The match that matters most has already been won. By South Africa. 12-11 on Saturday night in the City of Lights to make them world champions for a record fourth time. Yes, this is a cricket website. No, nothing about this part of the story is about cricket.

In rugby's fiercest rivalry, the Springboks and All Blacks met at the World Cup final in Paris during the weekend in a match that has been lauded as one of the greatest games the sport has ever seen. It was a nerve-shredder, as you can probably tell from the score-line, and ended with both teams down to 14 players and plenty of tears.

Four days later, these two countries meet again, though the stakes are much lower this time. South Africa and New Zealand sit second and third on the points table respectively and a lot would have to go wrong for either of them to miss out on the semi-final, where they could play each other again. That's not to say it's impossible for things to unravel but it would also be fair to look at this as a dress rehearsal rather than a do-or-die. And for South Africa it could actually be the start, because the country's attention will now shift to cricket and the expectation that was largely absent from their campaign is going to pile on in multiples.

With two months left in 2023, South Africans are starting to think it may finally be their time because this has been a year of unprecedented success. "All the momentum within the sport was started by the women in the start of the year, with them getting into the [T20 World Cup final]," Temba Bavuma, South Africa men's captain, said after their win against Pakistan in Chennai. "I think it's been a bit of pressure for us as the Proteas to keep the momentum going. We're doing well so far and we'll take the inspiration and motivation from all those performances from our other national teams."

The "other" national teams also include the national women's football team, who became the first senior side to advance out of the group stage at the football World Cup but is dominated by the Springboks, who have unified South Africa in a way nothing and no-one else has been able to. And for the cricketers that is something to strive to emulate.

"We take massive inspiration from them, - massive learnings and lessons from them as a team; from how they go about things, what they stand for and the purpose they play for," Rassie van der Dussen said ahead of the New Zealand match. "Siya (Kolisi - the Springbok captain) mentioned in a press conference that if you're not from South Africa, you don't really understand what it means or what sporting achievement means for us."

So what does it mean and why is it different to anywhere else? Surely winning is an opioid of the masses everywhere? Not so, explains van der Dussen. "What the Springboks and sport shows is when you get things right and you do things the right way, what you can achieve. Good things happen to good people. And that Springbok team - that's what they are. They are all hard-working, good South Africans with a real humility about them, and a real hunger for success and it shows when you are willing to put differences aside what is possible for a country like ours."

And that's the rub of it. Beyond having well-functioning systems that result in collective achievement, sport in South Africa is one of the most front-facing parts of society that speaks to the legacies of division and slowly and painfully, some cohesion. Sport was an essential part of the politics of Apartheid, which kept racial groups segregated and saw all-white teams take the field, and the resistance against it, when people of colour continued playing despite all the obstacles put in their way and with the knowledge they would never represent the country. Cricket was the first (and to date only) sport that has had a reckoning with race and it was recent. The Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) hearings took place just over two years ago and tore the game apart. It has started to come back and to borrow the Springboks slogan, it appears that the cricketers are stronger together.

"The situations we've faced in the past three years - Covid-19, BLM, SJN and various political stories we have had back home as a team, forced us to pull together," van der Dussen said. "It's had the effect of us being really tight off the field as well. Between any two members of the squad there is a real connection. We are blessed in a sense that we are in a good space now because we've had to deal with a lot of controversy over the past three years."

But could all of that, along with the very fresh success of the Springboks, combine to make this also the cricketers' year? Coach Rob Walter tried to play it down. "I don't think it [the expectation] has become any more because the Boks have won," he said. "It's an inspiration as to how they won and hopefully that can catalyse us moving forward. Maybe the media attention will shift to us now. We've spoken about it as a team as to what we can take as opposed to how it impacts us for a pressure point of view. Rugby is rugby and they have been very successful over a long period of time. We are trying to take care of our own business here."

That's sensible and sobering because while the Springboks have won four World Cups, the Proteas have not even reached one final and despite all the warm and fuzzies South Africans are feeling now, it's too early to be thinking about that. The immediate challenge is three more group games, starting with New Zealand, a team South Africa have been poor against at World Cups.

South Africa have lost five of their last World Cup encounters against New Zealand, including at the 2011 quarterfinal and 2015 semi-final, and six of eight all told. They last beat New Zealand at the World Cup in 1999.

The same statistic was true for Pakistan (though they did not play them in 2003, 2007 and 2011) and when they looked shaky on 250 for 8 chasing 271 in Chennai, people were clearing their throats to say the word choke and bringing up South Africa's storied and scarred World Cup history.

Almost all South African squads have said the ghosts of tournaments past do not haunt them and most are believable to a point - the point where they crash out. This side, still very much in, is perhaps the most believable because of how they see the reasons that people keep bringing up their previous failings.

"You realise that fans have been really scarred by previous performances and you really can't criticise them for feeling that way, and for criticism to come from a place of hurt," van der Dussen said. "But personally, and it goes for most of the people in the squad and management team, we haven't lived that. So it's not really applicable to us. It's things that have happened and they love replaying the scenes whenever we take the field and that's fine but it's not something that is affecting us. It's part of history. But it's certainly not part of us as a team."

And so they move forward, as a team looking to carve out their own identity in a year where being "South African" has taken on more meaning.

As for New Zealand, despite getting to the last two finals and losing them, they don't face the same scrutiny, have even less media coverage than South Africa at this event, and as a playing group, don't even seem too affected by the All Blacks defeat. They'll also take some cues from their more famous and successful sporting counterparts which makes the narrative around Wednesday's match more about two countries' sporting stories than just two cricket teams.

"When you look at the All Blacks as a whole, they've played some great rugby throughout this World Cup. The Kiwi way is we look to scrap the whole way," Tom Latham said. "Obviously faced with a little bit of adversity in terms of being down to 14 men, but it's something we talk about in our team as well, we scrap right to the end regardless of the situation."

South Africa's cricketers are stronger together as they look to emulate Springboks

2023-10-31 15:20:24