One of the Semi-Finals of the World Cup is going to be in St George’s Park.
Would it be b/w South Africa and Pakistan?
St George’s Nightmare Is A World Cup Possibility
If Proteas play in the Port Elizabeth semifinal can they erase the jinx?
OMAR Henry brought up the most frightening prospect of all after Wednesday night’s calamitous defeat for Shaun Pollock’s muddlers by a Pakistani line-up that reinvented itself after last Sunday’s shame at Kingsmead.
“One of the World Cup semifinals is going to be (held) at St George’s Park and we could be in it,” said Henry yesterday.
“So we had better learn how to play there, and soon. We played Australia there last year, scored more than 300 runs, and were still beaten quite easily,” he said. “(On Wednesday) we were never even in the game except for a few overs when we started batting.”
Henry fingered inconsistency as a major worry with the World Cup now only six weeks away.
“Our bowlers were so disciplined at Kingsmead but at St George’s they were all over the place. We have to find out why this inconsistency is coming into our game,” he said.
“All the bowlers went for six runs an over but some took wickets and some didn’t,” said Henry.
He said the brainstrust needed to find out why. Which in itself does not inspire too much confidence because one would have thought they would know by now.
More worrying, however, than the inconsistency, was the apparent inability to come up with alternative plans when plan A was going so badly awry.
The fact is, captain Pollock could not find ways to disrupt the Pakistan rhythm, to change the pace of the game, and to pull back the flood of runs.
But Henry defended Pollock, who at times on Wednesday looked a beaten man as his bowlers took such an almighty caning. “It’s a difficult job and he is learning all the time,” he said.
What was left unsaid, however, is that the captaincy cupboard in SA is pretty bare. If not Pollock, then who?
“It’s better that this happened now, rather than in the World Cup,” said Henry, seeking a positive spin on a very negative night.
“At least we still have time to talk about these things and work out what went wrong.”
Brave words, but the fact is that, in three short days, SA went from the sublime to the ridiculous. On Sunday on a helpful Kingsmead pitch, it should be said they looked like a team that could beat almost anyone in next year’s World Cup.
On Wednesday night, they looked like a bunch of inept, outclassed and overawed amateurs against a team which, for once, played at its irrepressible best.
It is hard to know whether one should be encouraged, or deeply concerned by Henry’s insistence that at least 12 of the final World Cup 15 are in this current squad. There were only three places still up for grabs, he said.
Maybe we should not be getting too jumpy. After all, Pakistan were World Cup finalists in England in 1999. Everyone knows they have a bunch of cricketers simply oozing class and talent. Maybe there is no disgrace in getting so badly mauled by them and in conditions pretty much like those they would find on their own continent.
And therein lies another issue. The South Africans might argue that they would hardly expect to be playing in SA, on pitches more suited to their Asian opponents. But Henry had little sympathy with that notion.
“We have to learn to play on all surfaces. SA is a unique country. We have different areas where we can create the same conditions we would find on the subcontinent or in Australia,” he said.
**"East London is likely to be quite similar to Port Elizabeth (in the third one-dayer today).
“The thing is we need to learn from the lessons of the heavy defeats against Australia and Pakistan at St George’s and we have to come up with a way of dealing with those conditions.”**
Again, brave words, but hardly comforting as Port Elizabeth was one of the first cricket test venues in SA, hosting international teams a century ago.
If we have not learned to play in those conditions yet, are we ever going to?
Protesting that there is still time is wearing a little thin now. The batting order is still in disarray. All the different permutations being tried are only half working and there is another thought even more scary than the prospect of a semifinal at St George’s Park. Can Jacques Kallis keep saving the sinking ship? His sublime form cannot last forever.
