Can the Proteas benefit from past World Cup experience?

WARNING: The above footage may offend sensitive viewers.

Let’s face it. When you mention South Africa’s World Cup past, a lot of pretty bad memories spring to mind.

The heartbreaking exit to New Zealand in the 2015 semifinals. A colossal Proteas knockout collapse to the same opposition in 2011. The infamous misreading of a Duckworth-Lewis situation in 2003. Not to mention a certain run out 20 years ago that most South Africans are still not ready to talk about.

But hey, one has to embrace the past to move on, so let’s get the visual recap of past Proteas ICC World Cup exits over and done with.

Going into the 2019 edition, are there any signs that the upcoming South African campaign is one that could be defined by World Cup success instead of its World Cup exit?

If you need a good example of a player that has had the full spectrum of South African World Cup experience, you don’t need to look too much further than the journey of captain Faf du Plessis.

His baptism to World Cup cricket was a tough one with only three international matches under his belt before the start of the 2011 tournament in the subcontinent. He ended up thrust into the spotlight for his role in the run out of AB de Villiers against New Zealand - a moment he won’t forget, but won’t wish to remember.

FAR MORE SEASONED

The World Cup stage saw a far more seasoned Du Plessis four years later. While it ended in a dramatic semifinal exit, it’s often forgotten that Du Plessis was arguably the best Proteas player in the match as he helped set up such a close clash in seaming conditions against a testing Black Caps attack with an innings of 82 – a classic anchoring knock from No 3 which should go down as one of the great South African World Cup innings.

Fast forward to today and to how Du Plessis has matured into a captain for all formats, you’ll see a player that’s entrenched himself as a fine leader and has quietly racked up the best ODI win rate for any Proteas skipper.

Going into their eighth ICC World Cup, have the Proteas settled on the kind of leader that could potentially lead them to glory?

As for the rest of the squad, while there are plenty of experienced campaigners around Du Plessis, the one refreshing part of the side’s makeup is the amount of players that are experiencing their first World Cup. More than half of the squad are tournament debutants, which gives an obvious benefit of no baggage from past World Cup pain.

While the last Proteas World Cup campaign will be defined by their semifinal, one important step that the team did make was breaking their knockout-game hoodoo with their long-awaited first knockout win at the event in the quarterfinals against Sri Lanka.

Good lessons have been taken away from that. Dale Steyn has experience of taking wickets upfront in a winning knockout cause; Quinton de Kock struggled for form in the 2015 World Cup but managed to come good in a knockout situation. JP Duminy even registered a World Cup hat-trick in that setting.

Du Plessis, Hashim Amla, David Miller and Imran Tahir are the other current squad members that played that day, all experiencing breaking their knockout duck with that emphatic nine-wicket victory in Sydney.

NEW FORMAT

Match narratives like that in the knockouts would certainly help any “choking” references and memories. Any doubt around the team’s performance under pressure would surely subside the less pressurised the match situation is. If they do reach the semifinals, fans as well as players will be far better off emotionally if they can pull off avoiding close match situations like the exits in 1999, 2003 and 2015.

In this 10-team World Cup format, to reach the playoffs, you will be more battle-hardened once you get there than in tournaments gone by.

In the last few editions, merely avoiding a loss to one of the “minnows” was basically enough to take one of the major nations to the quarterfinals. Now, with only four semifinal spots on offer in one big group, it takes far more to reach the knockouts with more games looking like a “must-win” for teams.

The last time there was a similar format to this one was in 1992, which seemed to suit South Africa as they announced themselves with a strong showing in their first World Cup ending in the unlucky “22 runs off 1 ball” rain calculations in the semifinal.

If an inexperienced Proteas team could do that in a similar format back then, could a more experienced Proteas outfit go further in the tournament now?