After years of veering towards gates of cricketing hell, South Africa pitch up in paradise with WTC triumph

Sport teaches life lessons. It advocates stories of camaraderie, of emphasising the collective over your own interests, and offers a chance to chase dreams that otherwise would have been put down as fantasy. But there is a crueller side to sport too. Where winning often becomes the only marker of success, or of how good a team or a player was.

South Africa have been chastened by that. More times than they would want to recollect, actually. Theirs has been a team full of extraordinarily talented individuals, but somehow, they have not come together to win as many titles as their ability would warrant.

So much so that whenever people talk about the Proteas, they remember them as that team that made a habit of fumbling at the finish. Fickle? Too short-sighted? Perhaps. But that is how sport and sporting memories work.

Which meant South Africa needed something special to bin that narrative. And the Proteas got exactly that at Lord’s .

Proteas turn up like they have rarely ever done

When session two of day three began, they were up against it. Australia had not run away with the contest, but they had a healthy lead, and had dismissed South Africa for 138 just a day ago. This, remember, was also a team burdened by the past.

But then, South Africa turned up. Like they have rarely ever done. Almost dealing Australia a dose of their own medicine and playing, as the cliché would go, like champions.

Aiden Markram, so often touted to have the world at his feet, but unable to marry it with consistency, crafted the innings of his life. And the best part was that it never felt out of character.

Temba Bavuma showed indomitable leadership throughout the game, but especially in the run-chase. He was hamstrung (quite literally), and never let it show. Everything was so on-point and everything was so calm, which was further epitomised after South Africa won.

There was happiness. But it was a quietly confident and controlled celebration. Like he wanted Australia and the world to know this will happen more often in years to come. A famous Indian captain (aka MS Dhoni) had done something similar years ago. And word is that he did just fine as a skipper too.

There were hairy moments (of course there were) and those in South African colours might have gulped nervously when Kyle Verreynne tried to ramp South Africa to history and gloved it. But Australia had run out of reviews (and ideas) and this, anyway, was just meant to be South Africa’s day and occasion. Not to mention they only needed one more run.

Monkey finally off South Africa’s back

The overriding emotion from everyone with an allegiance to South African cricket, apart from the obvious delight, was one of relief. That this monkey was finally off their back, and that they will no longer personify the many possible slips between the cup and the lip.

And now, South African cricketers can parade around Cape Town, Centurion, Durban, Gqeberha, Johannesburg and Paarl with world-champion medals around their necks. Knowing that when they look into the eyes of their people and see tears, those are of elation and ecstasy, and not disappointment.

Several hundreds of them, lest we forget, flew thousands of miles, cheering their lungs out, spurring their team on and then rejoicing as the sun shone on their side - literally and metaphorically. And each of them, along with those back home, will tango all night long because the team of their hearts, subjected only to heartbreaks and heartburns previously, has laid its hands on the holy grail.

But that is not all. In an era where Test cricket and its financial viability occupies a significant chunk of cricketing conversations, South Africa, by virtue of being world champions, will now hopefully have more chances of playing this format, without worrying about how practical it is. Or without having to indulge in a direct trade-off, as was the case when Neil Brand led an incredibly inexperienced side to New Zealand last year.

And that is why this team will be etched in South African cricketing folklore. As perhaps the squad that made Test cricket fashionable and feasible again in a country that has produced so many world-class cricketers. And most definitely as the side that ended a cricketing nation’s enormously long wait to be called world champions, and made the country, as a whole, rejoice, momentarily forgetting the differences that otherwise dominate the discourse.

Silencing the doubters in some style

There will still be those who argue that South Africa should not have had this opportunity at all. That their chances of being here, let alone winning the entire thing, would have dwindled if they had faced Australia or England during the qualification phase.

But South Africa could have lost a three-Test series to Australia, and still finished second (comfortably). Cricket, of course, is not played with a pen on paper, nor with calculators. But even then, the idea that the Proteas did not deserve to be here, in a competition that from its very inception had a flawed concept around who plays whom, is just ridiculous.

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In tournaments, you have to beat what is in front of you. And the Proteas have done that every step of the way - capped off, fittingly, by outlasting Australia. Meaning that fantasy has now intertwined with reality. What was treated as fiction before, is no longer just a story seeking to be scripted. It is tangible, and it is South Africa’s.

No more conjectures, no more what-ifs, no more thinking about coming close but falling short, and no more waking up in the night, still brooding over what might have been. South Africa left absolutely nothing to chance and nothing to fate after lunch on day three. They stared down their ultimate peak, scaled the summit and then clasped destiny so tightly that it never even contemplated slipping away.

From a poetic and psychological standpoint, it simply had to come against Australia, who until Saturday, had not lost a senior men’s ICC final since 2010. And it had to come with Markram, who helplessly watched from the dugout as his team crumbled against India in Barbados last year, Kagiso Rabada, who felt he had let the team down after getting banned for recreational drug use, and Bavuma, braving the criticism, the questions, the odds and a hamstring injury, as the chief protagonists.

And after years of veering, sometimes uncontrollably, towards the gates of cricketing hell, South Africa now pitch up in paradise, with the country and their fans experiencing cacophonic joy like never before. Having carved out the conclusion and crescendo they have craved for so long.

A conclusion that, in bold and capital letters, will say South Africa are, in this format and for the next two years, the gold standard, and that they will be, whenever senior cricket is chronicled, remembered forever as being champions of the world.