All the pre-series talk about the South Africa-Australia cricket season has proven to be that: just talk. South Africa hasn’t been able to overcome their biggest adversary, themselves.
The fear of failure is so suffocating and intimidating for them that it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. When South Africa tackles any other team they are adventurous, aggressive and dogged, but against Australia they become another team.
Since they were readmitted to world cricket, they haven’t beaten Australia in a Test series. They’ve come close and may consider themselves to have been unlucky in a few instances but it wasn’t bad luck – rather self-sabotage.
Negative captaincy and defensive cricket has been their undoing.
Most, if not all of the Test matches between the two, have been competitive, and in nearly all of them there have been points where South Africa is on top. But they have never failed to fritter away the ascendancy.
Defensive batting, horrible field placings, bad shot selection, poor fielding – you name the excuse, they are guilty of it. Shane Warne was useful for them in that he gave them an easy out on which to blame their lack of success.
Of course, the irony of this is that in the game he had best figures in an innings against them, they won. They had most likely given up at Sydney in 1994 after being behind by 123 after the first innings and then slumping to 5/110 in the second.
But they didn’t give up, and defending 117, they had nothing to lose, so they didn’t go out there and over-analyse or over-think.
They played with enthusiasm, passion, gusto and hoped for the best. Something they have not done against Australia since.
After that famous victory they went to Adelaide, one-up with one to play. Then they had to bat for just over a day to force a draw but couldn’t do it.
Only two players scored more than 10 and one of them was the night watchman.
If they want to defeat Australia, they should analyse the recent blueprints set down by India and England in the 2005 Ashes.
Be aggressive, be positive, and once you get your foot on the jugular, never ever relinquish your grip. Rather try something positive and attacking, which may come off, rather than negative cricket which definitely won’t.
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This series’ twelfth and final team has a distinct West Indian flavour at the top of the order, and a domineering captain.
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