With the Proteas staring down the barrel of a 300 plus run defeat to the touring Australians, former captain Shaun Pollock said something interesting while commentating on the game: “There is one thing about the Proteas: they are a proud team.”
By Michael Marnewick
But being proud doesn’t necessarily translate into success, even if there is determination and effort. We can’t fault them on those three attributes. We can’t even pass judgment because sitting in our armchairs, the great critics we are who have never played the game at this level and thus don’t know the extent of the pressure placed on each player, we don’t actually know.
Pollock, one of South Africa’s greatest cricketing performers, much like his father Peter and uncle Graeme, said in an interview once that playing with pride was the cornerstone of his cricketing philosophy.
“I loved being competitive, for me to play at a top level against the best in the world was a great experience,” he said. “People are motivated by different things, you love winning, the thrill, the adrenalin rush that comes with victory, playing in front of big crowds, that played its part, the losing part definitely motivated me to train harder, you set personal goals of what you want to achieve, how you want to perform and how you want to be remembered and that always motivated me – pride of performance.
“Whenever I was involved, for me it was about giving a performance that I could be proud of. That was the bottom line.”
Looking at the scorecard from a batting perspective, there isn’t a lot to be proud of if you’re a South African. Without casting aspersions, it is up to a captain to lead from the front and Graeme Smith’s failure in both innings (10 and 4) is disappointing and heaps pressure on the rest of the team to make up for that. His opening partner scored one and two. Similarly, Hashim Amla, surely one of the game’s great batsmen, is battling with form.
The only ray of sunshine came from the world’s number one Test batsman AB de Villiers who contributed while everyone else around him was capitulating to the aggressive Australian bowling. He scored 91 and 48 in his two knocks, but it is desperately disappointing that he was the only player in his team that could score more than 40 runs in an innings (Amla’s 35 in the second innings was the second-highest by a South African).
Australia, registered three centuries on their way to scoring nearly seven hundred runs in the test match. South Africa by contrast scored 406 in total.
“The thing about mental toughness is that you want to win, there is no doubt about that; but you have to try eliminate the fear of losing,” Pollock added. “We all have it, you fear anyone bowling at 150 kilometres an hour, anyone who says they didn’t fear that is probably talking nonsense. You learn how to deal with it. It’s possibly the same with a Jonah Lomu running full pace at you, there has got to be fear in your mind, but it’s about learning how to deal with it, to not be worried.”
Sadly, fear of failure rather than the desire to win can be a strong motivator, but for the wrong reasons and often leads to failure in trying to avoid it. South Africa, desperate not to lose the first test appear to have been struck by this mental bogey.
