The reason for South Africa’s failure to win tournaments is not choking. Choking would be an easier hurdle to remedy, than the actual problem at hand. Choking is psychological, and can be fixed.
The real reason why the Proteas fail to win tournaments is because they are too well organized. Or to put it in other words: “One-opponent-dimensionally prepared”.
The Proteas are the strongest cricket team in the world, by a comfortable distance at that. The cricket year is made up of tours to various countries.
South Africa do their homework very well prior to, and during a tour. They study their opposition in great detail, and figure out how to beat them in the test & the ODI series of the tour.
This is great for successful tours & rankings, but creates an emotional psychological traffic-jam when playing tournaments.
The Proteas have not yet managed to translate their skills & talent to successfully combat 5-7 different countries/teams within the space of a month or less. It is too far an obstacle for them to ponder on. While they can dominate 13-15 players of the opposition during a tour, they cannot handle 91-105 different style players in a single tournament. The wheels come off & nobody knows why.
It’s a bit like taking a top matric scholar & adding additional 10 subjects to the year, and expecting him to excel at all subjects.
Unfortunately it is very difficult to solve this problem. Even playing in regular quadrangular tournaments does not fully cover the mindset/experience needed to win world cups, whether T20 or ODI. I guess the only thing they can do is study the Aussie team of the 90’s who had the psychological strength to dominate in all forms of the game, as well as tournaments.
It’s a tough one. Choking would have been the easier option…
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