Lessons from past semi-finals still linger today

Amid the fables and folklore that enshroud previous World Cup semi-final showdowns between Australia and South Africa there resides a couple of historical truisms that carry some relevance into today's encounter in Kolkata.

The first is, similar to the campaigns of 1999 and 2007 when the spirited rivals also met in the tournament's penultimate fixture, Australia's team being strewn with players facing their final hurrah and therefore hellbent on crowning a gilded era with one more trophy.

The other is the puzzling precedent of South Africa's markedly changed behaviour heading into those high-stakes clashes that telegraphed to their foes they were second-guessing themselves before a ball was bowled in either contest.

When memories drift to the famous tied match at Edgbaston in 1999, they invariably focus on Shane Warne's mesmeric bowling, Lance Klusener's brutal late-order hitting and the tragi-comic final over that still triggers PTSD in Proteas players and fans.

But within the Australia inner sanctum, one of the clearest recollections remains Warne's impassioned speech to his teammates immediately before they took to the field to defend a seemingly inadequate 213.

"Boys, if we lose this, it'll be the last game for Australia for a couple of us … so let's make sure it's not," was Warne's exhortation, or some variation thereof.

Initially stunned by Warne's not-so-subtle suggestion he would follow through on previously aired plans for a premature retirement having endured a tough 12 months that included shoulder surgery, getting dropped from the Test team and the obligatory off-field scandals, his words then took on more poignant meaning.

A strength of Australia's rallying run to the prize in '99 was the sense of unfinished business shared by the eight members of the starting XI (Warne, Steve and Mark Waugh, Ricky Ponting, Michael Bevan, Glenn McGrath, Damien Fleming and Paul Reiffel) who had succumbed to Sri Lanka in the 1996 final.

While Warne's hypothetical was also typically hyperbolic, it proved a timely reminder of cricket mortality for senior players the likes of the Waugh twins, Tom Moody, Reiffel and Fleming who presciently surmised they were, indeed, potentially staring at their last World Cup outing.

Three members of that Cup-winning outfit – Ponting, McGrath and Adam Gilchrist – were then part of the all-conquering Australia team that went on a scarcely believable stretch of 21 consecutive World Cup wins from that tied result to the 2007 re-match with South Africa at St Lucia.

But upon reaching their first knockout game of that seven-week tournament in the Caribbean, those experienced warriors understood a winning streak meant nothing if it didn't extend to the decider, especially with 30-plus warriors McGrath, Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden and Andrew Symonds knowing they would not scale that peak again.

And so it is with the current Australia squad, a rump of which first tasted World Cup success in the home triumph of 2015 with a squad featuring Steve Smith, David Warner, Glenn Maxwell, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Marsh.

A bulk of that cohort, as well as current squad members Adam Zampa, Marcus Stoinis and Alex Carey – all of whom have ticked past their 30th birthdays – then fell at the second-last hurdle in England four years ago and, like their celebrated predecessors, are aware this likely represents their final crack.

Starc has already confirmed his last appearance in an Australia ODI World Cup shirt will come either today, or in Sunday's final against India.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush, I'm not going to be playing one-day cricket in four years' time," Starc told cricket.com.au this week when asked if he had contemplated the prospect of his ODI World Cup career finishing in the coming week.

"Whether I'm picked or not, I'd still like to play a bit of one-day cricket.

"For a lot of us, it's been a tough gig playing three formats for a long time and it takes a lot of hard work and commitment to do that.

"Everything has been build-up to the World Cup but there's a bit of time after this to reflect after this on where it all sits."

If Australia's current crop can glean any insights from prior World Cup semi-finals against the Proteas, it is to be alert to telltale signs their opponents are feeling the heat.

Heading into the 1999 campaign, Hansie Cronje's team was the benchmark in 50-over cricket having lost just five of their 22 ODIs in the year leading up to the tournament opener.

Their winning percentage over that period of 68.2 per cent was superior to other threats Australia (65.2) and Pakistan (60.1), yet it was the latter teams that met in the trophy decider at Lord's.

According to then Australia skipper Steve Waugh, the signs that South Africa were approaching the 1999 Cup carrying a different mindset than they had borne through preceding series became obvious through their captain's demeanour.

Waugh and Cronje had developed a strong friendship as South Africa reintegrated into world cricket through the 1990s, to the extent that during Australia's 1997 Ashes tour Cronje (then playing as an overseas professional in Ireland) would regularly phone Waugh just to chat about the game.

But from the time the pair first crossed paths at the 1999 World Cup in the UK, Waugh noticed a distinct change in his former friend's demeanour with Cronje clearly deciding he would not enter into any pre-game pleasantries or engage in unnecessary small talk.

Waugh believed it betrayed a similar mindset his former captain Allan Border took into the 1989 Ashes, whereby he forbid his players to 'fraternise' with their England foes no matter how friendly they might have been in the past because it risked shifting focus from their mission to win.

The adoption of a similar 'don't mess with me' attitude by South Africa's captain in 1999 told Waugh the Proteas were straining at the leash, and when Cronje swore at his captaincy rival during Waugh's match-winning innings in the final Super Six encounter at Headingley the Australians knew something would eventually give.

"Physically, he (Cronje) was a fitness freak but mentally he pushed himself so hard that, like a piece of pottery in a kiln, when the heat became too much he cracked," Waugh wrote in his autobiography.

In the aftermath of the tied semi-final at Edgbaston that spawned South Africa's unfortunate reputation as World Cup 'chokers', Waugh observed he had never witnessed a more crestfallen figure than Cronje who would lose his life in a plane crash three years later.

While the 'no interaction' might have paid dividends for Border in 1989 (albeit to the bemusement of his England counterpart David Gower), Waugh sensed it was a ploy that only compounded pressure building on the brooding South Africa skipper, and he exploited it every chance he got.

At a pre-tournament media event he announced the Proteas were rightly favoured to lift the Cup because they played a similarly hard but entertaining brand of cricket as his own men, before adding pointedly "that's why we enjoy beating them".

And prior to the Super Six game at Headingley that would decide who made it through the semi-finals, Waugh brazenly announced the game "will be a pointer to who wins the World Cup" just in case South Africa weren't quite aware of where their biggest threat lay.

As disciples of Waugh's 'whatever it takes' leadership style, Ponting and McGrath understood frailties and how to exploit them as Australia sought an historic third successive World Cup crown in 2007.

Despite the reigning champs' heavyweight status, South Africa entered the Caribbean campaign as once more the most successful (statistically) outfit across the year prior with a winning ratio of 75 per cent compared to Australia's 65.4.

But knowing the ghosts of '99 still lingered, and their effect was further compounded by the debacle of 2003 when South Africa failed to progress beyond the group stage of their home World Cup, the Australians began sowing seeds of doubt.

Ever the provocateur, McGrath noted early in the 2007 tournament that notwithstanding their imposing recent record, the Proteas' one-day game relied too heavily on structure and their undoubtedly well-credentialled playing personnel lacked flair.

It was a bold call given barely a year had passed since South Africa chased down Australia's then-record total of 434 with a ball to spare at Johannesburg but, after his team landed a hefty 83-run win in the initial phase of the 2007 World Cup, Ponting doubled-down on the tactic.

Prior to their semi-final meeting at St Lucia, Ponting repeated McGrath's observation about the predictably methodical Proteas and went further to suggest the world's top-ranked all-rounder Jacques Kallis was one who erred on the side of ponderous and rarely took a game by the scruff of its neck.

Any doubts the Australia skipper harboured as to whether those barbs had found their mark were erased at the semi-final coin toss when his opposite number Graeme Smith called correctly and chose to bat, a ploy starkly at odds with South Africa's proven ODI strategy to chase.

"When Graeme Smith said 'we'll have a bat' I immediately thought 'gee, they must be desperate'," Ponting wrote in his 2007 Captain's Diary.

"It was as if they were trying to say 'we'll take you on your terms, we're not scared of you'."

That defiant mindset materialised as a crazy-brave assault on Australia's bowlers, best illustrated by Smith's third-over charge at Nathan Bracken and Kallis's similarly ill-advised advance on McGrath soon after that led to both batters having their stumps rattled, before their team crashed to 5-27 inside 10 overs.

Instead of invoking the Waugh mantra to 'back yourself' as they had pledged to do pre-game, South Africa instead tried to fundamentally change the approach that had brought them regular success, in the biggest game of their collective careers.

As Ponting understood the Waugh philosophy, 'backing yourself' meant maintaining the self-belief to execute an individual game plan while also recognising what was and wasn't plausible in given circumstances.

"That's brave and smart. South Africa, on the other hand, just played dumb," he wrote of that one-sided semi-final that paved the way for Australia's triumph over Sri Lanka in the Cup decider days later.

"They were all trying to play the innings of their life in the same game, but they were cut down, one after the other.

"Instead of swimming between the flags, they drowned down the wrong end of the beach."

By comparison, the verbal battle ahead of today's resumption of the semi-final rivalry in Kolkata has been decidedly tame.

Even Starc's claim that, on the way to their 2015 World Cup win at home, Australia viewed South Africa as "the only team we thought could beat us" was more an honest evaluation than an attempt to stir up bitter memories of the Proteas most recent heartbreaking semi-final loss (to New Zealand) in that tournament.

However, current Australia captain Pat Cummins subtly signalled his awareness of what has gone before when asked on match eve if the World Cup history between today's combatants might bring any bearing on how the game plays out.

"It's hard to speak on their behalf, but I do know each World Cup, it does seem to be the story that South Africa haven't quite achieved what they set out to do," Cummins said yesterday.

"I think there's a couple of different ways you can go about it.

"You can either build it up as the most important game of your life, or you can (approach it as) business as usual really.

"With experience, I think just keeping it pretty chilled and business as usual for our group seems to be the way to go.

"You draw back on those past wins, but you also just draw back on the last few weeks and know that us at our best is good enough, so you don't need to try and push it too hard.

"There's a quiet confidence, and I think our team plays our best when we've got that."

2023 World Cup Finals

First semi-final: India beat New Zealand by 70 runs

November 16: Second semi-final, South Africa v Australia, Kolkata (D/N), 7.30pm AEDT

November 19: Final, Ahmedabad (D/N), 7.30pm AEDT