JOHANNESBURG, 18 February 2003 — I can’t put a finger on what exactly is going wrong for the South African team. We are clicking as a batting unit, but floundering terribly as a bowling unit. Our back-up bowlers just can’t seem to capitalize on the great starts that are being provided by Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini, and this has cost us the games against West Indies and New Zealand.
It has been extremely disappointing for me personally. It’s just not happening for me, and I have not bowled the way I can and have been in the 22 one-dayers South Africa played before the World Cup. Nothing seems to be clicking right now, and I’m not feeling as strong as I was coming into this tournament. I have been getting a tremendous hiding in the press, and I would like to prove my detractors wrong, but it now depends on the selectors whether I will get another chance to redeem myself or not. I know this slump cannot go on forever, and who knows, if we do manage to make the Super Six, I might still have a role to play in this tournament. The harder I try, the worse things are getting, and right now my form is not only worrying, it’s annoying and frustrating as well.
The other back-up bowlers like Jacques Kallis and Nicky Boje are also performing under par, and against New Zealand this cost us the match despite the superb effort of our batsmen.
Stephen Fleming played a fantastic captain’s knock at the Wanderers and that innings defeated us. He may never play another innings like that in his life, and on the morning of the match he said he had been waiting for a moment like this to prove his worth. Fleming has led from the front, and might just have done enough to get the team out of the mire they landed in after opting out of their game against Kenya in Nairobi.
Some supporters feel that we were done in by the rain rule once again, but I think the New Zealanders were always up to the run rate, and while nothing is predictable in cricket, chances are that they would have made it home even if the match went the whole distance. It was a do or die match for the Kiwis and they did it.
Our poor bowling performance was not helped by our fielding on Sunday. Mark Boucher dropped Fleming at 53 and that might have cost us the match. He is also going through a very bad patch, and like me is feeling the pressure. We had hoped for a clinical performance on the field, but we were all over the place and have only ourselves to blame if things don’t go our way from here on.
At the start of the tournament, everyone would have expected us to put away both West Indies and New Zealand with ease, and we had our chances against both teams. Our own scratchy performance is responsible for us now having to depend on others to get us through to the Super Six. There are no excuses for both those losses, and I feel sorry for Herschelle Gibbs who has been playing out of his socks. His innings on Sunday should have won us the match.
On the eve of the Kiwi game, we decided that we had to win if we did not want the next couple of weeks to be agonizingly long. We failed to do that, and have to wait till Feb. 28 to see whether West Indies beat Sri Lanka. After that we have to play well to beat the Lankans if we are to have any hope of making the Super Six. At this stage it seems like a daunting prospect. Right now we have to beat both Bangladesh and Canada by huge margins to ensure that we are in the hunt if it comes down to run rates. We will also have to use those games to get our bowlers into some form.
This is not how we wanted to make it to the Super Six. The first hurdle suddenly seems very high, and for the sake of our wonderful supporters, I do hope we can cross it. (Gameplan)
