How Proteas Self-belief Earned Success Down Under

by Trevor Chesterfield

Winning Tests in Australia are far from easy. Few teams have accomplished it with lasting success. In 1994, South Africa based their New Year narrow victory on the bowling efforts largely of Fanie de Villiers and Allan Donald.

Twice India have surmounted Olympus, and could have achieved what the Proteas have achieved a year earlier but for umpiring errors that went in Australia’s favour. India weren’t prepared to accept how their Sydney defeat was airbrushed by mistakes made by others.

But that is history now and for the chronicles and future writers to mull over as the game moves on to another tour.

What we are looking at is not crystal ball gazing, but a replay of events fifteen years earlier. Fanie de Villiers told a surprised, mainly local, media on the evening of day four how South Africa stood on the brink of a 1-0 series lead.

De Villiers has already made early inroads and at the impromptu media conference, he uttered the now famous edict: ‘You know South Africans, we never give up. It’s definitely still on (a South African win), believe me.’

There was a bit of spice as well about that after-day’s play media conference at the SCG, which was as refreshing as it was thought provoking. Some felt it a show of arrogance which surprised most Australian media.

Just who the hell is this guy? Playing in only his second Test and here he is shouting the odds.

In a tight if stilted accent he let the Aussies know they were in for a fight. Here was a street fighter who was not about to give up and let their media in on his philosophical thinking.

‘I want to tell you now,’ he said directly into the microphones and tape recorders of those crowded around, ‘the Aussies had better watch out. We can still win this Test. If we can get a breakthrough in the first seven overs and get two guys out then the pressure is really going to be on them.

‘I don’t think they are going to play any big shots. They can’t afford to do that. Go for the singles and twos and try and get them that way. We’re going to have so many more overs to bowl at them and that counts in our favour. It’s definitely still on believe me. We’ve always shown character in that sense . . .’

It had been powerful stuff and stirring thoughts of self-belief.

Fast forward to December 27, 2008: a different South African voice, more cultured perhaps, offered similar words at a different Aussie venue as Jacques Kallis offered his thoughts. South Africa were trailing by 100 and plenty, but the chunky all-rounder suggested how his side could still win it from that position.

There was of course the old refrain of, ‘You guys have to really be joking. Win it from where you are. Give over.’

What was it the famous Czech middle-distance running legend Emil Zatopek, said in 1952? ‘If you want to win something go for the hundred metres. But if you want to experience something, run the marathon. It is the willpower that counts. The stamina.’

There is a difference. You need stamina to win and Kallis felt South Africa had the Zatopek style stamina. Zatopek is still the only man to win the five kilometres, ten kilometres and marathon at the same Olympics – Helsinki in 1952.

Of course, it is only an analogy as there were far differing conditions in Sydney on January 6, 1994 to the game in Melbourne so many years later. But the fighting qualities are different. That side of the 1993/94, led by Kepler Wessels was one of players who had emerged from years of isolation and were a tough streetwise, cutting edged group and as such were highly competitive, and wanted to show this to the Aussies.

There were some rough edges about their game, but not their tactics. And it showed all too often as Allan Border’s Australians copped a side that wouldn’t surrender. There were some infamous umpiring decisions as well. Darrell Hair – remember him? – in Adelaide in the third Test of that first series between the big southern nations after isolation gave more than one lbw decision that riled the normally mild Peter Kirsten.

The opposition’s dressing room wall had a few holes where it is suggested the older Kirsten brother expressed his views of the second Hair lbw decision; the ball edged into the pad after pitching outside leg on TV replays. Grievances were pretty loud as well; nothing though the way India, and their board behaved with cantankerous glee a year ago. The South Africans had, under Wessels, a code of conduct that was fair but competitive.

Although in that Adelaide Test, the so-called white knight Hansie Cronjé, was in charge as Wessels had flown home to have his damaged finger mended in an operation. Not that the United Cricket Board, as it was then known, threw similar tantrums to those of the BCCI. Their reaction was a tight-lipped ‘disappointed at some of the umpiring decisions’ comment.

As a matter of trivia, this believe it or not began Duncan Fletcher’s enquiring mind wondering about a system of referrals. It was another 14 years for that idea was given a run, even if it is still flawed in execution. But that is a subject to be touched on another time.

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