Once more into the breach

For now, at least, there is justice in the world, and it looks like this: Pietersen, caught Smith, bowled Nel. The World Cup has given the Proteas plenty to chew on, but nothing would have been sweeter than the sight of the rash faux-Englishman in his little blue pyjamas scratching his way to 3 before being force-fed humble pie by his two nemeses.

The Smith-Pietersen-Nel spat has been childish and unnecessary but, from a crudely voyeuristic perspective, it has also been great fun; and the demise of Pietersen and England on Tuesday elevated the rivalry to something quite comic, as if Newman, the demonic postman from Seinfeld, had chipped a ball from Kramer straight to Jerry at mid-off. It seemed that finally the Proteas had become, as Seinfeld might say, masters of their domain.

But on Wednesday all of that changes, for on Wednesday 15 years of baggage falls out of the blue St Lucia sky on to the South African camp. The flogging meted out to England was a bold step forward in the Proteas’ evolution into a mature cricket team, but by now even the youngest players must be glancing over their shoulders at the slagheap on which lie rotting South African aspirations in past World Cups.

Farce and drizzle against England in 1992; a benched Allan Donald watching Brian Lara sizzle in 1996; mid-pitch horrors in 1999; rotten sums in the rain in 2003: all will crowd around, no matter how much up-beat juju the presence of Jonty Rhodes injects into the dressing-room. When it comes to big games in the World Cup, South Africa are practised losers, and trying to convince themselves that this time it can be different will be half the battle for the current team.

Of course, whether it really will be different is another matter entirely. At the time of writing, on Wednesday, it seemed a mathematical certainty that the Proteas will meet Australia in St Lucia, and once again this is unkind maths.

The Australian beast now snorting and pawing the ground behind the gate is unrecognisably different from the one that limped through most of the 1999 campaign. These are not Steve Waugh’s elegant, complex Test stars stooping (and sometimes stumbling) to conquer the one-day world. Ricky Ponting’s crew are as elegant as pile-drivers and complicated as concrete.

South Africa’s strategists face an impenetrable wall. The champions’ batting line-up has no discernable weaknesses, other than the out-of-form Mike Hussey; but to reach him the Proteas must get through the most destructive top three in modern one-day cricket. Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist are not dismissed by bowlers, departing instead when they deign to err; and Ponting is precisely the sort of cuss whose character, fabulous skill and sense of occasion might combine to produce a startling hundred on Wednesday.

Things don’t look much brighter on the bowling front. The St Lucia pitch has proved sluggish so far, and if Glenn McGrath goes for more than 30 off his 10 overs, he will consider himself caned. And with Nathan Bracken bending the new ball away from Smith and cutting the old one into the knees of the middle-order, runs are going to be at a premium for South Africa.

All this they know; but other matters are probably less certain, and most tricky among these is surely the issue of whether or not Makhaya Ntini plays and, if he does, which of the bowlers who did such masterful work against England will miss out.

It cannot be Andrew Hall, whose magic allows him not only to win matches with his will, but to weave a supernaturally amnesiac fog around selectors: nothing Hall does seems to be remembered by any of them, and his five wickets at Barbados will not save him from being dropped some time in the next few months. But at least he should be safe until Wednesday evening.

Shaun Pollock, too, must play. The Australians will almost certainly swing through the line against him as they did in St Kitts and try to plaster him over long-off, but Pollock is too canny to bench, and one suspects that in the end it might be Charl Langeveldt, so controlled against England, who steps aside for Ntini.

And so to a prediction. South Africa can beat Australia, but not as a team. Smith spoke of team efforts on Tuesday, but that was a result engineered almost entirely by himself, Hall, Andre Nel and Pollock. The same must apply on Wednesday: if every bowler gets it in roughly the right area, and every batter in the top six scores his average at a run a ball, South Africa will lose. Victory will require individual brilliance, whether another big ton from De Villiers or a three-for-a-pittance breakthrough in the first 10 overs by Pollock. Good will simply not be good enough.

And if good is discarded for mercurial and magnificent, and the semi-final is won, the final hangs, luminous and ripe for the plucking. But there’s many a slip twixt cup and lip. Probably three of them, with a gully. What a week it’s going to be …