What a major difference?

Well if any team cannot even chase down a small total of 221 in the quarter-finals of a world cup, then expecting something special from them would just be as stupid as it can get whatsoever. And that was what the South Africans were found doing yesterday against New Zealand at Dhaka. And, with winning being totally out of question, just look at the margin of victory the Kiwis had against the Proteas and you can realize that the Proteas have just been better than the West Indies. I can no doubt say that Bangladesh and Ireland played better cricket than the South Africans.

One has to just take a look at how many times in world cups the South Africans have been losing to the Kiwis since their entry into world cricket in the 1992 world cup. If not for the 1996 and 1999 world cups, New Zealand have been able to take home twice of what the South Africans have managed. This was the third consecutive time that New Zealand beat South Africa in world cups. I just felt pity to see Shaun Pollock go in first to the presentation area despite scoring 307 runs and Herschelle Gibbs missing out to Stephen Fleming for the MoM award.

You can just go through the scorecard top see that there were no big hitting by the New Zealand batsmen. All the New Zealand batsmen did was to wait for an opportunity and strike at the right time. The entire New Zealand innings consisted of just lone six from the blades of Kane Williamson. There was a 114 run 3^rd wicket partnership between Jesse Ryder and Ross Taylor which was instrumental in the eventual score of 221.The South Africans couldn't even bowl the New Zealand batsmen all-out and allowed them to play all their 50 overs which laid the foundation to their defeat.

The match should not go down as another chucking by the African team for, this was anybody's game unlike in 1992-1999 world cups. The South African scorecard which at one point of time read 121/3 in the 27^th over eventually ended at 172 all out meaning only 51 runs could be scored in 16 odd overs at the rate of just over 3 runs an over losing 7 wickets. This was the second time the South Africans were found doing this. Previously, against England as well, they succumbed chasing 173. This time, had this been the score against England there would have been another tie for England.