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Philander: ‘Honest conversations will need to happen’ (3:51)

Vernon Philander feels South Africa misread the conditions and should have picked a second spinner (3:51)

Since it’s South Africa and an ICC tournament semi-final, defeat should seem like the end of the world, shouldn’t it? It doesn’t.

There were no tears, no hysterics, no obvious signs of scarring that will last for weeks and months and generations to come. It was just “a bad day to have a bad day”, as South Africa’s white-ball coach Rob Walter put it at the press conference afterwards.

He acknowledged the game was lost in the field where “we could have handled the last 10 overs a little bit better”, and “we missed a few opportunities, we could have slowed things down”. Specifically putting Kane Williamson down on 56 and conceding 83 runs in the last six overs cost South Africa. But on a flat pitch and despite being faced with a tournament record chase of 363, at 125 for 1 in the 23rd over captain Temba Bavuma felt it could be done. He was there on 56, Rassie van der Dussen was settled with a third successive fifty and, Bavuma said to the broadcasters “we needed either myself or Rassie van der Dussen to go on and emulate what their top four batters did”.

Then perhaps David Miller‘s hundred, his second in a semi-final after his face-saving 101 against Australia in Kolkata, would not have gone in vain but there are too many other what-ifs to consider before that. By the time Miller came to the crease, New Zealand knew the game was all but up and thought no international runs are scored easily; the intensity may have lifted and things could have been different if New Zealand knew the pressure was on. The man himself said he was “gutted”, but sounded nothing like the one whose 2023 semi-final hundred left him feeling a “bit hollow”. Miller brought out the usual, “I’m obviously very happy personally to do well. But I would have rather done badly and won the game”. He was also happy to give “credit to our opposition”, and even judged South Africa’s tournament as “really nice”.

Don’t read that as South Africa’s way of pacifying themselves or playing down what is another disappointment but rather as a more realistic and rational assessment of what is a bridging exercise between the last World Cup and the next one. Since the 2023 World Cup and prior to this event, South Africa played no matches with a full-strength ODI team and used the format development exercise. Over 15 months, they saw it as a place to bring in new players (and they handed out 14 caps since the end of the 2023 World Cup) and experiment with combinations. And at least one of those has really worked.

Ryan Rickelton, whose 103 against Afghanistan was his first in the format, has established himself as a starter in pretty much all South Africa’s sides. Come 2027, he’ll very likely be there and perhaps he is not the only one. Eight of South Africa’s squad are over 30 but it seems as though all of them have the desire to continue and are showing the form to back that up. Van der Dussen and Miller are the standout examples but let’s not forget about Bavuma, who is often criticised for batting too slowly but scored back to back half-centuries in this tournament and showed a more aggressive streak.

Kagiso Rabada and Lungi Ngidi are both on the cusp of that age and proved their worth, particularly in this match. Rabada’s maiden over to Williamson early and the two overs he bowled after the 40th which kept New Zealand quiet and removed Tom Latham were, in isolation, fabulous. Ngidi’s summing up of conditions and variations even after a season where there were questions over his fitness showed what role he can play on flat pitches in future. More’s the pity, maybe, that he won’t be in operation in Dubai where conditions might have suited him. There is work to be done on Marco Jansen and Wiaan Mulder’s execution in big games but both are young and developing and their presence gives South Africa the ability to field five seamers and bat deep.

So in the resources department South Africa have good reason to be confident that their work in progress is progressing and that is how Walter assessed it. “We had guys contributing significantly with the bat. From a bowling point of view, I think our biggest development was our accuracy, and that’s something that we’ve been working really hard on. Every game we play is a learning opportunity and we just keep trying to take the little lessons. Today is a hard lesson. You feel it a little bit more because it’s the end of a campaign, but we certainly continue to keep learning.”

Rassie van der Dussen and Temba Bavuma got South Africa going Getty Images

That could sound like South Africa are using the international stage as a classroom but the reality of scheduling clashes, player availability and regularity of ICC events has left them no choice. And they’re not doing it at the expense of competing and competing well. Remember that they only actually played three matches with a full strength side recently – the three at this tournament – and won two of them convincingly, and that as a country they have reached the knockouts of the last seven ICC events across men’s, women’s and under-19s. The men made their first final just eight months ago at the T20 World Cup. Their gains are only incremental but they are there.

And yet, the record still isn’t pretty – South Africa have only won one out of 11 semi-finals in ICC ODI events – and their loss here only extends the narrative that they cannot perform when it matters most. But this defeat should not be seen as catastrophic or era-defining. It is just a step on the way to what they’re actually after: a big hurrah at a home World Cup and they’re not hiding it. “We’re still evolving as a team. There’s no doubt in my mind. We’re two-and-half years to the 2027 World Cup and that’s the eyes on the prize,” Walter said.

There’s a danger they may be putting too much store in that and setting expectations which could backfire spectacularly but that is a problem for another day. Today, they lost a game of cricket, an important one, but actually just another game as Jansen put it beforehand and they know it doesn’t change that much.