South Africa stand in the way as New Zealand try to make final step

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/mar/22/new-zealand-south-africa-world-cup-semi-final

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Like a swell rolling on to Auckland’s famous Piha surfing beach, the Black Caps have been gathering momentum and with it the degree of national support has been growing to epidemic proportions. The Sunday papers are packed, front back and middle, with Martin Guptill’s extraordinary double-century demolition of West Indies the previous evening, and on Tuesday 46,000 people, mostly Kiwis and noisy ones at that, will shoehorn themselves into Eden Park for the biggest game of cricket they will have witnessed in this country in the 23 years since Inzamam-ul-Haq smashed their dream of a Melbourne World Cup final.

The dream revisits, but this time it is the remarkable AB de Villiers and his South Africa team who provide the opposition and this tooth-and-claw match will not be for the faint-hearted. Already, the Herald on Sunday has offered advice from a sports psychologist on how to deal with nerves, including “slowing down the abdominal breathing, trying to focus on the positives and just trying to comfort each other”. And that is just for the spectators.

The players will require nerves of steel for this match, however, a function not just of the circumstances and the finality that comes with losing, but of the nature of Eden Park, a rugby ground. It was always different when it had a strip aligned between opposite corners of a rectangle, but now it lies across the middle of the shorter sides of the same rectangular arena, along the rugby halfway line. It means that the straight boundaries are bordering on the shortest in international cricket, while those square of the wicket are longer. How to defend against such hazards is not least among the conundrums facing both sets of bowlers, something especially accentuated by the manner in which Guptill hit the ball with an impeccably straight bat and massive power, and also, at the other end of the spectrum, how De Villiers can use the pace on the ball to scoop and ramp it over fine leg and third man. It is an even smaller carry for that.

Defending there can be done, and the low-scoring trans-Tasman encounter earlier in the tournament, which New Zealand shaded by a single wicket, shows that dinky boundaries do not necessarily lead to a high-scoring game. Indeed, arguably the finest spell of bowling of the entire competition was that produced by Daniel Vettori, beginning during the first power play when Australia were threatening to overwhelm New Zealand. And Brendon McCullum attacks to defend in any case.

If bowlers have largely been fodder for batsmen throughout the World Cup, then this could be a match decided by them. Both sides possess pace attacks of high quality, that of South Africa considerably more feted, but New Zealand’s gaining in esteem. A look at the leading wicket-takers shows Trent Boult, who benefited in the quarter-final from scarcely bowling to Chris Gayle, leading with 19, with Vettori and Tim Southee only four behind. South Africa’s leading wicket taker is, surprisingly, the legspinner Imran Tahir, who also has 15, with Morne Morkel one behind that. Dale Steyn has yet to register in the top 10, although there is no finer big-match bowler in the world, and his skiddy pace and outswing could be defining.

The balance of the South African side is an achilles heel, though, a legacy of the retirement of Jacques Kallis, so that they either play an extra batsman and are a frontline bowler short, or they play the bowler and weaken the batting. So far they have largely chosen the first course of action, which means that they fill in 10 overs either with JP Duminy’s off spin or De Villiers himself delivering inviting medium pace. In fact, it was Tahir, who has taken 70 wickets in only 37 ODIs, and Duminy, with a hat-trick, who hoovered up in the quarter-final against Sri Lanka. Eden Park is no ground for makeshift bowlers, however, and it will be down to the South African batting to make sufficient runs to offset this if that is the way they choose to go.

New Zealand have the better balanced team, certainly with no weak bowling link. But in spite of their run of success – unbeaten in their last 10 matches if a warm-up against South Africa is to be counted – and the manner in which the batting played to a near-perfect template against West Indies, they look short of one top batsman should the innings be under siege early on, with Grant Elliott coming in at five. But then against Sri Lanka in Dunedin last month, he made an unbeaten 104 and Luke Ronchi 170 not out, adding a world record unbroken 267 for the sixth wicket after New Zealand had been reduced to 93 for five.

The reality is that the match is too close to call. Both sides have brilliant cricketers and are playing compelling cricket but there are unwanted tags to shed: New Zealand of having made six previous semi-finals without getting to a single final; South Africa of blowing big games. The win over Sri Lanka was their first ever in a World Cup knockout. Perhaps in the end it will not be the players who make the difference but the crowd. Earlier in the week Sir Richard Hadlee spoke eloquently about the difference it made to him having a chant going behind him, the extra yard of pace, ounce of effort, and New Zealand could benefit from that now. Dream Big New Zealand, is McCullum’s mantra. This might just be their time.