South Africa vs New Zealand: Why chases have been South Africa’s bugbear at the World Cup over the years | Cricket-world-cup News

There’s a five-letter word starting with ‘c’ that merges the destinies of South Africa and New Zealand in World Cup cricket.It is not as viciously spat out, or unimaginatively uttered, or unoriginal as ‘choke’.
The word is ‘chase’, and the two sides meeting in Pune on Wednesday uniquely mirror each other, with New Zealand a few paces ahead of the South Africans in how the chase race has panned out. South Africans botched their modest run-chase against Netherlands a few days back.
They stuttered against the mighty Australians famously in 1999, and stumbled forgettably against minnows Bangladesh in 2007. So the defeat to the Dutch in the middle of some serious run-loots and 400-plus scores, evoked a wry shake of the head as if to say, “That’s just them.”
Poor run chases look like anomalies in most of their World Cup campaigns, until suddenly they are the coup de grace. 1992 to Duckworth & Lewis and England, 1996 to West Indies, 1999 to Australia, 2003 to Sri Lanka and 2011 to New Zealand.
But excitingly for this edition, the Proteas arrived in Pune to face their sweet-smiling nemesis New Zealand who tripped them up in both 2011 and 2015 Knockouts, on the back of a 1-wicket thrilling chase against Pakan in Chennai.
Keshav Maharaj’s roar alongside Tabraiz Shamsi’s dogged defense, set alight this World Cup edition. It was merely a league match against a Pakan in shambles, and ought to never have been a desperate last-wicket scramble. Still, the roar showed what going past the line meant to the Saffers.
The country’s most shocking loss when chasing against New Zealand in World Cups came in 2011, when Daniel Vettori exerted a spin-strangle on a wicked Dhaka wicket to squeeze the batting life out of a vaunted SA top 6 of Amla, Smith, Kallis, AB deVilliers, Duminy and Faf, and Jacob Oram landed the knockout punches with 4 wickets.
It was Jacques Kallis’ most unfluent 75 deliveries faced. And though it pales in memory to the Donald harakiri of 1999, a mixup runout that claimed AB de Villiers, ended hopes of one of the strongest Cup teams SA ever fielded.
New Zealand are haunted no such Halloweens of cricket batting.Against South Africa in World Cups alone, where they have won 6 of their 8 faceoffs since 1992, 5 have been successful run-chases. Things got tight in the 2015 Auckland semifinals, when they won 4 wickets, off the penultimate ball. The victory margin was ditto in a group game of 2019 though this time, the Kiwis won with 3 balls remaining, steered a calm Kane Williamson ton despite Chris Morris triggering collapses at 4/80 and 5/137 while chasing 242.
They even tied a Super Over target of 15 last time and were thrown a technicality to deny them the World Cup. Jimmy Neesham was back to doing his thing last week, bringing them within 5 runs of a mammoth target of 388 at Dharamshala against Australia. Captain Tom Latham, whose father Rod made 60 the first time that the Kiwis slashed down the Saffer target in 1992, speaking on match-eve, gave an insight into just how little these narrow losses sting a team like New Zealand not racked chasing nightmares.
“It was fantastic how our batters put us in a position to win a game chasing almost 400. We were just one shot away from winning so we’ll put these learnings into tomorrow’s game” he would say. Latham said the team had recognized fairly early on that it was a good pitch, and set about in pursuit of 389. “We’ll look at the positives.”What New Zealand chase, not unlike South Africa, is their first World Cup trophy in cricket. The Proteas misses and their eluding success in World Cups has evoked everything from lilting laments to bawling ballads.
New Zealand came closer than the Saffers, and were dealt brutal blows especially Martin Crowe’s men in 1992 and Brendon McCullum’s crew in 2015. The 2019 finish will struggle to summon a coherent closure. Yet, New Zealand plod on, without dramatics or poetry, without riffing off Greek tragedies. There are other semifinals misses too, that don’t even make the litany of heartbreaking losses though it would’ve equally hurt the personnel. They just get up after every loss, dust themselves off, and turn up at the next edition.
Latham, a second-generation World Cup chaser, took over the baton from not just his father, but stepping in as captain carries the same optimism that renders the Australia loss to a pointer in lessons learnt.
Kane Williamson who batted for 30-odd deliveries outside the NZ nets in Pune, has perfected the comeback — be it from ridiculous World Cup rules or a busted knee or a freakish thumb injury, which he described as “turning fat and colourful very fast after it was struck.”Kiwi cricket wears its heartbreaks and bone-shatters lightly.
Destiny’s reward
New Zealand chase destiny’s reward for the years of consency and excellence in their cricket. Unlike South Africa whose outstanding talents like Hansie Cronje, Allan Donald, Lance Klusener, Kallis, AB deVilliers, Dale Steyn, Faf Du Plessis and Graeme Smith were burdened with pressure of winning the World Cups and perhaps caved under it, New Zealand have always been an unassuming unit without celebrity or stardom.Most Read
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Like Rod Latham who was support cast to Greatbatch in 1992, a dozen others have contributed to their win record against Saffers in World Cups — SA haven’t won since 1999. While Stephen Fleming and Williamson have captain’s tons in run chases, the heroes are as varied as Nathan Astle who went after Donald in 2003, Craig McMillan who took out the middle order in 2007 and chased calmly, Jacob Oram in 2011, Corey Anderson and Grant Elliot in 2015 and Colin de Grandhomme whose 60 off 47 got them the last 100 in 2019. In this, they live the All Blacks mantra of shared responsibility.
Latham spoke of All Blacks highlighting NZ’s racial diversity as much as Springboks did theirs at the Rug World Cup. But from that losing ABs final on Saturday, the Black Caps gleaned out their lessons. “It was unfortunate to end on the wrong side, but they taught us to scrap all the way to the end, fight hard till deep in the back end of the game,” he said.
Perhaps because the two are so similar in the brand of cricket they play, knowing they’ll always be in the shadow of adored rug teams until they nail down a World Cup of their own, their matches have been so even. There’s rarely an edge to their rivalry, plentiful of mutual respect, and maybe a shared annoyance of Australia, boerous with its five World Cups.