DUMPED!!!

When I was 18 years old I dated the most beautiful girl in our school. Or that was what I thought anyway. We dated for 2 years and I thought that “this was the one”. She wasn’t and twenty years later, we both have moved onto happier and more fulfilled lives. There was a moment back then in that teenage bliss that I thought life couldn’t get better. And then one day we had a talk and...She broke up with me. At that age, the searing pain of your first real heart break is only overshadowed by the shock that it could happen to ME! The problem was that it would happen to me 5 more times over the next decade or so, before I met the person who would become my wife. And each time the pain and the shock was the same. Each time I promised myself that it would not happen again TO ME. But it did and maybe in hindsight it was good for me and ‘taught me many things’. That’s the kind of thing you have to say to yourself to get over being dumped over and over again.
Which brings me to South Africa and its relationship with its Cricket Team? The Proteas have a unique position in South African society for a sporting team. It seems everyone likes them. Even people who have no clue how the game they play works. They don’t come across arrogant and have accepted the name change to the Proteas without a fight (unlike rugby). They play well, win more than they lose and don’t change coaches every year (unlike soccer). They seem to appeal to all races, all ages and both genders. They have ducked the quota issue by having a sprinkling of black players who are now national heroes (Herschelle Gibbs and Makaya Ntini in particular and now JP Duminy and Wayne Parnell). They are good clean boys who seem to stay out of politics and trouble (ok this is a stretch but no one has been convicted on rape, smoking dope or match fixing...ok!)
It may also be the case that they are away so much that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
All in all, they have built around themselves the image of everyone’s cute baby brother doing his thing.
So it is not surprising that today a sizable section of the South African population is in muted mourning for the loss to Pakistan yesterday in the ICC T20 World Cup. The mourning is real because once again South Africa has not won a cricket tournament it had every opportunity and capacity to win. It made worse given the fact that we were not beaten by a more skilful, better organised and disciplined team – but by the very talented but totally volatile Pakistan who will probably be a total washout in the final.
It is muted because it wasn’t exactly unexpected. The Proteas have done this to us before. The Cricket World Cup loss to England in the 1992 semi final. The loss to the West Indies in the 1996 Cricket World Cup. That draw with Australia in the 1999 semi-final. The 2003 Cricket World Cup, Duckworth-Lewis loss in the pouring rain to Sri Lanka. The humiliating 2007 Cricket World Cup loss to Bangladesh which made qualification for the final very difficult and finally resulted in a loss to Australia in the semi’s – AGAIN. In all these tournaments, South Africa had formidable teams – usually with of the world’s best ranked bowlers (Alan Donald or Shaun Pollack) or of the best ranked batsman (Jacques Kallis or Darryl Cullinan) playing. South Africa has always been the best fielding team in the world. In fact before the 2007 Cricket World Cup, SA was the number 1 ODI ranked team in the world.
And then yesterday...South Africa went into the semi-final, unbeaten and seemingly unbeatable. And yet we were dumped...AGAIN.
So... is it a case of the heart searing pain of defeat? Or... is it just the fact the how could it happen to us... AGAIN?
Selah