A quarter of a century has passed since that haunting drop of Allan Donald’s bat, that sight of canary yellow shirts in disbelief over their fortune, that run out to tie the match but eliminate South Africa from the World Cup.
Heartbreak after heartbreak followed, the most affecting since 1999 coming in 2015, with Dale Steyn spread across the Eden Park pitch, hands on head under lights, consoled by Grant Elliott. New Zealand’s South African-born batter had just ended his adopted nation’s own miserable sequence of last-four misery with a six down the ground.
