The World Cup’s unique pressure causes teams to over-think and South Africa could be best served by keeping things as simple as possible
Firdose Moonda08-Mar-2015Six months of preparation. Enormous expectation.A consultant for every technical aspect of the game to make up the largest support staff contingent of the competition. A head of elephants in the room.A team who claim to have exorcised the ghosts of the past. Great pretenders.The first half of each of the above pairs are the things South Africa have done in the lead up to this World Cup. The second half is the result of all of those things. Juxtaposed, they reveal what happens when desperation overrides determination: it leads to a build-up of pressure that does not happen outside of a major tournament.If this was a bilateral series against any of Zimbabwe, India, West Indies, Ireland or Pakistan, South Africa would have likely won with games to spare. They have done that against of four of those five countries in the last 18 months. They promised they would treat the World Cup in the same way as one of those series but were never given the opportunity to do that because of the continued obsession around winning a World Cup.Ultimately that leads to overthinking, which, as Sian Beilock, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, wrote in her book Choke, “can destroy our ability to perform at our full potential”. Overthinking while under pressure, she wrote, “can cause us to fail when performing tasks that we’d normally consider to be relatively easy.”Chasing a target is a “relatively easy,” thing for South Africa. They’ve had to do it 268 times and of those, they have won 60% – 162 matches. But since the 2011 World Cup, where the quarterfinal loss was perhaps their worst example of failure in a chase, it has become relatively difficult. South Africa have batted second 31 times after their loss in Dhaka and won just 15 of those matches. Their success rate has dipped significantly and at this tournament, dipped entirely. They’ve chased twice and lost both, which points to their state of mind.Making a statement is not South Africa’s issue, responding is. When they are under the cosh, they do the wrong thing. They play shots they should not play – JP Duminy’s pull against Pakistan is a case in point, the run-out of AB de Villiers against New Zealand in 2011 is another – but those lapses in clear thinking stem from the stresses of the demands placed on them.Before this group left the country, they received orders in the same way troops going to war would – “March on, you skillful warriors,” was the president’s message – without the gentler touches that remind teams this is not actually a war. The sports minister, Fikile Mbalula, was present at an over-the-top squad announcement and the razzmatazz send-off less than a month later where he told de Villiers to return with a “bunch of winners” – a loaded phrase in a South African context it is loaded. Shortly before the cricketers left, the national football side, Bafana Bafana, returned from the African Nations’ Cup after a first round exit. The minister had previously called the footballers a “bunch of losers,” and those words have a way of stinging.
It takes not panicking. It takes not playing the big shot when slow progress will do. It takes forgetting about all the times it has not worked before but remembering that this is a World Cup, not a bilateral series.
At the same send off, the squad heard an impassioned pleas from the CSA president Chris Nenzani not to break the more than 50 million hearts they were representing and a message from three former captains, Kepler Wessels, Shaun Pollock and Graeme Smith that this team’s destiny will find out who they really are at this tournament. Of course all of that was little more than showboating but subconsciously, it soaked South Africa in pressure that does not exist in a bilateral series.Perhaps that’s why South Africa can sail through those while the teams that have done well at a World Cup – the subcontinent sides for example – thrive. Whereas competition against the same team in game after game can possibly bore them, they thrive on the one-offs at a World Cup. South Africa struggle to figure out how to deal with them.After a low-key start against Zimbabwe in sleepy Hamilton, they had a week before playing India. Other teams have had similar stop-start schedules and de Villiers encouraged the team to use the time in between, but that was difficult to do when India loomed early in the agenda. There is no such thing as a quiet build-up to an India game, especially not in a World Cup. South Africa felt so bombarded by the large Indian media contingent they went into a shell and they seemed unable to come out of it on game day.The alarm bells de Villiers heard almost two weeks later when South Africa were gearing to up to play Pakistan and he could sense an absence of “electric vibe” were likely echoes from what happened at the MCG. That was where South Africa lost Vernon Philander to a hamstring injury he has not yet recovered from and where their implosion with the bat exposed an age-old problem. Even with seven specialist batsmen, South Africa remain vulnerable for no other reason than because this is a World Cup.With successive totals over 400, it cannot be said South Africa’s line-up lacks quality or commitment. Scoring that many runs, whoever the opposition is, takes skill. Where South Africa are found wanting is when they chase, because that takes more than skill. It takes strategy – where South Africa have been showed up in primarily because of selection, which has left them without a genuine allrounder and by implication short of a fifth-bowler – but most of it all it takes stomach.It takes not panicking. It takes not playing the big shot when slow progress will do. It takes forgetting about all the times it has not worked before but remembering that this is a World Cup, not a bilateral series. There is only one chance against each opposition, not three, or five, or seven, and it takes not being overawed by that. It takes putting the paranoia away.Kyle Abbott probably had it right when he said “no-one is going to remember the group stage.” Except South Africa themselves if it leads to another knockout situation where they trip over their own feet because they thought too far ahead while bluffing about trying to focus on the immediate task.
