Ken Borland

The novelty value and excitement of being part of a greater Team South Africa at the Commonwealth Games will hopefully see the Proteas women’s cricket team return to their strengths and bounce back from a torrid run of six straight defeats against England when they play New Zealand in their opening game at Edgbaston on Saturday.

Team unity will seldom be more important for the Proteas as they are without most of their leading individual stars – Lizelle Lee has controversially retired, Marizanne Kapp is back in South Africa attending to a family emergency, Dane van Niekerk is still injured and Trisha Chetty and Tumi Sekhukhune are also unfit to play.

They have also been in England for a long time, suffering regular blows to their morale, and key players like Shabnim Ismail, Sune Luus and Mignon du Preez have been struggling for form.

Coach Hilton Moreeng has tried to bolster the mood.

“It’s very exciting to have this opportunity to be part of the Games, it’s a first for us and you can see the joy in the players, they know they have the opportunity to do something special.

“It’s a very happy camp and we feel blessed to represent Team South Africa. The main thing is we have acclimatised and we can adapt to conditions in Birmingham very well.

“Plus we’ve been playing against a very competitive team like England, who are always in the top two and they have tested us well. We’ve gone back to the drawing board to see how we can improve.

“We’ve learnt a lot playing against England and now we will use that to see how we can get victories in the Commonwealth Games. We will need to fire in all our disciplines,” Moreeng said.

While New Zealand have been inactive since the World Cup in March, it should be remembered that they beat the Proteas 3-1 in their previous meeting back in February 2020, clinching the series by romping to a 69-run victory in Wellington.

England and Sri Lanka are the other teams in Group B, so it is likely whoever wins Saturday’s clash between the Kiwis and the Proteas will make the semi-finals along with the hosts.

But New Zealand have been underachievers in global women’s events and South Africa will hope their greater match-sharpness will allow them to put their opponents under pressure.

Play starts at 12pm.

South Africa’s 2019 Cricket World Cup fixture list will have some eerie similarities to their infamous 1999 campaign in England, according to a report on the CricInfo website on Wednesday, with the ghosts of Edgbaston combining with their tournament nemesis.

The schedule, which the International Cricket Council board will deliberate over in Kolkata on Thursday, sees South Africa enjoying the honour of playing the opening game of the tournament, against England at the Oval, on Thursday, May 30. It is the same venue at which they beat the hosts by 122 runs in the previous World Cup held in England.

But after that matters get scary with history repeating itself with South Africa once again playing against Australia in their last match before the knockout round, on Saturday, July 6, with one of the semi-finals scheduled for Edgbaston in Birmingham, the scene of their notorious tied semi-final in 1999 that eliminated them from the tournament and created shockwaves that seemed to affect them in every World Cup thereafter.

The Proteas will also have to take on New Zealand, the team that has knocked them out of the last two World Cups, at Edgbaston on Wednesday, June 19.

Although there is a reasonable gap of three-to-five days between all the other Proteas’ games, the proposed schedule states that there will be an awkward eight-day gap between their match against Sri Lanka at Chester-le-Street on Friday, June 28, and their crunch clash with defending champions Australia. That match, as well as their June 15 game against Afghanistan in Cardiff, will be day/night affairs, while England, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will not play any day/night games in the round-robin phase.

SA fixtures: Thursday, May 30 v England (Oval); Sunday, June 2 v Bangladesh (Oval); Wednesday, June 5 v India (Southampton); Monday, June 10 v West Indies (Southampton); Saturday, June 15 v Afghanistan (Cardiff); Wednesday, June 19 v New Zealand (Edgbaston); Sunday, June 23 v Pakistan (Lord’s); Friday, June 28 v Sri Lanka (Chester-le-Street); Saturday, July 6 v Australia (Old Trafford).

South African captains have generally been through the mill at World Cups – the deep pain of Graeme Smith in 2011, Shaun Pollock’s stunned expression in 2003, Hansie Cronje’s tears at Edgbaston in 1999 are all still vivid memories – so it was wonderful to see AB de Villiers enjoy a glorious day at the Sydney Cricket Ground yesterday.

Just five weeks after lashing 149 off 44 balls against the West Indies at the Wanderers – his 31-ball century being the fastest in ODI history – De Villiers made 162 not out off 66 deliveries to destroy the same side at another great cathedral of the game.

In the process, the South African captain reached 150 off a record 64 balls, and De Villiers now holds the records for the fastest 50, century and 150 in ODI history, sealing his status as one of the greatest batsmen to have ever played limited-overs cricket.

The Sydney Cricket Ground rose as one for De Villiers after one of the most scintillating displays of batting ever seen on the global stage, and the likeable 31-year-old now has a beautiful World Cup memory to cherish, replacing the nasty scenes of 2011 when New Zealand substitute Kyle Mills was shouting in his face after a mix up with Faf du Plessis accelerated a South African collapse.

In terms of batting excellence, De Villiers’ innings ticked all the boxes.

He came in under pressure with South Africa having lost both set batsmen, Hashim Amla and Du Plessis, for solid half-centuries in the space of three deliveries from Chris Gayle. De Villiers weathered that storm and was able to rotate the strike for the impressive Rilee Rossouw to capitalise on his own brisk start.

It was only once Rossouw had been dismissed – for a momentum-changing 61 off 39 balls – that De Villiers really took the game away from the West Indies.

There was tremendous skill, innovation, some brute force, wonderful placement and brilliant thinking in De Villiers’ innings. Probably the most impressive feature of his batting is the amount of time he has, even against the quick bowlers, to get any delivery away to the area he has pre-identified as a scoring region.

To say that De Villiers has a tremendous eye for the ball is a bit like saying Imran Tahir (South Africa’s best bowler in the tournament) likes to acknowledge taking a wicket with some sort of celebration; combine that with quick feet, lovely wrists, superb timing and placement, plus tactical nous, and bowling to AB becomes a nightmare for even the best bowlers.

For me, there are probably two more things I’d like to see AB de Villiers do.

One is obviously play the match-winning innings in the World Cup final.

For the other, I’m going to dig up the legend of Barry Richards, arguably the greatest South African batsman ever.

The destructive power of Graeme Pollock, the prolific elegance of Jacques Kallis and the silky skills of Hashim Amla all feature in that debate, but for sheer brilliance in being able to fashion any stroke for any ball, Richards and De Villiers probably come out tops.

In the days of Richards, there was no international cricket for South Africans and the club game was of a very high standard, with provincial players in action most of the time. The legend goes that Richards, bored of the humdrum challenges of plundering hundreds, sometimes used to make it more interesting by only using the side of the bat. And the pitches were generally quite juicy in Natal club cricket.

On one famous occasion at the Collegians Club in Pietermaritzburg, Richards used the side of the bat for an over bowled with the new ball by Pat Trimborn, who played four Tests for South Africa!

Given the extraordinary brilliance of De Villiers, perhaps he should take on the bowlers with only the side of the bat just to even the contest a bit!