CHOKE ON THIS OZ!!!

Okay so nobody will care about this post, but I have to write it!! Yeah, I was gonna go all predictable and write about Sado and how great that was!! But hell THIS IS BETTER!! MUCH MUCH BETTER!!! Okay, so to those of you who just don't get the sport!! Too bad, you're losing OUT on some good shit... Try to read this though, it has action, intrigue, drama, upsets, thrills and spills!! Not to mention an all-important twist!!!

Anyway so this weekend Australia and South Africa met in the deciding match of a 5 match one day International tournament at the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg - South Africa!! Australia... SMASHED the world record to set the highest run score in the history of the one day game (groooaaan!!), I got home from Sado, checked the match update, saw that we would be chasing 434 and just about died a thousand deaths!! My thoughts: NO WAY IN HELL ARE WE GOING TO BEAT THAT!!

But this is South Africa vs Australia... anything can happen! For some reason these two teams bring out the best (AND worst) in each other!! That JERK, Shane Warne, predictably slammed the South African team before the match, calling the current squad the weakest in history (okay so we lost... BADLY in Australia) and went on in his usual arrogant manner about how we couldn't beat the all powerful Aussies, etc etc and after their AMAZING record-breaking performance before lunch on Sunday, it looked like he would be right!! FOR GOD'S SAKE - we know how insufferable they are when they're right!! I mean they broke a ten year old record and we would have to break the record they had just set to win the game. Their outstanding performance shocked and silenced the 32 000 South African supporters in the stadium! Gosh, I know how every spectator must have felt by lunchtime, I've occasionally felt the same way myself over the years when watching SA play! That hollow, let-down, OH GOD NOT AGAIN, feeling we get when our team does something incredibly horrendous, or even worse, when we are just simply OUTPLAYED! Worse, OUTPLAYED BY OUR CRICKETING NEMESIS - AUSTRALIA - against whom we have the ignominious reputation of being CHOKERS!!

Halfway through the day, South Africa was apparently reduced to a virtual laughing stock!! The runs just kept being scored and our bowlers could do nothing much to stop it! It was humiliation vs Australia at its absolute worst!! Every South African cricket supporter's WORST nightmare come true! I can't imagine what captain Graeme Smith told the boys in the locker room, they must've been totally despondent! But then, they went out to chase that huge mountain of runs and something magical happened... I would have given my eyeteeth and left arm to see it!!

As one newspaper put it: "Australia had become the first team to score over 400 runs in limited overs cricket, easily surpassing the previous record of 398-5 scored by Sri Lanka against Kenya 10 years ago.
The record did not last for very long."

The Formidable Aussies!!

Even more simply put - we SLAUGHTERED THEM!!! We lost Boeta Dippenaar pretty cheaply and I know if I'd been watching I would have been squirming uncomfortably waiting for the batting order to collapse (yet again!)... but Graeme Smith and Herschelle Gibbs found their BMTs (FINALLY) and put on one HELL of a show! I get a shiver just thinking about it, it must have been a thing of beauty to watch!! As one paper put it (and this is a brilliant quote about the captain's performance): "And so Smith took it upon himself to deliver, responding to his team's indignity with a brutal innings laced with fury."
Gibbs and Smith now hold the record for the highest partnership by a South African pair against Australia, scoring 187 runs. This was also the highest first innings score and the highest second innings score in one-day cricket history, and it was the highest run-chase in one-day cricket history.

Captain Graeme Smith & Herschelle the hero - 175 runs!!!

In a show of patriotism, Gibbs kisses the flag on his helmet after scoring his century

I can imagine how the crowd in the stadium and the people watching at home must have felt witnessing that match... watching it turn around for South Africa, being in despair for the first half of the match and having it turn into tentative hope and then explosive euphoria as Herschelle and Graeme batted their way into the record books! And then as Mark steadied the innings after we lost Herschelle and Graeme... I can imagine the hearts in the throats as Makhaya Ntini (our last batsman in) scrambled for a single to put the better batsman, Mark, on strike... and then watching Mark score those winning runs, I would have been screaming and crying at the same time! It was reportedly a day grown men wept with joy!! I can certainly understand that! I wouldn't have budged from the telly at all while that drama unfolded!!

When we win & When we lose
For it to come down to the last over of the match... 7 runs off 6 balls!! No batsmen left and then scoring the winning runs off of the second last ball of the match!! It rarely comes that close! But when it does, it's the most thrilling, amazing thing!! You know,
you're either going to be screaming in the streets in victory or slumped in your chair in dazed, defeated disbelief!! I've seen matches that close before (usually against Australia) and I've experienced both the jubilation and the despair! Either way, in that moment, as the bowler runs up and releases that ball, you hold your breath and pray... if you're supporting the bowling side (in this case the Aussies) you're PRAYING that they get that last batsman out, or restrict him to no run... please dear LORD don't let him hit that ball! If you're on the batting side, you're begging God for a hit, a hit, any hit, please God over the fielder's head, into the outfield! We just need ONE MORE RUN TO WIN!!! JUST ONE MORE!! So let him get it, let him hit that ball into no-man's land, or over the top for four or six! Anything, just DON'T LET HIM GET OUT!!! God, how I LOVE this game! Shosholoza and all that, ne?!!!

Mark scores the winning runs
Mark and Makhaya celebrate

















When I think of the memorable matches we've won and lost vs Australia (some of best matches I've ever seen), I am astounded by how consistently these two teams deliver outstanding entertainment when they are competing against one another!! That AMAZING victory in Sydney more than ten years ago!! The agonising draw that put us OUT of the world cup in 1999 (That one had me wearing black for a week!! I cried BUCKETS after we came so close)... My favourite quote of the day has to be this one: "Seven years ago, in the semi-final of the 1999 World Cup, South Africa and Australia contested what has widely come to be regarded as the definitive one-day international - a match that built to a pulsating finale in which South Africa threw away their place in the World Cup final with what also came to be regarded as the definitive one-day choke. Today, however, South Africa can be called chokers no longer, after burying the ghosts of 1999 with victory in a match even more extraordinary and nail-shredding than its illustrious forebear."

Gavin Hood (Tsotsi director) brings his Oscar out to the watch the match (go figure)

Aaaah Australia, how humbling this must be!

Yesterday's match has already achieved the legendary status of being "simply the greatest match ever played"! Sighhhhhhhh!!! And I missed it :( Guys, I can't emphasise enough, how HUGE this is!! It's the greatest moment EVER in One Day cricket history and the moment belongs to US!!! And beating Australia in the process makes it even sweeter! Giddygiddygiddy!! After the shite run of national sporting results we've had recently (cricket included), this is (according to newspaper reports and just what I know about my home land) going to create as big a frenzy as the SA World Cup Rugby victory in 1995! The same upswelling of national pride - and coming so soon after Tsotsi's success, I can well imagine the ebullience this has resulted in!! I hate missing out on moments like these!

The headlines screamed it best today (certainly a reflection of public sentiment!! I can imagine everyone still being on a total high after witnessing a game like that - green with envy here)...

438/9 CHOKE ON THAT AUSSIES!!!! (from the Star in Johannesburg)

A funnier headline (probably in reference to Gibbs' take-no-prisoners attitude) : "Jou ma se (your mother's) 434 ... we'll just score even more."
Herschelle and Makhaya's victory lap! The boys are BACK!!!!

Yeah... cricket... I don't like it man... I LOVE IT!!!