Life is grand

To say I am relieved after yesterday’s win against the West Indies is to put it mildly. After the thrashing at the hands of Bangladesh, the near-loss against Sri Lanka and other lack-lustre performances I was feeling dispirited about South African cricket.

“We felt we were a little bit tentative against Bangladesh and we wanted to really come out and express ourselves this time,” Smith said. “We got ourselves to the top ranking by playing our natural game, and we discussed how we just occasionally put ourselves under pressure by not sticking to what we do best. We wanted to relax and go back to that today and play with freedom, and a bit of brain.”

That quote expresses exactly what I was feeling. We were going into games fearing the ball and bat, scared to dare. And yet when we stride out onto the pitch and play the game our way, we do so well. Not only do we do well but the game is enjoyable to watch, not the cringe worthy efforts of other games were I literally felt disgusted at the apparent attitude of our team.

The next game is against New Zealand, a team in the ascendancy. If we go into the game brimming with the joy of wanting to play good cricket then we will do well. We may not win but we will be good to watch and can say we are worthy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 9:25 am and is filed under Cricket, Post, South Africa, confidence, game, joy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.