So near: South Africa defeated every opponent before falling short in the final.
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A warm March night ebbed away at Dhaka and South Africa had just lost the 2011 World Cup quarterfinal against New Zealand. Graeme Smith trudged into the post-match press-conference hall and an insensitive reporter said: “Earlier you were all called chokers, now they are saying jokers.”
Smith, moist eyes and a tremulous voice, handled that question with grace and subsequently explained why the Proteas lost. But the word choke became this constant shadow and an easy cliche that trailed South Africa. But what transpired at Bridgetown on Saturday was never a choke as that would be a lazy inference.
South Africa was done in by a superior Indian team even when a mere 30 were required from the last five overs.
Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh and Hardik Pandya were hard to get away, add Suryakumar Yadav’s sensational catch to dismiss David Miller into the mix, and this was all about the eventual champion reiterating a dominant trait.
Yet, Aiden Markram’s men can draw inspiration from the manner in which they competed through the ICC T20 World Cup.
An ICC World Cup trophy remains missing in the South African cupboard but the way the Proteas approached their games in this championship remained exemplary. Like India, South Africa was the other unbeaten squad until the final.
Be it defending champion England or a resurgent Afghanistan, all rivals were cast aside. This is a line-up that lacks the services of AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis and Dale Steyn, all part of the retired club. But Markram had men like Quinton de Kock and Heinrich Klaasen to bolster the batting, and a varied bowling quartet of Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje, Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi, to lean upon.
Steady progress
Readmitted to cricket through the tour of India in 1991, South Africa shed its isolation due to those wretched apartheid years, and made steady progress. Always a clear and present danger in global tournaments, somehow the Proteas used to combust on seeing the finishing line. Run-outs would happen or rain-rules would be wrongly interpreted.
Cut to the present, the Rainbow Nation, busy making space for all communities in its sporting edifice, has shown that it can raise hard questions in ICC tournaments.
In the future, a title may be seized but until then Markram’s men, once their tears dry up, can remember a superb campaign even if the summit clash did not go as per plan.
