A Sri Lanka-South Africa World Cup clash can be unusual, even outright bizarre. And as Delhi saw today, it can also yield a plethora of records.
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“More people at the press box than the stands,” pointed out a tweet as the clock ticked past a quarter to one in the afternoon.
True, there was still more than hour left for the match to begin. It is also true that the security check is stringent. You do not need to arrive early to beat the traffic, for the Delhi Gate underground station is a stone’s throw away.
But this was a World Cup match – and World Cups are special. They happen every four years. When they do, your city gets four or five matches. Not all of them may be on a weekend.
And even if everything goes your way, if you do get a chance to watch a World Cup match in your city, it may not be a Sri Lanka-South Africa clash. And South Africa-Sri Lanka World Cup matches are not everyday affairs.
By the time Temba Bavuma and Dasun Shanaka return from the toss, you have settled down, so you have time to think.
Sri Lanka had become an ICC Full Member in 1982, but they won only one match in 1983, and lost all six matches in 1987. Little was expected of them in 1992. They returned with two wins, one of them against Zimbabwe, who were going through a horror run of their own.
Not much was expected of South Africa too, who came into the World Cup with two decades of ban and three games of ODI cricket behind them. Over the course of the tournament, however, they became the darlings of the cricket fraternity: the 22-in-1 saga merely added to the poignance.
South Africa were one of the best sides of the 1992 World Cup. Since 1975, they became the first side to qualify for the top four on World Cup debut. Yet, they were felled by Sri Lanka, who finished seventh out of nine teams. A medium-pacer called Arjuna Ranatunga took 2-26 to restrict them to 195. Sri Lanka became 87-4, but Ranatunga stepped up again, this time with 64 not out.
Sri Lankan fans will probably not call it an upset, but South Africa’s domination in the 1990s was not restricted to one World Cup. In that decade, their win-loss ratio of 1.803 and 2.23 were the best in ODIs and Test cricket.
We can settle for a borderline upset, then.
As Temba Bavuma walked back at Delhi to lukewarm applause from barely two thousand people, you recall the next time they clashed. At Northampton in 1999, superb bowling from Chaminda Vaas and Muttiah Muralitharan reduced South Africa to 122-8.
Since ODIs became a 50-over thing, no team has lost their first eight wickets for as few in a World Cup match and still gone on to win. But then, no team in history could boast of the Lance Klusener-1999 World Cup combination.
Klusener made 52 not out in 45 balls to lift South Africa to 199 and claimed 3-21 in Sri Lanka’s innings of 110.
Four years later, he was at the non-striker’s end when Mark Boucher defended the last ball of the 45th over from Muralitharan. Poor Nicky Boje stood outside the boundary, waiting to deliver the sheet with calculations that told that South Africa had only tied the match, not won, and they needed a win.
But the skies opened at that very point. Play never resumed, and Boje’s message was never delivered. South Africa were eliminated on home soil. And Shaun Pollock was sacked.
By the time Quinton de Kock and Rassie van der Dussen had helped themselves to a hundred, you have switched from history to databases. You know that two centurions, to be followed by Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen, and David Miller, may bring about world records.
The two men with five infixes depart, but Markram and Klaasen add 78 in six overs like there is no tomorrow. As the scorer announces that this is the highest ODI total at the venue, you can sense more records coming. Three hundreds in an innings (maybe even four, but Klaasen makes only 32), for example – a first in the history of the tournament.
It would take a collapse for Sri Lanka to get back into the match, you think. And then you think of that day in Providence where, chasing 210, South Africa were 206-5. Reporters had filed their match reports by then, leaving the margin of victory blank in the first paragraph: the usual routine, you know.
But the man with a mane and fire to match the lion on the national flag roared back, and how! Lasith Malinga became the first bowler to take four wickets in four balls in international cricket, and South Africa barely scraped through.
The 2015 quarter-final bout was different, for it was the only time they met at the World Cup knockout phase. Perhaps in acknowledgment, Sri Lanka picked uncapped Tharindu Kaushal, the only cricketer to debut in a World Cup knockout other than Wayne Larkins in the 1979 semi-final.
South Africa responded to this unprecedented occasion as well. JP Duminy (of all people) became the first bowler to complete a hat-trick in a World Cup knockout match.
But even that paled into insignificance when South Africa shrugged off their c-tag to win their first knockout match in the history of the tournament.
South Africa’s nine-wicket demolition of Sri Lanka at Chester-le-Street in 2019, thus, seemed like an aberration. Was the aura wearing off after a quasi-upset, a near-miraculous rearguard, a brain-fade resulting in a tie, a four-in-four, and a knockout match featuring three firsts? Surely a rivalry cannot offer more?
It can, as the swelling Delhi crowd – more than half the stands had been filled up – would have told you. It can offer World Cup records and, as long as Kusal Mendis were around, keep the hopes of an absurd chase alive.
