There’s a shopping-channel largesse to the international fixture list on Saturday. What’s the only thing better than a World Cup crunch match between England and South Africa? Two World Cup crunch matches between England and South Africa! With the cricket coverage starting at 9am BST and the rugby build-up beginning at 7.15pm, the timings fall perfectly for both sets of fans (South Africans get to lie in for an extra hour). Order in the beers and biltong, and prepare yourself for a true endurance event, the armchair equivalent of an ultra-marathon.
Super Saffa Saturday, as no one is yet calling it, is a curious quirk in the sporting calendar. It will be the first time two nations have faced off in a Rugby and Cricket World Cup on the same day, a unique wrinkle in time fashioned by Covid and the subsequent shunting of the 50-over tournament from February to October. Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, that the context of the games feels just as anomalous. There is, after all, something deeply topsy-turvy going on with the two England teams. Jos Buttler’s white-ball double world champions desperately need a win having lost two of their first three group games. If they fall to the Proteas – or any of their remaining opponents – a face-reddening failure to qualify for the knockouts becomes a strong possibility. Steve Borthwick’s side, meanwhile, have stunk over the past nine months, but find themselves one match away from the final. Ireland and France, their infinite betters, have already gone home.
Will the world right itself on Saturday? Probably. England’s cricketers, shaken by their unexpected loss to Afghanistan, should have the better of South Africa, a team suffering from their own wobble against the Netherlands. Meanwhile the Springboks, the top-ranked nation, are easy favourites against an England squad containing 14 of the same players they beat four years ago.
Yet the fact that these contrasting results seem so likely won’t stop anyone relishing the upcoming double-feature. Perhaps it’s because the sporting rivalry between the two countries has a distinctive flavour, its profile very different from their more traditional rivalries. For both England and the Proteas, the ultimate cricketing foe is Australia; the Springboks’ number-one enemy are the All Blacks.
But to an English mind, there are few sporting cultures more intimidating than that of South Africa. A history of bruising encounters in rugby and cricket alike has elevated their legend to something like the Titans, be that Lance Klusener powering the ball over the ropes or Victor Matfield outmuscling the opposition at the lineout. South Africa’s physical might has consistently triumphed at the Rugby World Cup, crushing English hearts and bodies. All three of South Africa’s knockout victories have been painful to watch: not with the keen, clean thrill of a knife-edge encounter, but the grinding agony of a farm vehicle slowly rolling across your pelvis.
When Evelyn Waugh wrote in Brideshead Revisited of “a blow, expected, repeated, falling upon a bruise with no smart or shock of surprise, only a dull and sickening pain and the doubt whether another like it could be borne,” he was surely prophesying Jannie de Beer’s five drop goals in the 1999 quarter-final. The sight of the South African fly-half’s chiselled cheekbones as they followed the flight of the ball is no less vivid to English memory than the sight of Jason Leonard’s increasingly exhausted attempts to charge it down. And yet neither image has burned itself as deeply into the brain as that of England wing Mark Cueto going over in the corner eight years later. It is never Mathew Tait’s brilliant break from halfway we see in our nightmares, or the deft overhead flick as Jonny Wilkinson palms the ball over Joost van der Westhuizen’s head. No: it’s Cueto’s left leg, bent at the knee, sliding towards the touchline as Danie Rossouw hits him with that try-saving tackle. (Other opinions on whether the try should have stood are available.)
Perhaps that’s why we take so much satisfaction in their cricket teams’ tag as chokers. Their men have certainly lived up to it, with four World Cup semi-final defeats (not to mention three more in the Champions Trophy); their women broke the hoodoo this year with a final-over victory against England in the global T20 tournament that carried them through to South Africa’s first cricket World Cup final in any format. With two wins against Sri Lanka and Australia, Temba Bavuma’s side were also inspiring a justifiable optimism – right until their bowlers lost the plot against Dutch batters Scott Edwards and Roelof van der Merwe.
Captain Bavuma currently enjoys little of the popularity that his rugby counterpart, Siya Kolisi, has inspired in South Africa, as some of the visceral online reaction to the Netherlands defeat demonstrated. Kolisi may be a more naturally outgoing personality, with a more engaging social media feed, but he also has the fundamental advantage of having lifted that World Cup trophy four years ago.
The final was the kind of bruising, bullying encounter that has so often characterised the rivalry, from the moment Kyle Sinckler was knocked out mid-tackle in the third minute. Saturday’s semi-final may well be a repeat, and England fans are already bracing for impact. Should Buttler’s side hit their straps earlier in the day, they are more than capable of repaying the favour. Either way, it should be a day packed with crunch.
