Telford Vice: Don't mention the World Cup elephant in the room

South African captain Graeme Smith. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

South Africans who say they have dealt with the events of March 25 last year at the Shere Bangla stadium in Dhaka are in the same league as New Zealanders who claim they have moved on from what happened on June 24, 1995 at Ellis Park in Johannesburg.

The spectre at the post-World Cup quarter-final match press conference of the dead captain walking, Graeme Smith, his face perfectly pale, his mind in meltdown, dismissed all the energy from the room. And then there was the anger; the barely bridled belligerence that pumped through the veins of South Africans who had watched their team lose an unloseable match against a New Zealand side who were masters of winning the unwinnable. How could they allow that to happen? Again. Again? Again!

It's all still too raw and real in the memory to stop the anger from pumping afresh, especially with the one-day series between New Zealand and South Africa upon us.

That, of course, is the civilian perspective. How much more raw and real must the emotions be for the players? We have been given an inkling of how they feel by the team management taking issue with South African reporters who have dared to write about the elephantine Protea in the room that is last year's Cup loss, when Smith's team somehow failed to chase down 222 to beat New Zealand.

What did they expect us to write about? Nelson Mandela handing Francois Pienaar the William Webb Ellis Cup on June 24, 1995?

Let them do their worst. South Africans have always been good at denial, and we will be for decades yet. Perhaps that's part of the reason we are adept at absorbing and accepting the kind of change that would scare the wits out of lesser beings.

A new coaching staff and one-day and T20 captain and vice-captain appointed all on the same day? No problem. A radical change of focus from reaching goals to the journey required to reach those goals? Fine, let's do it.

Which could explain why AB de Villiers declined to gloat about his team's burgled victory in the T20 series decider in Auckland on Wednesday.

Of course, his measured comments may have had more to do with the fact that, for once, the choke was on the other throat.

That said, Gary Kirsten's return to the dressing room has generated calm among players who have been known to let their heads run away with them. De Villiers and Kirsten will hope at least two of the one-dayers against New Zealand fit into a new era of South Africa consistently winning winnable games - like the one in Dhaka on March 25 last year.

Telford Vice is a freelance cricket writer in South Africa.