cricket with balls

It is not every day you play a match winning innings at home and away, but today Grant Elliot did.

Playing in his home town, for his club New Zealand, he timed his innings to perfection, even if he it didn’t always look like that.

New Zealand were trying to look nervous in their chase, but Elliot has a sea of calm singles as he let his skipper, New Zealand born, Daniel Vettori play the big shots.

The innings confused many seasoned cricket watchers as this was an important innings in a world wide ICC champion tournament, as a South African he was supposed to choke.

Instead he held firm, resolute, stoic, non-chokey.

Earlier this year in the Ashes South African born, bred, and accented Jonathan Trott played his debut in an Ashes deciding test and excelled.

Even the great KP, when not hampered by captaincy or injuries, handles the pressure better than the men in green.

So why then does the South African team melt under similar pressures?

Surely Trott and Elliott cannot be that special, because if they were they would be playing for their country and not be cricket mercenaries.

So the answer must be that South Africans don’t choke, the South African cricket team chokes.

For years, about 19 of them, we have just assumed that it is the nation and the way they play cricket, unlike other nations they have had no reason to use players from other countries, so we could never do a proper test on whether it was the team enviroment or the national identity.

Now we know, without Elliot’s steadfast innings, and his bowling against England, New Zealand would not be in the final of this oh so important ICC white jacket tournament.

I think South Africa should think about a re-branding for international tournaments.

Or a cricket exorcism, I think Navjot Sidhu does them.