South Africa has to stop playing cricket

Well, if a team cannot chase down a meager total of just 172, one can no doubt question its credibility in international cricket and especially in the mega event such as the world cup. South Africa have been in the news for all the bad reasons since they made it to the international arena in the 1992 world cup. Since then, bad luck have struck them thrice in that decade and since then, the South Africans have made fools out of themselves and nothing else. South Africa were an unbeatable team in the 1992, 1996 and 1999 world cups under Hansie Cronje.

But since then, they have just been an ordinary team similar to say India, England or New Zealand. They have no one else but themselves to blame for their debacle in 2003 world cup when they were given an over short in the inaugural match against West Indies, when they were unable to defend a 300+ total with an asking rate of over six an over (even after the D-L method was applied) and finally when they needed a run and the batsman simply ducked the ball thinking he could do it in the next delivery against Sri Lanka which ended in a tie.

Now, in the match against England yesterday, South Africa did well to restrict them to less than 175 with some Imran Tahir having a ball with four wickets to his credit. Not even in dreams would the South African captain-Graeme Smith would have thought that his team would be at the losing side when at one stage the South African scoreboard read 124-4 at the end of the 32^nd over needing 49 runs from 108 deliveries with needless to say 6 wickets in hand. Since then, all the South African batsmen could manage was to lose wickets in quick intervals and see that their team lose the match.

I just cannot figure out what exactly happened to South Africa or what sort of magic did England do to get back into the game to come out victorious from nowhere. One can give some consideration to match fixing for, such cases rarely happen and that too for South Africa against England-who are not rated among favorite teams to beat the Proteas. With most of the betters having their say on South Africa, betting rookies can make merry with South Africa losing the game to England. There might be many similar matches like this but, no one comes close to winning and all of a sudden make a U-turn. Only fixers can have their say.