition earlier than usual.
South Africa haven’t followed the Aussies’ template this time. Not many teams could. But they have ditched the South African way — particularly in a batting sense. They have been content to stay on thin ice, scoring just enough runs to bowl at or by chipping away at a target unemphatically. The ice hasn’t cracked under them despite defeat looming in six of those seven wins, testament to a quality that hasn’t always been evident in their approach: composure.
It is, Markram said, the cricketing equivalent of a sourdough starter: “We can take a lot of calmness from the fact that in this competition we’ve been involved in quite a few close games. So it’s not going to feel like anything new. We also take a lot of belief from knowing that we have not been in ideal positions but we’ve been able to get the job done. That offers you calmness as a team. If you’re operating in that space you take calmness and confidence in your decision-making.”
Markram has led from the front on that score, making canny bowling changes — sometimes involving himself — and taking outrageous catches. And all the while looking like he is sat on a park bench holding an ice-cream in one hand and a good book in the other. Do not be fooled by the image he projects.
“The mind is going quickly and sometimes it’s all over the place, but you don’t want that to rub off on the players,” Markram said. “It’s the old cliché that a bad plan you commit to is better than a good plan that you’re not really committed to. So committing to something while we’re out there, whether it’s right or wrong, helps a lot. Sometimes things look calmer than they are out there, but if you can keep calm it allows you to think clearly and come up with decent plans.”
Planning is one thing, execution distinctly another. But players as disparate and different in skills and experience as David Miller, Ottneil Baartman, Quinton de Kock, Kagiso Rabada, Tabraiz Shamsi and Marco Jansen have stepped up to deliver matchwinning performances in the past three weeks.
Maybe that’s the value of, in the squad of 15, only Ryan Rickelton, Bjorn Fortuin and Baartman not having been to a senior World Cup before. But that must mean the remaining dozen have brought a lot of excess baggage. De Kock and Miller were in the XIs that crashed out in the semifinals of the 2014 T20 World Cup, and the 2015 and 2023 World Cups. Last year’s semi also featured Heinrich Klaasen, Gerald Coetzee, Keshav Maharaj, Jansen, Rabada, Shamsi and Markram — who are all back for more. How have they managed to lose their luggage so successfully?
“That’s a tricky one,” Markram said. “There’s nothing clear and evident that you could put your finger on and say this is the exact difference. We have been together as a group for quite some time, and that experience and the environment you’re able to create in the changeroom and off the field plays a big role in how things look on the field. That probably is a big difference.
“The guys have a lot of trust in each other and are willing to put everything on the line for each other. Once you’ve established that in a team it goes a long way in what you see on the field from an actions and effort point of view.”
You too can surely see that, through playing helter-skelter cricket, South Africa have generated the required desire and pride, even though they still haven’t found what they’re looking for. How far they are from putting a bullet in the blue sky above this World Cup is about to be revealed.
Cricbuzz
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