“When you call us chokers you have to go back pre-1997. This is 1999, the choking thing is all played out.”
It is more than 24 years since the then South Africa coach, Bob Woolmer, pleaded with the press to change the narrative, and 16 since his shocking death during the 2007 World Cup. Yet the choking thing is still playing itself out.
Woolmer’s quotes came the day before the most devastating of South Africa’s one‑day international World Cup eliminations: the epic semi-final against Australia at Edgbaston, when Allan Donald, paralysed by the need of millions of South Africans, was run out with two balls remaining. The ghosts of South Africa’s World Cup past could fill a five-storey townhouse. The two most chilling – Australia and semi-finals – await them in Kolkata on Thursday.
South Africa are the only team in world cricket with a superior ODI record against Australia. They have won 15 of the past 18 meetings, including a crushing victory in Lucknow in this tournament, but they have never beaten Australia in a World Cup knockout match. An often fractious rivalry has been defined by the unspoken perception that, when they face Australia, South Africa’s chances of victory are in inverse proportion to the weight of the contest. “The South Africans were good,” said Steve Waugh, Australia’s captain in 1999, “but against us, we felt they just wanted it too badly.”
After the desolation of 1999, they started to want it too badly against everyone. It’s unfathomable that the only International Cricket Council tournament final South Africa have reached is the 1998 Champions Trophy, when they beat West Indies. That came six weeks after defeating Australia in the gold‑medal match at the Commonwealth Games; those two wins were the reason Woolmer thought the choking thing was all played out.
His comments aged quickly and abysmally, but no one could have foreseen what was to happen the next day. It feels voyeuristic to revisit such a traumatic moment, and maybe this article should come with a trigger warning. The aching need of both sides, especially South Africa, created a pressure and intensity that most of us will never experience or truly understand.
A mark of the greatest sport is that you feel nervous when you watch it again – even when you’re neutral, even when you know exactly what is going to happen. Few cricket fans could relive the ending of the 1999 semi‑final and not become mindful of their insides.
South Africa, chasing 214 in an unyielding arm‑wrestle of a match, started the last over needing nine to win with one wicket remaining. Lance Klusener, whose cold‑eyed baseball hitting throughout the World Cup had redefined the possibilities of finishing, lasered Damien Fleming’s first two balls through the covers for four with intimidating certainty. That brought the scores level, and Klusener was one of the few people on the field or in the stands who knew Australia would go through with a tie. In the 20th century, with the internet a nascent industry, few people had the means or inclination to seek out the small print.
South Africa needed one run – one measly, snivelling run – from the last four deliveries. The No 11, Donald, had spent 30 overs in the TV umpire’s room, praying he would not have to bat. He got his wish, sort of: he didn’t face a ball, so all he had to do was run. But in the most heightened circumstances of his career, of almost anyone’s career, that proved too much. He wandered absent-mindedly out of his crease to the next ball and would have been out had Darren Lehmann’s throw hit the stumps.
In a flash, it was over. There were only 36 seconds between Fleming bowling the penultimate and final deliveries, a blatant rejection of the most basic sports psychology: compose yourself, talk to a teammate, don’t rush, get your heart rate down, and for heaven’s sake take in some of that oxygen. In the 2019 final between England and New Zealand, by contrast, there were 103 seconds between the last two balls. But in 1999, it was if the players on both sides could take no more and had to get it over with one way or another.
When Klusener forced the next ball down the ground and made a run for it, a spooked Donald didn’t move, except to turn his head to follow the ball. It would have been a risky single even if he had set off straight away; in the space of a couple of deliveries Klusener’s cool authority had given way to a desperate gamble.
Klusener kept running, straight off the field, taking only a quick look over his shoulder to confirm what he already knew. The saddest sight in World Cup history might be Donald’s belated, pitiful attempt to run to the other end, without his bat, just in case something even stranger happened, all the while knowing that it wouldn’t.
When Donald left the field he locked himself in the physio’s room, pads still on, and wept for half an hour. A giant of a human being, who had been majestic in his day job earlier in the match, could not have deserved it less.
Fairly or not, the match cemented South Africa’s reputation as chokers, one that has perpetuated itself ever since. Their relationship with global tournaments, particularly the 50-over World Cup, is a uniquely layered tale of despair and occasional farce, one that spans multiple generations. Mother Cricket is supposed to dispense moral justice and ensure people don’t take liberties with the game. With South Africa, she has indulged a rarely seen sadistic side.
The crossover between plotlines is almost perverse. In 1999 and 2003, when they were eliminated from their own World Cup after misreading a Duckworth-Lewis sheet, South Africa tied a match they had to win. In the semi-final against England in 1992 they were scuppered by an ill‑conceived rain rule that turned a target of 22 from 13 balls into 21 from 1. The heavens opened at the most inopportune time, as they would in 2003 and 2015.
That 1992 semi-final is remembered as the “21 off one ball” game, but technically South Africa lost by 19 runs – the same margin as their wholly unexpected defeat by a Brian Lara-inspired West Indies in the 1996 quarter-final.
Another quarter-final defeat 15 years later was symbolised by the avoidable run- out of AB de Villiers against New Zealand. Donald’s cataclysmic run-out was one of three in the 1999 semi‑final; the captain, Shaun Pollock, fell the same way at a pivotal moment against Sri Lanka four years later.
Those run-outs are among multiple acts of self‑sabotage. South Africa controversially left out a star fast bowler in 1996 (Donald) and 2015 (Kyle Abbott). The main reason they played Australia in the 1999 semi‑final was because Herschelle Gibbs dropped Waugh while celebrating prematurely in a Super Six game four days earlier. They bowled first in the 1992 semi-final even though the weather forecast wasn’t great and the rain rule gave the team batting first a huge advantage. They missed five chances in the field against New Zealand in 2015. And no other team has been knocked out after misreading a Duckworth-Lewis sheet.
There’s another “ch” word that defines South Africa’s World Cup failures. “We can’t say with conviction that we do have the blueprint when we are chasing,” said their captain, Temba Bavuma, earlier in the tournament. He was talking specifically about his team, who are so devastating when they bat first, but he might have been giving a history lesson. Almost all South Africa’s World Cup meltdowns have occurred when they have batted second. The decisive moment of Thursday’s semi-final may well be the toss, and for once it has nothing to do with the pitch.
South Africa weren’t chasing in the 2007 semi-final, when Australia walloped them by seven wickets, yet even then their batting was the decisive factor. They were so determined to stand up to Australia that they drowned in their own testosterone, losing five wickets in the first 10 overs amid a series of reckless shots.
That game is one of 10 consecutive semi-finals in global tournaments that South Africa failed to win. Technically they didn’t lose in 1999. The match was tied and South Africa were eliminated by what Wisden called a “vile technicality” and pedants called article 11.4 of the World Cup playing conditions. Australia went through because they finished above South Africa in the Super Six stage. The rule applied only to the semi‑finals. Had there been a tie in the final, the World Cup would have been shared.
Within eight years of that game both Woolmer and the South Africa captain, Hansie Cronje, were dead. The rest of that South African squad will live vicariously on Thursday.
The Spanish football team, the All Blacks and England’s white-ball side under Eoin Morgan are proof that it’s never too late to reject typecasting. Like South Africa, those teams had to shift industrial quantities of psychological rubble from their nation’s subconscious. The word “chokers”, casually and sometimes callously tossed around by cold, timid souls who have never entered the arena, will be attached to South Africa until they win a Cricket World Cup. Before they can think about that ultimate catharsis, they have a couple of important ghosts to exorcise.
