Ken Borland

Given that the Proteas expect there to be assistance for all their bowlers and that the West Indies batsmen fared even worse than South Africa’s in their T20 World Cup opening matches, one would understand if Kagiso Rabada feels the world is their oyster as they go into their crucial encounter in Dubai on Tuesday.

While South Africa could only post a rather miserable 118-9 against Australia in Abu Dhabi, a total their admirable bowlers almost managed to defend, the West Indies batting was downright atrocious as they were bundled out for a measly 55 by England in Dubai.

Rabada cautioned, however, that the West Indies still have an explosive batting line-up that will be out for redemption after eating humble pie at the weekend.

“We know the ball will move around a bit, batting is not that free-flowing because the pitches are not flat, they offer something for the bowlers,” Rabada said on Monday.

“We expect the Dubai pitch to offer something for both pace and spin bowlers, there will be assistance, a bit of bounce, sometimes the ball stops and it can be a bit two-paced.

“So batsmen will have to really apply themselves, but the West Indies will be looking to come back really strong and we can never underestimate them. The England game is behind them and this is a completely new match.

“They are a dangerous team and it’s a new day. The West Indies are a strong, powerful team, especially in T20 cricket. So we will need to be as disciplined as we were against Australia,” Rabada said.

Having performed so very well in the field against Australia, Rabada said the Proteas are still very positive and they are confident their batsmen are able to come to the party on Tuesday.

“We bowled extremely well but it was obviously not an ideal start with the bat. But you rarely get a perfect game in both departments and Australia’s bowling outshone their batting too.

“We will have to rock up with the appropriate intensity again and we’ll need to be close to our best. There will be a lot for the bowlers to work with, but we have to apply ourselves too.

“The bowlers can’t just rock up and put the ball in a place. We have to make sure we come with the same intensity when you’re defending a low score, we have the strategy and now it’s about execution.

“We also see the batting as a concern, but it’s been addressed and they know what they have to do. But it’s just one game where we didn’t get over the line, why should we be negative? We are still very positive as a team,” Rabada said.

Given the great rivalry that exists between the two teams, it would be stupid not to expect the Springboks to find some extra motivation against the All Blacks in Townsville on Saturday, especially since it is the 100^th Test between the only two sides to have won the World Cup three times, but South Africa’s veteran eighthman Duane Vermeulen said on Tuesday that he was approaching the milestone fixture as just another international.

Given their unfocused displays in the last two matches against the Wallabies and Vermeulen’s slow return to full fitness after ankle surgery, it is understandable that the 35-year-old does not want to be distracted by any of the fanfare this week.

“We will take it as just another Test match; yes, it’s the 100^th match against the All Blacks, but we want to compete in the Rugby Championship and try and still win that competition. We are playing New Zealand and we will go out and give it our best whatever the occasion; the fact that it is the 100^th Test is for the people who write books.

“We can only talk about the ‘now’, the past has gone but we just want to improve on last week. New Zealand play a whole different style of rugby to Australia and we have got to prepare accordingly,” Vermeulen said.

Since the first Test between the teams – coincidentally also 100 years ago on 13 August 1921 in Dunedin (NZ won 13-5), the All Blacks have won 59 times and South Africa have 36 wins, with four matches drawn. But since the return from isolation in 1992, the Springboks have only won 16 of 62 Tests.

Nevertheless, South Africa are still New Zealand’s greatest rivals with the highest winning percentage (36.4%) against them of all opposition. Due to the travel restrictions imposed by Covid, this match is being played in north-eastern Queensland. The Springboks and All Blacks have met at a neutral venue on four occasions, all of them during World Cups, and South Africa’s only win came in Cardiff in 1999, 22-18.

South Africa need to beat New Zealand in successive matches for the first time since winning three in a row in 2009 to regain the Freedom Cup, which the All Blacks took off them in 2010.

Brodie Retallick, the talismanic New Zealand second-rower who has never lost to the Springboks, said his team are certainly embracing the history of the occasion.

“You can’t underestimate them. We’ve talked about the fact that it’s the 100^th Test between the two nations and they are the World Cup champions, it’s the first time the All Blacks have played a World Cup champion in a long time. So we’re going out there to give it our best shot and hopefully take it to them.

“Where they’ve caught us the last couple of times, when they did, was through their line-speed defensively. They’ve outmuscled us and we haven’t been able to break them down through our attack and then they’ve punished us. So physically, you’ve always got the set-piece battle but you also have to deal with their line-speed,” Retallick said.

The Proteas have enjoyed a superb record-equalling run in T20 cricket of late and will go into next month’s T20 World Cup with their confidence at a high. While Sri Lanka were disappointingly hapless during the 3-0 series whitewash, perhaps more credit should be given to the South Africans for being so clinical in dispatching the home side.

Most critics would probably have backed Sri Lanka to win the series on their home pitches, which were typically sub-continental and designed to favour their strengths and expose the supposed Proteas weaknesses.

Playing in the subcontinent means dealing with spin and South Africa were brilliant in both the progress their batsmen have made on turning pitches and also the sheer quality of their own spin attack, which was relied upon to an extent never seen before in a Proteas team.

The T20 World Cup will be played in what is expected to be similar conditions in the United Arab Emirates.

“It was very pleasing to win the series in the manner we did. We trusted in our process: Sri Lanka have some world-class spinners but our batsmen found a way to handle them and our spinners showed what they can do when they are backed. It’s good that the hierarchy is backing spin more.

“I obviously have my game-plans before the match, but you need to adapt on the field and read the conditions as soon as possible. I try to identify periods when we can go for the kill, and I must give credit to my bowlers for the number of times they came on and took wickets, or even an economical couple of overs. We wanted to really make an impact after the bitter pill of losing the ODI series,” stand-in captain Keshav Maharaj said.

Quinton de Kock may no longer have alpha-male status as the captain, but the wicketkeeper/batsman continued to mark himself out as the Proteas’ key batsman, a real matchwinner in T2 cricket. He was the leading run-scorer in the series with 153 runs, being dismissed just once as he claimed the man of the series award and a career-high eighth place in the ICC T20 rankings.

“Quinny has been in great form after obviously having a tough time in Pakistan. He’s been fantastic in the team environment and you can’t keep a player like that down for too long. He’s obviously in a happy space after a bit of rest, the break was good for him and it rewarded us too.

“He’s going to be a really big player for us at the World Cup and it was good to see him carry his bat through a couple of times, when it would be easy to just score thirty and get out. He’s showing a lot of responsibility and he will be a big name for as at the World Cup,” coach Mark Boucher said.

Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber said he will be looking at the replay of their first Rugby Championship Test against Australia again just to check whether they should have been given more reward in the last couple of scrums and whether their chasers were obstructed in getting to the aerial ball, but he was clear that the Wallabies deserved to win and his team lost 26-28 because of their own ill-discipline.

South Africa were leading 26-25 in the final minutes when they dominated successive scrums, but referee Luke Pearce only ordered resets. Then, after the final hooter, the Wallabies wheeled a scrum to isolate the eighthman and won a turnover penalty, which Quade Cooper slotted from long-range, on the angle, to snatch victory at the death.

It was Cooper’s seventh penalty and he also converted Australia’s try in a faultless kicking display in his first Test in four years. But it was those seven penalties conceded which cost the Springboks, according to Nienaber.

“Conceding 23 points off the tee, that sums it up, our discipline was poor. We scored three tries to one, but we gave them 23 points and that’s the reason we lost. We did brilliantly to get back in the game in the second half, but then we lost in the 82^nd minute, again because of discipline, we conceded a penalty. Australia played well and they deserved to win.

“In our third-last scrum I thought we had good dominance, but obviously the referee saw a different picture that didn’t show clear dominance. We need to make sure our pictures are aligned with the referee’s and we knew that it would be a struggle to get our wings into the aerial contest, but it’s tough to say now if there were any line-changes, I can’t say with absolute conviction,” Nienaber said.

The Springbok coach clearly did not want to make excuses and he also did not want to use the fact that his team have recently been released from their Covid bubble and returned to normal life on the largest island in the world, and were playing in front of a crowd for the first time since the World Cup, to justify an unfocused performance.

“We weren’t great today, we were just a bit off our game, especially discipline. It was not a polished performance, so we need to fix those things we got wrong. Conceding anything beyond 10 penalties in a game makes it a real grind to win and we must be smarter than giving away stupid penalties. Our scrums were fairly solid but there were two scrums which Australia got points off at crucial times –just before halftime and then the last kick.

“But it was lovely to play in front of a crowd again, it’s what the players wanted. In the first 20 minutes we were quite dominant, we had control of the game but then we lost it. We created opportunities, we scored three tries and Sbu Nkosi and Lukhanyo Am were both over the line. But Australia are a quality side and this is a tough place to win,” Nienaber said.