Chokers no more? South Africa break 32-year cup curse

Thirty-two years of hurt for South Africa were wiped away in a couple of hours.

That’s all the time it took to administer an utter hiding of Afghanistan, launching the Proteas into their first-ever World Cup final in Barbados on Sunday night.

South African batsmen Reeza Hendricks, left, and Aiden Markram guide their team home against Afghanistan.

South African legends such as Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Dale Steyn and Jacques Kallis would certainly have admired the way Aiden Markram’s team did it, blasting out the Afghanistan batting line-up for 56 with Test-match quality pace bowling, led by left-armer Marco Jansen.

“They were guys who were legends of the game, legends of South African cricket, and in my eyes it doesn’t matter if they made a final or not because they inspired all of us to play cricket for South Africa,” Markram said of his forebears.

“And because of them, we’re trying to represent those people that have played for us really well. We’re glad we’ve made them proud to an extent, I still feel we’ve got one more step left, but for the time being I’m glad that guys like Dale Steyn are incredibly happy.”

The manner of Jansen’s early dominance with the new ball, followed up in fine style by Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje and Tabraiz Shamsi, will only raise further questions about Australia’s approach to their game against Afghanistan – when they left Mitchell Starc out of the team and suffered a defeat that ultimately knocked them out of the race to the semis.

“For us, it was just sticking to the plan and bowling our best ball,” Jansen said after plucking 3-16 and claiming the player of the match award. “The assessment was that the wicket was giving us a few to work with, and we just wanted to keep it simple.”

Back in November, it had been the South Africans who wilted under Test-quality bowling pressure imposed by Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins in an ODI World Cup semi-final in Kolkata.

That result, it seemed, underlined the Proteas’ long tradition of falling short in the biggest moments. That run of misfortune, much of it self-inflicted, began with a defeat via the rain rules of the time to England in a Cup semi-final in Sydney in 1992, a matter of months after South Africa returned to the stage after Apartheid.

Four years later they were unbeaten after the pool phase, only to fall apart against a Brian Lara-inspired West Indies in the quarter-finals.

Afghanistan’s Gulbadin Naib has his stumps rearranged by Marco Jansen.

In 1999, unforgettably, the team then led by Hansie Cronje was twice confounded by Steve Waugh’s Australia, even as then coach Bob Woolmer protested that his team were no longer suspect under pressure.

“When you call us chokers, you have to go back pre-1997,” he said. “This is 1999, the choking thing is all played out.”

First, South Africa were unable to defend a big target at Headingley, before being pipped in an extraordinary tie at Edgbaston after Shane Warne fought off thoughts of his own premature retirement by spinning his way to four wickets.

Even then, it took a horrendous running mix up between Donald and Lance “Zulu” Klusener to allow Australia passage to the final - something they had earned via the earlier victory in Leeds.

And in 2003, as ODI tournament hosts, South Africa were again eliminated on rain rules because they misread the calculations, thinking they needed one fewer run than they actually did to progress.

These reverses did appear to mess with the psyche of South African cricketers for a time.

Undoubtedly, they gave opponents a sense that they were never out of the contest, even if well behind. Another epic semi-final was fought at Auckland’s Eden Park in 2015, where an undulating contest was ended by a six from New Zealand’s Grant Elliott – one of many former South Africans to find a new cricket home elsewhere.

Last year, the Proteas’ current coach Rob Walter stressed that the ODI World Cup loss to Australia arrived not because of history nor pressure, but simply because Pat Cummins’ men used the conditions best.

The semi-final result was disappointing for Afghanistan cricket fans, who gathered to watch the match on a big screen in the city of Jalalabad, in the country’s east.

Going into this semi-final, it had been Afghanistan’s coach Jonathan Trott who was eager to talk up the events of past tournaments so far as South Africa were concerned.

But Walter made it clear that his young team were writing their own fresh pages.

“The near misses in the past, they belong to the people who missed them,” he said.

“To be honest, this team is a different team. We own whatever is ours to own. And so, our nearest reflection point is this tournament where we’ve managed to get over the line. So that’s what we think about.”

Marco Jansen celebrates a wicket with South African teammate Keshav Maharaj.

Undoubtedly, Jansen and Rabada bowled with the precision and venom of a couple of highly skilled practitioners thinking only of the next ball.

They were far too good for Afghanistan, starting with the outside edge of Rahmanullah Gurbaz in the first over.

In recent years, the story of South African cricket has evolved from one of near misses to that of a devolving system, as players jump ship for T20 franchise money more bountiful than anything CSA can offer.

But in founding the SAT20 league last year, the game’s governors drew Indian capital to the tournament and IPL knowhow to the players.

The fruits of those changes will be on show in a World Cup final, an occasion that Steyn and company will watch with a happy tear or two.

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