At last! Proteas qualify for a World Cup final

The semifinal was all over in 133 balls, just about half a game. But this was a game that meant so much to South Africa. The men’s team is in a World Cup final.

“It feels good,” said Proteas captain Aiden Markram about qualifying for the main event this Saturday. Having scaled a mountain no previous man in his position had, it was an impressively understated response. 

His team dominated Afghanistan, who’ve shocked throughout the tournament, with the bowlers delivering another thunderous display, and trashing the usual nerves that accompany South Africa in a semifinal. The Proteas won by nine wickets at Brian Lara Cricket Academy in San Fernando, Trinidad.

“They have been incredible for us throughout the tournament. They’ve kept things really simple, assessed conditions and adapted their plans accordingly,” Markram said of his bowling unit. 

That they got the opportunity to bowl first on a dreadful surface was fortuitous. 

“We also would have batted, so it was fortunate that I lost the toss,” Markram chirped. 

Afghanistan love defending, having won their previous seven matches when they set a target. But this was not a surface that gave batters any comfort. It seamed, the bounce was inconsistent and occasionally deliveries ‘stopped’ too. 

However as they proved in New York, when conditions were similar, the South Africans have the discipline and control to extricate all of the assistance that a pitch offers. 

It was Marco Jansen who started the Afghan slide, dismissing the tournament’s leading run-scorer, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, in the first over, thanks to an excellent slip catch by Reeza Hendricks.

Muscle man Gulbadin Naib was next, with Jansen getting the ball to sneak back between the right-hander’s bat and pad to knock back the off stump. 

The match swayed South Africa's way in the next over, when Kagiso Rabada produced two snorters to breach the defences of Ibrahim Zadran and Mohammad Nabi. Both were balls that seamed back into the right-handers; Zadran had the top of his leg stump disturbed, Zabi lost his off stump. 

“We weren’t expecting that,” Rabada said after Afghanistan were dismissed for 56 in 11.5 overs. “We wanted to hit our straps like we’ve been doing in the whole tournament.

“Today it just happened for us. It’s obviously moving around a bit. We got the ball in the Right areas, bowled with good energy and reaped the rewards.”

Rabada finished with two wickets, as did Anrich Nortjé, while Tabraiz Shamsi and Jansen took three each with the latter earning the player of the match prize for his work in the power play.

There was early tension in the run chase, but that was mainly the result of the pitch misbehaving. Quinton de Kock was bowled for five and Markram got lucky when an outside edge wasn’t referred to the TV umpire by the Afghans. 

He and Hendricks — both out of touch in this tournament, having struggled to come to terms with the difficult surfaces South Africa have played on — fought through the early stages of the power play, rode their luck and then knocked off the target in the ninth over. 

Hendricks smashed a ‘free hit’ for six and then knocked a lovely straight drive to light the fuse on history for this Proteas team.

“A lot of our games have been really close. There are a lot of people back home, watching in the early hours of the morning and we’ve given them a lot of grey hair, hopefully this evening was a little more comforting for them,” Markram said.

It was more than that. It was, as Dale Steyn tweeted, emotional. 

South Africa head for Bridgetown and the World Cup final at Kensington Oval on Saturday (4.30pm SA time). After the heartache of seven semifinals — across the ODI and T20 tournaments — this was a significant first. 

“One more step, it’s an exciting challenge for us. We’ve never been there before, there is nothing to be scared of. It’s an opportunity that we’ve never had, we’ll be really excited for it,” Markram said.