Their pivotal face-off came in the 2011 World Cup quarter-finals at Mirpur when India co-hosted the event with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Because, it was the game when either New Zealand or South Africa were almost guaranteed (barring a washout) to break their 100% failure rate in the knockout phase of World Cups.
The Kiwis have lost all six previous knockout matches at World Cups starting with the 1975 semi-final against the West Indies and ending with a 2007 semi-final defeat to Sri Lanka.
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On the other hand, South Africa have reached the knockout stage four times in the five World Cups (during their 2011 meeting) since their debut in 1992 but have never been able to cross that hurdle. Worse, they failed to reach the Super Six stage at the home World Cup in 2003.
The win by 49 runs against South Africa in the last eight stage in Mirpur took New Zealand to the semis. Remember Man of the Match Jacob Oram? He took 4-39 at his medium pace in this game. But the Kiwis went on to lose to Sri Lanka in Colombo.
They, however, used the 2011 platform as a launch pad and reached the title clashes of the next two World Cups. They defeated South Africa in the semi-finals in an epic match in 2015 and humiliated India in the 2019 semi-finals when India had to chase on the morning of reserve day in Manchester.
South Africa’s best chance to win the Cup probably came in 1999 in England when they had two chances to beat a struggling Australia away. But first they lost in the Super Six (Herschelle Gibbs dropped Steve Waugh) and then did not beat Waugh’s men in the semis after a pulsating tie.
The Kiwis met a similar fate seven years ago when they failed to eliminate Pakistan in the last league game and then lost to them in the semis (Man of the Match Inzamam-ul-Haq).
South Africa’s two other heartbreaks were astonishing. First, an equation of 22 from 13 balls was reduced to 22 from one ball in the 1992 half against England after a rain interruption. And in the 2003 World Cup, Shaun Pollock’s men got the Duckworth/Lewis count wrong, and ended on a level score against Sri Lanka in the group stage when Mark Boucher played a dot ball from Muttiah Muralitharan before the rain had the final say One more run would have taken them to the Super Six stage.
Kiwi Brendon McCullum was careless against Australia in the 2015 final and gambled (loaded down to Starc in the first over of the match) to begin their downfall. His compatriot Martin Guptill was not careless at all when he tried to run out Ben Stokes in the 2019 final at Lord’s (when nine were needed from three balls) but the ball ricocheted off the bat of the diving Stokes for four overs that kept England in the game. Ultimately, Kiwis suffered the abomination of being second best on the boundary count after even the Super Over was tied.
New Zealand and South Africa’s World Cup rivalry and their team travels have underlined how sport can be a matter of similar scripts and thin margins.
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