Nation holds breath for Proteas

Ghosts galore at venue for today’s quarterfinal

IT WAS the edge seen, heard and felt around the world. Except where it mattered – in the eyes, ears and gut of umpire Brian Aldridge.

Allan Donald bowled the ball, the first ever sent down by a player in a South African shirt at a World Cup. Geoff Marsh nicked it, plain as day.

And Aldridge got it wrong, as was immediately obvious to the millions watching on February 26 1992.

So began SA’s modern relationship with the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), but this tale of triumph and torture has been told since December 1910 in 25 chapters of tests and one-day internationals.

SA have won just six of those games. They will be seeking the seventh in their World Cup quarterfinal against Sri Lanka starting at 5.30am tomorrow (SA time).

Happily for SA, they won that 1992 match against the Aussies by nine wickets. But, just short of a month later, there was no happiness on the faces of the players as they looked out from their balcony at the SCG and surveyed the farce their rain-hit semifinal against England had become.

Twenty-three years on not a lot has changed for SA in World Cup terms. They are still trying to win the cursed thing.

In fact, they are still trying to win a knockout match at the tournament. They are, in the nation’s heads, still trying to score 22 runs off one ball.

In January 1994, the SCG was where Fanie de Villiers took 6-43 as Australia, chasing just 117, were shunted out for 111 to seal SA’s first test victory at the ground.

Donald clean-bowling a stunned Allan Border before a run had been added on the fifth day will burn brightly in South Africans’ memories forever.

In December 1997, Pat Symcox smiled, swaggered and spun his way to 4-28 as SA defended 200 in a one-day international against Australia.

In January 2009, Graeme Smith walked out of the SCG dressingroom with a broken hand and into folklore.

By then, he had already led SA to their first test series triumph in Australia. His team would lose the match, but they had won untold numbers of hearts.

And, less than three weeks ago, AB de Villiers bludgeoned 162 not out in an innings of shimmering audacity that will raise the hair on the backs of the necks of all who saw it for the rest of their days.

It says something about the way one-day cricket is going that SA’s total in that match, 408-5, marked the second time that the record score at the ground had been improved during the World Cup.

But what says the most was that none of the above means much to Hashim Amla, who was unaware the SCG was the venue for the 1992 debacle.

But he said it “serves as a wonderful motivation”.

Damn right. Tomorrow, as 11 South Africans step once more into the breach none of what has gone before will matter.