Black Caps’ coach John Bracewell was in a defiant mood today, telling a post match press conference South Africa would have to do better than utterly crush the Black Caps by 358 runs to truly humiliate them. “We’ve been humiliated by some of the greats – Australia, the West Indies, Pakistan… you really have to take us to bits until we’re rocking back and forth on the shower floor, shivering ‘cos the water went cold three days ago to be considered a great team. South Africa still have work ahead of them to join that club”.
According to Bracewell, the Proteas’ unopposed romp through the Kiwi top order does not mark this humiliation out as anything special. “It’s been done. Steyn’s ten wickets is a point of interest but compare that with bowling us out for 26 – which one sticks in the memory? You need to improve the balance with the batting – Inzamam scored more runs on his own in 2002 than our whole team, for example. They’d want to destroy one of the youngsters’ sprit to the extent they give up the game completely, for example.”
Bracewell says South Africa’s attempt to improve on this attempted humiliation will create interest in the rest of the series. “We’ll have more guys out injured and be reeling after an evening of clear-the-air-bonding turns into protracted drunken recriminations. With my job hanging by the thinnest of threads, it’ll be up to South Africa to really get the foot on the throat and join the ranks of the great Black Caps humilators. It depends how much they want it.”