My previous article on the T20 World Cup was titled, ‘Dare we hope?’ The answer – once again – was, “No. Don’t hope. Don’t even bother. It’s just going to all happen again.”
Without even needing to play our fourth game, we are once again on the proverbial plane headed home. The most resounding déjà vu in the sporting world, surely?
In the “Reasons to Dare Hope” column going in to the World Cup there would have been elements such as “Team contains AB de Villiers, and in-form Hashim Amla, a firing Quinto de Kock, and a finisher like David Miller, and more recently Wiese and Morris” as well as the bowling prowess of “Dale Steyn, Imran Tahir, and an on-fire Kagiso Rabada”. Add the fact that we were in the “easy group” facing England, West Indies, and Sri Lanka over the much more impressive New Zealand, Australia, and India, and it should have been a walk in the park.
In the “Reasons to not risk” column we have “we are the Proteas” – and turns out that little bit of information should have been enough.
JUST STOPPIT
I consider myself one of the Proteas’ biggest fans, but even this time feels like one too much for me. I barely know where to begin. Losing against England having scored a mammoth 229 could be dealt with if it was purely the excellence of their star players like Root, Stokes, and Buttler. But when you look at the 26 extras we sent down (to their four, a whopping four extra overs of balls) it is inexcusable. They just had to play disciplined cricket and they would have walked that one.
Almost getting blown away by the Afghanistan opening batsman, Shahzad, before crumbling against West Indies, meant that we had to rely on Sri Lanka beating England for us to progress. Which almost, but didn’t happen. And so our last game saw us needing to beat Sri Lanka so that we don’t leave a World Cup event having only beaten one associate team.
Just not good enough Proteas. Even this eternal optimist struggled to muster up any considerable belief.
TIL NEXT TIME
That feels like it could be the title of the Proteas team song – “Til Next Time” as we sigh deeply once more and wonder if we ever will live up to our incredible potential in a world event.
Pretty much everyone in the spectators chairs believe the coach needs to go, but for the most part we agree that give or take a player (where, oh where, is Ryan Mclaren?) we have the right men for the job. What seems to be constantly lacking is a plan, or at least one that looks like it is being kept to.
Proteas, our love/hate relationship will continue. I (and so many others) so desperately want you to do well and want to be fully supportive, but when you perform like this it is tough. No-one could have faulted Australia for being blown away by us in the 438 game those many years ago because we just played amazingly. But none of our opposition particularly did (despite some moments from England). We just (once again) handed game after game to our opponents like a sporting buffet and said, “Help yourselves.”
Where is the Protea Fire we keep on hearing about?