CricDigs Blogs

Everyone, including the Australian team is expecting South African Cricket Team to cave in to the pressure of playing semi-final and complete another disappointing World Cup campaign. But would they succeed against the odds? I really think so. Their talent and cricketing power was never in question, but it is their ability to play clutch games and uncanny knack of self-destruction is what they are more famous (?) for. How else do you explain, Herschelle Gibbs “dropping” the most crucial of catches and then Alan Donald committing the run-out error twice. Even in this WC they almost managed to lose their match against SL and choked against Bangladesh for no reason whatsoever. So, though everything points to SA losing to Aus in the second semi-final, here is why I think they will win it.
1. The fact that they managed to hang on to a win against SL shows that may be the luck is on their side this time around.
2. The hammering they gave to England showed that they are quite capable winning must-win games, even though it was their loss to Bangladesh that put them in that situation to begin with.
3. In their Group Match against Australia they started quite well and continued until 25 overs on-pace to reach the required target.

And last but not the least…

4. The current Australian bowling attack can be taken to the cleaners. Ricky Ponting is talking about Shaun Tait’s pace etc, but we all know that Tait can be completely off-target and hammered for a lot of runs. Even Bangladesh was targeting him for a little while in their super 8 match.

So, I am rooting for South Africa to take on the Australians and take care of them for good. To draw a Baseball analogy, that is what the Boston Red Sox did to the NY Yankees in the year 2004 after taking 86 years since winning their previous Championship. The Red Sox were said have a curse on them….Now the question is would SA need those many years or would 8.6 years since 1999 disaster be enough?