Australia Batting 215 for 7 (Head 62, Shamsi 2-42, Coetzee 2-47). South Africa 212 (Miller 101, Klaasen 47, Starc 3-34, Hazlewood 2-12) by three wickets
Yawning. Australia is in another World Cup final.
However, these were not Steve Waugh’s mentality monsters or Ricky Ponting’s “Invincibles”. These men were fallible. They almost didn’t make it. South Africa refused to admit them.
Eerily enough, the goal of winning was also the result achieved by these two highly watchable teams in what has long been the best ODI of all time. 213. This classic, like the one from 1999, owed a lot to the weirdos. Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi didn’t so much turn the ball over as help it develop a mind of its own. They acted in tandem for 16 overs, producing a point every two balls, a miss every four balls and almost the same number of wickets as the boundaries – 3 for 4.
The men they dismissed were Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne and crucially Glenn Maxwell for just 1.
Australia were 137 for 5.
How did this game come about?
South Africa had recorded their lowest 10-over score in 15 years of ODI cricket. 18 for 2. They came into this semifinal scoring more than 14 runs in a single. The tournament’s most feared batting line-up was shut down like a computer infected with a virus. Only David Miller was immune. He increased from his end to 101 to 1. The others collapsed to 100 for 9 of them.
Things didn’t get much better in the chase either. South Africa needed 52 balls to reach their first boundary. Australia needed two. Marco Jansen gave up 12 runs on one throw. Reeza Hendricks dropped Head to 40 and watched him score a hat-trick of fours – one of which was also a drop – to reach his half-century. More than half of the score they had to defend was gone in the 15th over.
The ghosts of Knockouts past had all arrived at Eden Gardens, popcorn and all.
However, Shasmi told them to beep all the time. He was the one who made Labuschagne look very, very silly in the 16th over, an LBW call rejected even though his leg was literally in front of the wicket. He was the one who knocked back Maxwell’s leg stump, a long hop that suddenly turned into one of the most important throws of this game, sneaking under the bat that had conjured up a double hundred last week to make up for a lost cause.
Shamsi went around the whole place cheering. Temba Bavuma had better control of his feet, but his eyes lit up.
When Josh Inglis came in, the ghosts of knockouts past began to flee.
In conditions that denied a batsman any sense of security, this man, playing only his 17th ODI, played the coolest little cameo of the entire World Cup. Inglis controlled 89% of the balls he faced – a full 15 percentage points higher than average. That he was going to play such a decisive hand became clear from the first boundary he hit. He targeted Shamsi, who was at the peak of his powers, and hit him against the turn, but he did so with a fairly straight stick and a tiny back lift.
These two decisions combined made the difference. Australia insisted on repeating even the most tantalizing deliveries from Shamsi and Maharaj. But while it led to the demise of two of their best players – David Warner and Maxwell – Inglis thrived because he put his full face forward at every opportunity and it didn’t take too long to get him on the top ball.
Eden Gardens offered a quick turnaround. To end up the way Warner and Maxwell did – and to some extent Head and Labuschagne, even when they played up front – was flirting with too much danger. The time they lost in lifting the bat so high meant they were unable to protect their pads or their wickets.
Australia were 174 for 5 with Inglis on one side and Steven Smith on the other.
The ghosts of past knockout games now shared fist bumps.
However, Gerald Coetzee told them to beep all the time. He wasn’t sure if he would be here. While he was saying this to his fiancée the day before South Africa were due to announce their World Cup squad, he received a call from the coach telling him he was in. He had played four ODIs before this tournament and yet hitting the deck at 150 kmph in the middle overs proved invaluable. He is South Africa’s leading wicket-taker (20) and the two he took tonight were mighty impressive.
In the middle of an eight-over game where he had to aim for the batsman’s nose, which is very hard work, especially when you have to keep up that pace, he outwitted Smith and bowled the long ball when he was faced with one Rebound did the math and that he caught a yorker and slammed it through Inglis, which fell onto the stumps, although the guy actually managed to hit it – exposing Australia’s tail.
South Africa still had 19 runs to go. They created more chances. Mitchell Starc grabbed one but there was no slip. Pat Cummins threw one towards short midwicket but the ball missed a diving Miller. De Kock, who is no longer an active ODI cricketer now that the game is over, dropped a really tough catch behind the wicket with the target nine runs away. Under normal circumstances, Kagiso Rabada would have been on his way home by this point, but he was suffering from a bruised heel.
So the ghosts won. And Australia with them. They reach their eighth men’s ODI World Cup final – there have only been 12 so far – and face India in Ahmedabad on Sunday.
For about an hour and twelve minutes right at the start of that semi-final, under ashy skies, they played the kind of cricket that no one could match. Starc and Josh Hazlewood bowled a total of 13 overs at the start of the game and allowed just 11 shots on target. When the sky was cloudy, they were able to fly through the air and take off from the field. Her teammates – especially Warner – offered even more, making a handful of saves inside the 30-yard circle that could have easily gone to four otherwise.
“You can see it in the way they move,” Ponting said in his commentary. “It’s almost like a yellow wave.”
Australia wanted the batters to hit over the top. De Kock resisted for 13 deliveries but then he lost confidence in himself and took the bait. The ball flew miles through the air. Cummins ran back wide from the middle. He never lost track of it and when he finally had it in his hands, he simply lay triumphantly on the grass with his arms outstretched.
This was first class planning and execution. Especially Hazlewood. Fate had conspired to give him a brand new ball in damp conditions that required the floodlights to be switched on. A one-day game had turned into a day-night Test and in this format it is absolutely metal. Once he saw that he was getting just enough seam movement and that it was going both ways, he knew he just had to be precise from there. Forty of Hazlewood’s 48 deliveries came at or close to a length. 38 of those 40 deliveries occurred on the stumps or in the canal. Essentially, he forced South Africa to play almost every ball, but he gave them nothing to drive, pull or cut. His numbers are 8-3-12-2.
Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins added 22 runs off 46 balls to take Australia home•ICC/Getty Images
Starc, on the other hand, did the biggest Starc factor of all by sending off the opposition captain in the first half of a World Cup knockout game. Finally, he also took out South Africa’s T20I captain, with Aiden Markram spooning a catch to back point and Warner not only taking it but literally jumping around for joy. Australia has a long and storied history of head cutting, but this was just so greedy.
It was only 12th place and the finishers were already at the finish line. Miller started with a sweet six-over wide long-on against Adam Zampa to extend South Africa’s total. The only frontline spinner Australia had brought with them to the World Cup went for eight overs in bowling-friendly conditions. He gave away half the sixes hit throughout the inning and Miller was the man who kept sending him over the ropes. The balance began to falter.
Cummins headed the ball. He’s got one that’s going to be big. The next one, not so much. When that happens, facing the spin is a nightmare, and Heinrich Klaasen embodied it. He played to train. It didn’t do as much good as he had feared. As a result, he was hit on the outside edge and lost his middle stump. The next man was lbw to a ball that was 5.4 degrees off. Marco Jansen had no chance. Not with so much natural variation.
However, Miller persevered. He became the first batsman ranked at number 6 or lower to hit a century in a World Cup knockout match. And when he came back at the end of the inning, he said they had enough on the board. He said the hitting was hard out there; that he couldn’t afford to look past the next ball he had to face. It was an incredible blow. It was an incredible game.
Alagappan Muthu is an editor at ESPNcricinfo