South African player Marco Janssen and his teammates (ANI image)
TimesofIndia.com in New Delhi: South Africa are unbeaten in the T20 World Cup. Barring the double Super Over win against Afghanistan, they have beaten top teams, including India, whom they beat by 76 runs.
After seven straight wins, South Africa will be hoping to shed the ‘choker’ moniker.The legacy of this brand has followed the Proteas over the past two decades. It started with the 1999 World Cup loss to Australia and continued until the 2024 T20 World Cup, losing the final to India in the Caribbean.
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Now, the World Test Championship winners are the team to beat in the T20 World Cup being held in India and Sri Lanka. Their winning streak continued with a five-wicket win over Zimbabwe on Sunday. Coach Shukri Konrad was asked if this brings pressure and a scary reminder of being suffocated?“There’s always pressure. I think it’s what you do with that pressure and how you convert the pressure.
As for the C word [chokers]I think there’s something else to it – “cupcakes”. “I’m sure we kind of enjoyed it,” Conrad said.The cupcake reference relates to a television commercial in the run-up to India’s v South Africa Super Eight match in which an Indian fan jokingly told a South African fan about “repeating history” from the 2024 T20 World Cup while teasing them while eating a cupcake. But after South Africa’s crushing victory over India in Ahmedabad, things turned upside down.
“No, there’s always pressure and it’s really about accepting that pressure,” Konrad continued. “We don’t do things differently. We’ll prepare exactly the same way for New Zealand. Are we going to start as favourites? Maybe because we’re the only unbeaten team in the tournament. But I don’t know if that adds pressure.”“I think the semi-finals are enough pressure. Playing against a strong team in New Zealand is enough pressure.
So there is no extra pressure.“I’m happy that we’re favorites because I’ve always felt that as a South African team, you want to be able to play as favorites because it’s easy to be an underdog. The expectations aren’t high. But if we can keep doing what we’re doing, we’ll need a little bit of luck along the way as well.”He ended his speech sarcastically, saying: “Hopefully that will give us the result on Wednesday and then we will play at home in Ahmedabad.”