Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Something Is Lost For South Africa

Well it was really frustrating when the news that South Africa has lost the third test to Australia broke out in the afternoon. This shattered the dreams of not only most of the South African players, but also all the Aussie haters and Protea fans over the world. It is inevitable but to accept that Australia still head the ICC test rankings and are even now the most powerful cricketing nation in the world. A chance to overthrow the Aussies from the throne was eventually lost by South Africa. Such opportunities do not arise every now and then. How, stupid were the South Africans to let that go off their hands!

A little bit of game planning would have seen South Africa achieve the most expected one. But, what could be said of a team that makes a mess and gets itself into self destructive mode? Forget about a win at Sydney, even a draw would have had some smiles on the faces of the fans. But, no. South Africa looked as though they never ever wanted to come out of that festive mood, that was achieved when they had won the second test. Why should one ever think of winning the third, when it hardly makes any difference regarding the series? This was the way Smith might have thought before entering the third test.

A similar thing was witnessed in the round robin stage of the world cup 2007, when South Africa faced the same Australia at St Kitts where Australia, batting first made a stiff 377. South Africa, afresh from their memories of having chased down 434 successfully were expected to do the same here as well. And it looked as though another Johannesburg was in store that day. But no. It all started with the run out of AB De Villiars. South Africa, who had until then had put up 160 runs on board at the end of the 21st over were eventually all out for 294. Thus rendering all dreams shattered. And the third test was no different.

And look as who the match winner for Australia was! A three match old player, who made his debut in Mohali against India in the Border-Gavaskar trophy in October last year. And how could South Africa manage to give the charge to the tail enders like Mitchell Johnson and Hauritz, who scored a handy 64 and 41 respectively? At the end of the day, South Afric amissed out on a golden opportunity to whitewash a team that had last time whitewashed them some three years ago. With this at stake for us at the moment, the only thing left for us would be to watch out for another exciting encounter between these two gaints of cricket, when Australia will be touring South Africa two months from now.

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