Here we are again, the Proteas are in a World Cup semi-final but do we dare to believe that this time will be different?
Well, so far this has been a different kind of campaign for South Africa when compared to other promising World Cup tilts.
The 2024 T20 World Cup is probably more akin to the 1992 Cricket World Cup than any of the subsequent failed campaigns.
This team was given little chance of making a splash on the global stage but they have surprised everybody with their fight and made it to the last four.
In 1992, South Africa came undone in the end by means of an absurd rain-rule but it is easy to forget that the team were behind the game when the heavens opened.
That team was determined to announce South Africa’s return to the international stage but what is the great motivator for the current group.
Proteas coach Rob Walter has stuck his neck out for this group of players specifically, knowing that the final makeup of the squad was going to ruffle some feathers and lead to some uncomfortable questions.
Walter has backed out-of-sorts stars like Quinton de Kock and Anrich Nortje to come good and they have delivered.
The coach has chosen a team that he believes can win this tournament and it looks like that belief might have filtered through to these players.
You might argue that the Proteas have no right to win this T20 World Cup.
They don’t have a top order loaded with big ball strikers, instead aggressive De Kock is backed up by good solid batting from Reeza Hendricks and Aiden Markram. They have a trio of hitters in the middle order though and can promote any one of Heinrich Klaasen, Tristan Stubbs or David Miller to do a job early on.
This team also isn’t loaded with all-rounders like the other top sides at the T20 World Cup. Australia, India, England and the West Indies litter their XIs with them – with three of those sides are on their way home.
In the Proteas top six, there are only two players who reasonably regularly turn their arms over but both Hendricks and Markram are still seen as part-timers. Perhaps we need to reconsider that label when it comes to Markram.
While the team came into the T20 World Cup with little time together, that has actually been pretty much the same for the other sides because of the IPL and the one side that had the most time together, Pakistan, were dumped out of the competition early.
That said, the Proteas are yet to really click, as it were, and put on the kind of performance that this group is capable of which might be the reason we can hope.
The surfaces this tournament have been played on have favoured the team willing to scrap and stay in the fight with relentless tenacity and this team has that in spades.
Their leader Markram has the experience of guiding the Sunrisers Eastern Cape to two SA20 titles against expert predictions.
Still, do we dare to believe, after 32 years of hurt, that this is the team to tell the world ‘hulle weet nie wat ons weet nie!’
