Shukri Conrad’s first crack at a white-ball tournament as South Africa head coach begins with what he calls “the biggest match of the competition thus far”. India, Sunday evening in Ahmedabad, is step two of his plan; step one was simply getting this far.
“The first half of the group stages was the anxious bit for me. This is now the excitement,” he said, smiling after training. “Tournament cricket almost has three parts to it. You’ve got to find a way of just getting out of that group stage. So we did that. Now you look and you say, right, we’ve got India first up and then the West Indies with some of the most entertaining players in the world and that excites me.”
South Africa close out the Super Eight against neighbours Zimbabwe, but by then their fate may already be sealed. The next five days, all in Ahmedabad, will be intense. More than 100,000 are expected on Sunday – roughly double the 55,000 who turned up for SA v New Zealand – and the match will be played on black-soil, a slower surface that usually brings spinners into the game.
Those ingredients could leave South Africa under the pump, yet Conrad shrugged and shifted a slice of the scrutiny back on the hosts. “Pressure is a big thing but it’s pressure both for us and them,” he noted. “I think we all talk about the pressure of playing against the top side, but we’re not quite aware of what the pressures they are under. I’m not, for one, suggesting that a guy that has three ducks in his last three matches comes under pressure for his place in his side. No.”
That unnamed batter is Abhishek Sharma, still searching for his first run of the tournament and twice dismissed by off-spin. South Africa’s frontline attack, though, contains two left-arm spinners rather than right-arm offies. Hence Aiden Markram – more than a part-timer these days – and Tristan Stubbs spent a healthy chunk of Friday’s net session bowling off-spin.
Is that a genuine tactical shift or simply a little cat-and-mouse? Conrad sounded unconvinced by extreme match-up theory. “The match-ups can be overstated. I’m not a big fan of it,” he said. “Sometimes the wickets are so good that it takes the match-ups out of the equation. If there’s something in the wicket and there’s a little bit of spin, then the match-up could be there for the offspinner against the left-hander. Maybe the angle you create sometimes. By and large, I think it’s slightly overstated on really good batting wickets.”
Scoring has not been outrageous this World Cup – only seven first-innings scores above 200 in 40 group games – yet Conrad feels batting surfaces are “slightly better,” he said, than on South Africa’s last visit for white-ball matches. That modest endorsement matters; the Proteas’ blueprint still relies on pace up front, spin in the middle and David Miller finishing the job, and that mix needs a pitch with at least a hint of carry.
“We’ve ticked the first box,” one member of the coaching team said quietly, “now we find out if our cricket is as calm as our words.” The tone was respectful, the intent unmistakable: expose India, preferably early, and let their own expectations do the rest.
