Ken Borland

Since comfortably dispatching the Lions 48-21 at Ellis Park four weeks ago, the Bulls have struggled to put away the other two teams who did not make the Currie Cup semi-finals – the Pumas and the Cheetahs. But Arno Botha, captain for those three matches, says he does not believe his team have lost any momentum ahead of their knockout game against Western Province in Pretoria on Friday night.

The Bulls needed their set-piece prowess to squeeze past an adventurous, passionate Pumas side 33-26 in Nelspruit, and then struggled to an uninspired, messy 39-36 win over the fast-finishing Free State Cheetahs at Loftus Versfeld last weekend.

“I don’t think we have lost any momentum. We need to look at a couple of technical things, we had a few slip-ups, but individuals have put their hands up, myself included, for those. They are small things that are easy to fix, coming from just a momentary lack of effort or concentration. Rugby is never going to be easy every week – we would have lost if we thought that,” Botha said.

“We have a very strong group of leaders who are very relaxed, but we all take responsibility. Being defending champions doesn’t matter, we always want to win every game and our focus is really just on one thing and that’s this weekend’s semifinal. We don’t look too far ahead, but we’re in a good place and looking forward to what’s coming.”

The hero of last year’s Currie Cup final triumph with two tries, Botha has been very much the senior statesman in the pack, which is young and extraordinarily willing. And nothing much damages the confidence of the hugely exciting crop of youngsters currently at Loftus Versfeld.

“When I go back to when I was 21 or 22, we were not where this group of youngsters is now, they are so far in front of where we were back in 2012. They are already comfortable in the system, some of them have played in a Currie Cup final already. You’re no longer young as a rugby player as soon as you lift that trophy and we are all learning so much from each other,” the tough Springbok loose forward said.

Judging by AB de Villiers’ comments after the Champions Trophy fiasco, South Africa could go speeding towards the 2019 World Cup having still not addressed the elephant in the dressingroom which is their continued, inexplicable failure to perform at their best in ICC knockout matches.

The Proteas are scheduled to play just 36 more ODIs before the June 2019 World Cup in England; they have played 36 ODIs since midway through their series in India in October 2015, just to give some perspective as to how quickly time will fly before the next showpiece ICC tournament starts.

And yet De Villiers maintained after the horrible showing against India last weekend that there was no lack of composure and the run outs and batting failures were not due to a mental problem. Given the skill levels of the players involved, it’s difficult to know what else could be the explanation.

It is probably a good thing, though, that the Champions Trophy disaster is still fresh in the minds as CSA begin the process to decide on who will be the Proteas coach that will guide yet another attempt at the elusive holy grail for South African cricket.

Two former Proteas coaches – who were both involved in coaching capacities during India’s memorable 2011 World Cup triumph – in Gary Kirsten and Eric Simons will sit on the five-man committee that will evaluate the applications and both have been outspoken about the problems South African players have in handling the pressures of ICC knockout matches.

It is one of the unwritten laws of sport that the most successful teams are able to shift pressure on to their opposition; sadly for the Proteas, they seem to crush themselves by piling pressure on to their own shoulders. In between ICC events, they are able to play freely and express themselves, at world cups they play totally differently – tentative and fearful cricket. Reading De Villiers’ autobiography, it is clear he has a Moby Dick sized obsession with winning the World Cup, an unhealthy obsession that probably does more harm than good.

The big difference between De Villiers and Virat Kohli is how the Indian captain invariably makes big runs when they are most needed; his 96 not out in the Champions Trophy semi-final was yet another example of that.

Whoever the Proteas coach will be, he needs to be able to free up the players when it comes to the high-pressure situations. The players need to pledge to each other that they will not change their games in knockout matches and it is the captain and coach who have to drive that.

No team plays with a greater burden of expectation than India, and yet Kirsten and Simons were able to get them winning and expressing themselves when they won the World Cup on home soil under immense pressure.

Simons raised some interesting points in the aftermath of the Champions Trophy loss, both in the SuperSport studio and in a subsequent conversation I had with him.

He pointed out that the Proteas never tried to shift the pressure India exerted on them with an excellent display in the field, India were never asked to try anything different.

When I asked him why India are consistently able to handle the pressure and expectation at ICC knockout events, he said he felt it was because their international players had come through a system featuring millions of cricketers so they have spent their entire lives ensuring they are on top of their game, they are always playing under intense scrutiny and, in a developing nation still wracked by poverty, it’s do or die for many of them. Natural selection and survival of the fittest in many ways.

“It’s not just these 11 Proteas players who have had the problem. CSA need to sit down and decide what to do, what do our teams lack? Somehow the players have got to be freed up … we saw them play differently against India. There needs to be a broader conversation about why? The world is asking the question, it’s time we did too,” Simons said.

I have no doubt Simons will bring the same questions to the panel that will decide the coaching situation moving forward.

But the first step in sorting out a problem is admitting you have a problem. As Paddy Upton, who was the mental coach when India, Kirsten and Simons won the 2011 World Cup, has pointed out, it’s part of the South African macho man psyche to never admit our vulnerabilities.

That has to change.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-kzn/20170617/282269550387810