South Africa marched into the cricket World Cup semifinal with a
nine-wicket trouncing of England, whose players were booed off the
field by their own supporters.
After Andrew Hall's best ever one-day figures of 5-18 reduced
England to a paltry 154 all out in Barbados on Tuesday, South
Africa raced to the victory target with more than 30 overs to
spare.
The fourth team to reach the semifinal, South Africa is likely
to face Australia, which is on a streak of 20 World Cup victories.
That would mean the other semifinal would be Sri Lanka against New
Zealand although, with four more Super 8s game still to be played,
that lineup could change.
Unbeaten Australia, which still has New Zealand to play, tops
the standings with 12 points from New Zealand, which has 10. Sri
Lanka were hoping to join the Kiwis on 10 points by beating Ireland
in Grenada yesterday but South Africa, with eight, has no more
Super 8s matches to play.
"It's nice to go there with a bit of momentum," said South
Africa captain Graeme Smith, who smashed an unbeaten 89 off only 58
balls in his team's 157 for one. "It's going to be a big game and
anything can happen."
Smith's players went into the game under a cloud after their own
fans reported to the media that some of them had been on a heavy
drinking binge after Saturday's five-wicket loss to New Zealand in
Grenada. Reporters were barred from asking questions about the
incident at a post-match news conference.
"There's always motivation but our motivation is that we know
what kind of cricket we can play. We just wanted to play it. We
haven't really achieved that so far in this tournament and I think
we achieved it today," Smith said.
"We were superbly disciplined with the ball, we just kept
coming, our fielding was terrific and to bowl them out for 154 was
a great effort. And then we just finished it off with the bat."
South Africa's surprise 67-run loss to Bangladesh 10 days ago
and the subsequent defeat to New Zealand handed England an expected
chance to reach the semifinal.
But Michael Vaughan and his team underlined why that would have
been a travesty as they showed once again how badly out of form
they all are. They were loudly jeered by the hundreds of England
fans who had traveled to the Caribbean.
"It's sad for English cricket. It's a horrible feeling to walk
off the pitch in Barbados and get booed by your own supporters, but
I fully understand why they have given us this reception," said a
dejected Vaughan.
His future as the one-day captain is now in doubt but he will
lead his team into a final game against the West Indies.
"We know we have a big game on Saturday. We know we have to come
out and improve our performance," Vaughan said.
"We know we're out of the World Cup. We've a lot of pride and we
realize there's a lot of supporters out here that we've let down
and we need to make sure that on Saturday we turn up and put in a
performance. We have to make sure we analyze what has gone wrong in
the World Cup. We've had a poor winter in all aspects."
After Vaughan spent 20 balls for his first run, England meekly
surrendered its wickets at Kensington Oval and even managed to
collapse spectacularly from 111 for three to 121-8.
Although Andrew Strauss scored 46 and Paul Collingwood 30 to
bolster the innings with a fourth wicket partnership of 68, Hall
ripped through the line of batsmen with three wickets in seven
balls.
Andre Nel also collected three including the prize wicket of
South African-born Kevin Pietersen, caught by Proteas captain
Graeme Smith for three.
(China Daily via Agencies April 19, 2007)