Proteas not learning the little lessons in playoffs

Making the bitter taste of defeat in the Champions Trophy harder to digest is that the little lessons Rob Walter claimed the team are learning are not showing in their performances in the most important matches. 

“Every game offers opportunities to learn and we keep trying to take the little lessons,” the Proteas limited-overs coach said after Wednesday’s 50-run semifinal defeat to New Zealand in Lahore. “Today [Wednesday] was a hard lesson. You feel it more because it is the end of a campaign.

“We will keep learning little things here and there, which we can do better. We are still evolving. There’s two-and-a-half years to 2027, that’s the eyes on the prize.”

Given Wednesday’s was the third consecutive playoff match the Proteas have lost, it’s worth asking if the lessons, from Kolkata and Bridgetown, are being learnt. From the outside, they are not being applied. 

Australia’s intensity in the field and with the ball in the ODI World Cup semi in 2023 was certainly a lesson. New Zealand didn’t match it at the Gaddafi Stadium but came close. SA’s intensity, when fielding first, was not as suffocating. 

Then, as was the case in the T20 World Cup final against India in Barbados in 2024, the “death” bowling let them down. Against Rohit Sharma’s men they conceded 42 runs in the last three overs, against the Kiwis it was 66 runs in the last five. 

Walter said he had seen improvements from the seamers in their accuracy, but the statistics don’t bear that out. 

The Champions Trophy is certainly a tricky competition to manage. “[It] is such a short tournament, we only played two matches to get to the semis,” said Walter. 

There is merit in the lack of game time proving costly for SA and Australia. “We missed not playing the Australians in the second game, that would have been a competitive match,” he said.

It may have created another opportunity for some lessons — but how much SA would have applied those on Wednesday is debatable, given how poorly they perform when it matters.

The period leading up to the tournament — not just this season — but 15 months since the last ODI World Cup, was used by Walter as the chance to build depth with an eye on 2027. 

With priority given first to the T20 World Cup in 2024 and then the World Test Championship, it put him under pressure to do well in ICC tournaments because results in bilateral series’ were poor. 

SA won four out of 14 ODIs in that period, two of those against Ireland. 

Another semifinal exit does not signify progress and suggests the “little lessons” aren’t being applied. 

The loss in Lahore may not sting as much as Kolkata and Bridgetown, because of how much the players gave in the first and how close they got in the second — but strictly measured in terms of how SA performs in a knockout match, it showed no improvement. 

In 17 playoff matches in ICC limited-overs events, since winning the inaugural Champions Trophy in 1998, SA has won twice.