“At the start of the tournament Quinton de Kock said if I bat a lot then the frontline batters haven’t done their job.” – Wayne Parnell
Telford Vice / Sydney
“BELIEVE!” Of all the signs held up by spectators at Fenway Park in the heady days of October 2004 that one, with its singular exhortation, an injunction, an urgent, commanding verb, distilled the mood most viscerally. Others — “I believe”, “We believe”, “We still believe”, or “Still, we believe” — didn’t hit the mark as powerfully.
The Boston Red Sox hadn’t won the World Series for 86 years. Or, as opposition fans, especially those of the New York Yankees, delighted in chanting when Red Sox Nation were in earshot, since “Nineteen! … Eighteen!” Boston’s horses had been to the World Series water four times after that, and refused to drink.
And here they were, 3-0 down in the American League Championship Series (ALCS) — essentially the semi-finals — against those damn Yankees, who in 2003 before had waited until the bottom of the 11th inning of the seventh game of the ALCS to stab all of Boston in the heart using the sharp end of Aaron Boone’s walk-off home run.
A year on, and one more loss would be just another broken dream tossed onto the scrapheap of Red Sox history. Except that Boston didn’t lose. They became the first — and only — MLB team to reel off four consecutive wins to claim the American League pennant. There was no stopping them from there, and they thrashed the St Louis Cardinals 4-0 in the World Series.
But it was when they were 3-0 down against the Yankees, and trailing by two runs after six innings in the fourth game, that a particular kind of regular fella — middle-aged, paunchy, moustachioed — stood up from his seat in the stands and brandished his hand-scrawled order: “Believe!”
All cricketminded South Africans, not only those who are middle-aged, paunchy and moustachioed, know how he felt. And all of them would be hesitant to do what he did. Because they are all out of faith. If only they could believe their team had a real chance of winning the men’s T20 World Cup. History tells them they shouldn’t get their hopes up.
Going into the 2022 edition South Africa had a better winning percentage in the tournament than England, West Indies, New Zealand, Australia and Pakistan — champions all — but they had never advanced beyond the semi-finals, which they had reached just twice in eight attempts. In the ODI World Cup only New Zealand, India and Australia have won a bigger percentage of their games than South Africa. But, in their eight appearances in the tournament, they have won only one knockout match — the 2015 quarter-final against Sri Lanka — of the six they have played. They have reached the semis in more than a third of those 16 tournaments without once making the final, nevermind winning it.
Believe? In what, exactly? Maybe in the ability of this team to spread the load of winning. In a rain-ruined game against Zimbabwe in Hobart last Monday, Lungi Ngidi established South Africa’s dominance and Wayne Parnell and Anrich Nortjé took 2/16 in four overs between them before Quinton de Kock smashed an unbeaten 47 off 18. Three days later at the SCG De Kock’s 38-ball 63 was overshadowed by Rilee Rossouw’s 109, which flew off 56 deliveries. Then Nortjé and Tabraiz Shamsi claimed a combined 7/30 to nail down a comfortable victory.
Onto Perth for South Africa’s biggest game of the tournament so far, against India on Sunday. Ngidi removed Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul and Virat Kohli inside seven overs with only 41 runs scored. Ngidi took 4/29 and Parnell 3/15 in helpful conditions, which demanded gritty half-centuries by Aiden Markram and David Miller to seal the win with two balls to spare.
There’s a thread to be traced there — Ngidi, Nortjé, De Kock, Parnell — but also strengthening knots tied by other players. All of which have made South Africa the only unbeaten team in Group 2 and put them on top of the standings by points and net runrate. With matches to come against Pakistan in Sydney on Thursday and the Netherlands in Adelaide on Sunday, Temba Bavuma’s team are on course for a semi-final berth.
“That’s the pleasing thing, having different guys stand up in different guys,” Parnell told reporters in Perth after Sunday’s success. “In years gone by we maybe relied a lot on one or two guys. Now, from 1 to 11, someone can put in a matchwinning performance. We’re trusting our skill. It’s about trusting your processes. We trust everyone to perform.”
The converse is that South Africa have struggled with the idea of world class players. Like a docile poodle that has somehow caught a bird, they haven’t known how to handle them. They are uneasy in the presence of greatness. So bona fide stars like Allan Donald, Herschelle Gibbs, Jacques Kallis and AB de Villiers are controversial figures in some cricketing conversations in South Africa. They are not alone: even Nelson Mandela, a global icon, has his homegrown detractors — many feel he sacrificed justice in the cause of racial reconciliation, which has not been achieved in any real sense.
Parnell also spoke of a corollary to South Africa’s new-found socialist approach: “At the start of the tournament Quinton de Kock said if I bat a lot then they [the frontline batters] haven’t done their job.” So far so good. Parnell was listed at No. 7 in all three matches. He wasn’t required in the game against Zimbabwe, and was called to the crease with two balls left in the innings against Bangladesh and with 14 remaining against India. He has yet to be dismissed and has scored two off seven.
But didn’t his teammates’ stated reluctance to see him shoulder too much of the batting burden contradict the idea of shared responsibility? It seems not: “That gives me the confidence [to know] that everyone’s hard on themselves to put in matchwinning performances.”
Call it a double-edged sword. Besides, Ngidi had enough belief in Parnell and Miller to chase down the last dozen runs of the target in Perth to not bother with changing back into his match gear, nevermind padding up. “This is how I’ve been the whole game,” he told reporters, in his training gear complete with hoodie, when he was asked if he was worried about having to go out and bat. “I had full faith in the guys. It was getting a bit nerve-racking towards the end there but the guys have played in situations like this before so you 100% have faith in them.”
He echoed Parnell: “The guys have been playing good cricket, and it’s been different performers each time. It’s not just us relying on one person to win us a game on the day. We’re trying to do it as a team, and I think that’s the biggest thing that’s working for us right now.”
Then he went a step further and used the B-word: “I think we’ve come in with the belief to do it. We’re not carrying any baggage.” Really? Ngidi played in the first two games of South Africa’s 2019 World Cup campaign, when they were rudely woken by England and knocked out cold by Bangladesh. He also featured in the losses to New Zealand and Pakistan. It turned out to be South Africa’s worst World Cup; five losses in eight completed matches.
Parnell was in the XI who went down to Pakistan in the 2009 World T20 semi-final, part of the squad who came badly unstuck in their 2011 World Cup quarter-final against New Zealand, as well as the squad who finished bottom of their group after losing all three of their round-robin matches in the 2012 World T20. He was in the XI who crashed out of the 2014 World T20 in a semi-final against India, who were also the opposition in the only match he played in South Africa’s ill-fated 2015 World Cup campaign. He had Shikhar Dhawan caught in the deep that day/night — for 137 in nine overs that cost 85. India surged to victory by 130 runs, which remains South Africa’s heaviest ODI defeat by any team on neutral territory.
None of which is to single out Parnell as a weak link or some sort of bad omen. Rather, it is testament to his mental strength that, at 33, he can recover from blows like those well enough to become an important part of South Africa’s current campaign — he is third among their wicket-takers and second in the economy rate stakes.
But this is bigger than that. South Africans remember the 2015 World Cup for a semi-final against New Zealand in which the suits demanded the dropping of Kyle Abbott, then the team’s best bowler, which forced the inclusion of Vernon Philander, who wasn’t at his best and had only recently recovered from a hamstring injury. It was a plainly stupid decision that cost South Africa more than just a decent shot at winning a World Cup.
As Faf du Plessis wrote in a new book, Faf: Through Fire: “Deep down, that selection controversy was playing at the back of all our minds as we went into the semi-final. On the day, we suppressed the feelings in a hard-fought effort to win the game, but when we got into the changing room afterwards, anger re-entered our collective being. I must emphasise that this had nothing to do with Vern; none of our emotions were caused by or directed at him. Our anger was towards the external interference and the sense that it might have sapped 10 or even just 1 percent of the energy and motivation we needed to go all the way. Whether it did in fact have that effect doesn’t matter. That’s how we felt. If you fast forward a few years, can you really blame players like Rilee Rossouw and Kyle Abbott for signing Kolpak deals? … You carry those emotions with you, and you lose that something special that is meant to define the experience of playing for your country. ‘Abbo’ was deeply wounded by what had been done to him.”
Maybe Ngidi and Parnell mean South Africa have jettisoned baggage like that and are now travelling light. Who needs more than hand luggage for a T20 tournament, anyway? Suitcases stuffed with failure are too heavy and bulky to keep dragging around. But resolving to dump them and doing so are vastly different.
Not everyone is convinced that has happened in its own right. “India kabhi nahi chahega Pakistan aage jaaye [India will never want Pakistan to progress],” Salim Malik told Lahore-based 24 News HD with a smirk after South Africa’s win, which complicated Pakistan’s chances of making the semis. The irony of someone who was banned for life for matchfixing — and subsequently unbanned — seeming to suggest that the Indians threw the match just to keep Pakistan out of the playoffs is not lost.
But that’s not South Africa’s problem. Indeed, they are happy not to be dragged into the noise. “There’s a lot of hype about a lot of teams, and maybe that puts pressure on them,” Ngidi said. “We just keep going out there putting in the performances that we need to; getting those points.”
The Red Sox didn’t have that privilege. For many of the 86 years they didn’t win the World Series all they heard in opposition ballparks was, “Nineteen! … Eighteen!” At least, having never won a World Cup, South Africa can’t be beaten with that stick. Maybe that’s what faith really is: trusting that what you can’t see does in fact exist at a deeper level. Or could exist. In a word, belief. Or even “Believe!”
First published by Cricbuzz.
Bulletproof Truth 