One man’s victory was another man’s defeat but Tuesday’s thriller semi-final between South Africa and New Zealand had the same people celebrating and crying, and that was the beauty of the game in which the lasting picture was that of New Zealand’s Man of the Match Grant Elliott helping up the world’s best bowler Dale Steyn after hitting him for a match winning six.
AB de Villiers who had played like a man obsessed alongside his 10 teammates, cried like a baby, so did Morne Morkel and Faf du Plessis. Steyn looked completely vanquished for it was his over in which South Africa were bundled out of the tournament. And you felt for them, even the Kiwis felt for them and the Kiwi-dominated stands felt for them.
You wished it hadn’t been that way in a game — why couldn’t there be two winners, for onceIJ After all, no team was less in this one and it was a victory, which, till the last ball could have gone either way.
As AB said later in the night when he could control his tears finally, he has no regrets and couldn’t have expected anything more from his boys. True. You felt for him and for his squad because you knew this campaign was not any ordinary one for the South Africans. “We’re playing for something much bigger,” AB said, trying to swallow the lump rising high in his throat. That something bigger was the 23-year-long wait to lift a trophy for which they had always bid the best.
It was about a rainbow nation looking for light at the end of a tunnel of defeats. Since 1992, the South Africans have mostly been adjudged the best team. They have the best bowlers in the world, the best batsmen, the best fielders and mostly the best scores. Their skipper is the fastest century-maker in the world, a man who every bowler across the globe wants to avoid. But come World Cups, and it all starts falling apart.
But the good thing about Proteas’ journey in this edition was them beating the jinx with unprecedented soundness; them playing to their full potential, both emotional and physical; them choking the choke for once and them reaching the penultimate round of the game. After they lost by four wickets to New Zealand, they weren’t accused of choking, the run-out miss by AB notwithstanding. In fact, everyone felt their heartbreak, even the Kiwis. AB’s acknowledgement of the crowd showed this spirit of the game.
In fact such was the impact of the SA’s defeat on the global cricketati that Twitter went ablaze with “heartbreak” comments for SA rather that “heartfelt” congrats for Kiwis. And, in all this emotion for SA, one forgets the equally huge occasion that the Kiwis were playing for — on their home ground with 41,000 supporters taking time off from work to give their boys some serious props.
Even for the Kiwis, it was history made when they entered the Final of a World Cup for the first time ever. The up and down fortunes in the middle took away their wickets and all their resolve to absorb pressure and yet they kept their composure till the last and came away victors. Theirs too was an amazing story of achievement.
Coming together under their aggressive skipper Brendon McCullum, performing like a unit, not losing a single game to the Final and yet being called underdogs — and then defeating the mightier South Africans with just a ball to spare — nothing could be bigger for the Island population — and they gave their ovation by forgetting their Rugby and their sailing and their golf for a while and gathering in numbers to be with cricket which is not even their No. 1 sport.
So at the end of the day, someone may have lost and someone may have won. But strangely, there were only winners at both ends — one won the battle of the mind, the other the limitations of history. In that context, it was only relevant that it took 45 matches and 42 days of one-sided cricket to bring the World Cup to its very first exciting moment!
