Tag: Emily Dickinson

Hope soars as South Africa reach final frontier for first time

“There’s nothing to be scared of.” – Aiden Markram

Telford Vice / Cape Town

HOPE is the thing with feathers. It gets you out of bed when the alarm ends your night’s sleep at 2am. It explains brushing your teeth at 2.15am. It floods the black pools of your six-month-old kitten’s eyes as he stares at you through the winter darkness: you’re awake! Let’s play!

“Firstly, thanks for waking up that early, jeepers,” Aiden Markram told a press conference on Tuesday when he was asked for his message to the fans ahead of the men’s T20 World Cup semifinal against Afghanistan in Tarouba, which started at 2.30am on Thursday South Africa time.

Markram seemed surprised at the prospect of people harbouring enough hope to watch him and his team play at that hour. When you’ve won seven consecutive games you have soared, feathered or not, past hope. You know you can win because you have won.

But hope is all the fans have. Some of them have been willing you onwards and upwards since that soggy semi against England at the SCG in 1992. Others wouldn’t have been born then. Still others wouldn’t have been alive the last time you were in a semi in this format, more than 10 years ago. Before the sun rose on Thursday all of them, regardless of when they were born, knew this time would be different.

The television cameras settled on a splodge of yellow-shirted spectators in the stands. Australia supporters! By all that made sense, they should have been watching Mitchell Marsh’s men play South Africa in this semi. But Afghanistan have, in the best and most exciting way, made this tournament not make sense. Until this match, of course. 

Their dismissal for 56 — their lowest total in all their 138 T20Is — in 11.5 overs was confirmed, on review, at 3.33am. Azmatullah Omarzai’s 10 was their highest score. Aside, that is, from the 13 extras. Kagiso Rabada bowled Ibrahim Zadran through the gate with his first ball of the match and did the same to Mohammad Nabi with his fourth, a sniping inswinger, which reduced the Afghans to 20/4 and erased their chances of posting a competitive total.

The essence of their nightmare was captured not by a delivery or a stroke, but by Naveen-ul-Haq arriving at the crease in the 10th over wearing neither helmet nor cap. When you’re taking guard at 50/8 who cares what’s on your head?  

A heaving Quinton de Kock lost his off stump to Fazalhaq Farooqi and the 11th delivery of South Africa’s reply, and Reeza Hendricks and Markram sealed victory in 8.5 overs with an unbroken stand of 55 off 43. The target was chalked off by 4.37am. Next stop the uncharted territory, for this team, of a World Cup final. They will meet England or India in Barbados on Saturday.

Much of which will be overshadowed by a Brian Lara Stadium pitch on which even the outrageously fine player for whom the ground is named would have struggled to shine. Some deliveries took off, others refused to launch, all seemed to veer this side or that. There was seam. There was swing. There was turn. Nothing about batting on this surface was fair.

A case in point was the penultimate delivery of South Africa’s last powerplay over, which was bowled by the bearded flying fury on legs called Rashid Khan — whose googly to Hendricks pitched short and stayed resolutely low.

Maybe because he has had a difficult tournament, scoring 80 runs in seven innings before this match, 43 of them in one innings, and never looking fluent, Hendricks was equipped to deal with what he faced in that instant; he jammed his bat onto the ball. It wasn’t anything like as elegant as Hendricks often is, but it was effective. 

Rashid fielded and followed through into Hendricks’ half of the pitch, looking at least as menacing as Dennis Lillee. He aimed a face as thunderous as his eyes were bolts of lightning at the South African, and underarmed the ball onto the stumps even though the batter was well within his ground. The bails and stumps lit up in apologetic sympathy.    

“We might have played better than that but the conditions didn’t allow us to do what we wanted,” Rashid said on television after the match, adding bleakly, “But you have to be prepared for any conditions.”

Between innings, a television interviewer had approached Rabada on the outfield. “Hi KG,” you could lipread her saying, “I’m Laura McGoldrick, Martin Guptill’s wife.” Rabada told her on camera, “We 100% believe that this is the team [to win a World Cup]. Why play if you don’t believe it?”

Rabada was not part of the side beaten by McGoldrick’s husband and 10 other New Zealanders — one of them, Grant Elliott, born and raised a South African — at Eden Park in the 2015 World Cup semi. Those players no doubt also believed they could win. But Rabada was at Eden Gardens in November to endure another World Cup semi defeat, to Australia. He would have believed South Africa could win then, too.

Now they have earned only their second success in 11 knockout games, and their first in a semifinal. Dare they hope for one more win? “There’s nothing to be scared of,” Markram said for the cameras, his eyes unnervingly steady.

“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” Emily Dickinson wrote as the opening line of a poem whose first verse continues, “That perches in the soul. And sings the tune without the words. And never stops at all.”

She was right originally, and on that wet night in Sydney in 1992, in Karachi in 1996, in Birmingham in 1999, in St Lucia in 2007, in Nottingham in 2009, in Dhaka in 2011, in Dhaka again in 2014, in Auckland in 2015, in Kolkata last year. And in Tarouba on Wednesday. Or Thursday, if you were among those who rose at 2am emptied of sleep but filled with hope.

Cricbuzz

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Hope grows wings for SA

“We don’t want to have a one-in-a-thousand kind of day. We want to have targets that we can hit.” – Janneman Malan

Telford Vice | Cape Town

DEATH came to Colombo on Saturday. It settled silently on the outfield at the R. Premadasa Stadium and lay there unnoticed until the 37th over of the second ODI, when the gloved hands of a member of the groundstaff carried it away with dignified gentleness.

What made the bird choose that spot of Sri Lanka’s lush earth to breathe its last? Maybe it didn’t have the strength to keep flying. Perhaps it had hoped to make a last meal of the myriad madly swarming insects that made the broadcast of the match look as if it had pixelated. Might it have been an aficionado of the game looking for a beloved place to die?

If so, and assuming it was a Sri Lankan supporter, there was mercy in it meeting its demise when it did. That way, it did not have to see Janneman Malan bat through five partnerships — sharing 96 off 112 with Reeza Hendricks and 86 off 54 with Heinrich Klaasen — to complete his third century in eight ODI innings, a polished and poised 121. It didn’t have to cringe at the Lankans’ fielding falling apart in the last 10 overs of South Africa’s innings, which yielded 97 runs. Or wince at Dushmantha Chameera, who started the last over on a hat-trick, promptly suffering a no-ball, a four cracked through extra cover by format debutant George Linde, and a wide. Neither did our dearly departed feathered friend have to countenance the Lankans losing their top order to a near rampant Kagiso Rabada and Wiaan Mulder inside six overs of their reply.

With that went the home side’s hopes of reaching the target of 284 in the 47 overs both innings were originally reduced to by rain. Instead, after the weather revised the equation further to 265 off 41, they shambled to 197 all out in 36.4 to set up a series decider at the same venue on Tuesday. Charith Asalanka’s 69-ball 77, his second career-best in as many innings following his 72 on Thursday, was Sri Lanka’s only response of note that came before the result was assured.

South Africa showed exponential improvement, particularly with the ball, from the performance they delivered in the first ODI. Rabada, in particular, re-invented himself from two days ago. Gone was the huffer and puffer who insisted on bowling too short for his team’s own good. In his place was the intelligent rapier South Africans have long known Rabada to be: jagging the ball off a good length, bullying batters with his bouncer, and keeping them guessing about what would come next. Worryingly for South Africa he left the field late in the match with a sprained ankle. “He will be assessed overnight and an update will be provided in due course,” was the word from the dressing room. Tabraiz Shamsi, too, needed to redeem himself after bowling with more emotion than execution on Thursday. He did by taking 3/28 in his first five overs of a haul of 5/49 — not only his best effort in the format but the best by a South African in Sri Lanka.

Of course, the attack needed runs to bowl at. Malan collected his runs inexorably with crisp strokes all around the wicket. Indeed, his own body proved the greater threat to his continued presence at the crease than the bowlers. Having heaved the 130th ball he faced to midwicket, he collapsed on the pitch with cramp. Malan ran 65 singles, four twos and two threes. That’s extreme in humidity intense enough to make the sweat dripping off his chin easily visible. Unsurprisingly, Kyle Verreynne did Malan’s fielding for him. “All credit to my partners who kept me going in the middle,” a resurrected Malan said in his post-match interview. Hendricks, playing his first ODI in almost 17 months, looked like he had never been away and made 51. Klaasen did what Klaasen does: hit the ball like blazes. His 43 flew off 27 balls.

Importantly, South Africa’s batters seem to have prompted a rethink by their opponents, as articulated by Dasun Shanaka: “Our death bowling has improved a lot but I think, in the coming games, I might use fast bowlers more.”

Once a decent pile of runs was in the book, clever captaincy was required for the visitors to keep the advantage. Keshav Maharaj, standing in for Temba Bavuma, who broke his thumb on Thursday, answered that call and more. Maharaj was intensely invested in maintaining his team’s dominance, and in controlling the narrative of the match. He made canny bowling changes, used his referrals cannily, and looked every inch a leader.

“Hope”, Emily Dickinson wrote 160 years ago, “is the thing with feathers.” It’s doubtful anyone who was on the field on Saturday reads 19th century American poetry. But they know hope when they see it. And feathers. Is it that difficult to put them together in the imagination?

Not for Malan, who told an online press conference: “We have realistic goals and expectations. We don’t want to have a one-in-a-thousand kind of day. We want to have targets that we can hit, and if we can hit them we have a good chance of winning the game.”

That’s prosaic rather than poetic, but it’s not for the birds.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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