KEVIN MCCALLUM | Proteas’ one-way road to the final ends in Kolkata humiliation

At the 2011 Cricket World Cup in Kolkata, I watched three women change the traffic.

It is a daily thing in the city. One-way roads choked with cars and the odd bus are halted at certain times of the day, and the streets are converted to one-way in the opposite direction.

The women waited until the Kolkata traffic police stopped the vehicles and placed flowers on the road as traffic was diverted down side roads. The ceremony done, they walked off, and the traffic chundered off on its not very merry way.

The system aims to reverse the flow of traffic at peak hours — one way from 7am to 1pm and the other from 1pm to 10pm. It would be more accurate to call “traffic” in Kolkata “congestion”. It is among the worst in India.

“Down the decades, Kolkata’s chaos has been compounded by the city prioritising cars over public transport, something all Indian cities are guilty of. Traffic crawls on Kolkata’s roads at an average speed of 14 to 18km/h, as against 22km/h in the rest of India,” reported the Guardian in 2016.

Bicycles are banned to make space for more cars. Pollution is estimated to be three to five times higher than the national level. Seven out of every 10 people in Kolkata struggle with respiratory diseases. Choking is, ahem, a common sound in Kolkata.

Which brings us to Wednesday, Eden Gardens, a semifinal and South Africa.

It started badly and got worse. Aiden Markram looked a little unsure after losing the toss. He had wanted to bat second, as chasing was expected to be easier with the dew, which had already started to settle before the toss. Was this match, this semifinal at yet another World Cup, over before it had begun?

Where South Africa had looked indecisive and nervous with how they wanted to bat, New Zealand swung with venom.

Cole McConchie wouldn’t allow Markram to free his arms, bowling wicket to wicket. Quinton de Kock was dismissed in pretty much the same way he has been for this tournament — getting himself out with a premeditated wander of his feet and his head. Perhaps he was still thinking about that when he made a spectacular cock-up of a catch off Tim Seifert on the second ball of the second over. He called Dewald Brevis off it when the youngster, at deep fine leg, was the better placed to take the catch. De Kock got nowhere near it.

Seifert was on 11 at the time. When he was bowled by Kagiso Rabada in the 10th over, he had made 58 from 33 balls. At the Pirates Sports Club in Greenside, the irony in the cheer for it was thick in the air. The match was done by then. Finn Allen was on a rampage, and yet, South Africa persisted with seam.

Lungi Ngidi looked bemused at some of the boundaries, using his arms and hands to describe balls keeping low and then travelling to the fence and over at an alarming rate. Ngidi’s accuracy deserted him in Kolkata, his deceptive slower balls more of an invitation for mayhem.

Where South Africa had looked indecisive and nervous with how they wanted to bat, New Zealand swung with venom. The Proteas were in the no man’s land between aggression and defence.

Was this a choke, that most hated of words for South African cricket fans?

Shukri Conrad, the coach, took it one step further and suggested, “I don’t know if tonight was a choke. I thought it was a bloody walloping. I think in order for you to choke, you must have had a sniff in the game. We didn’t have a sniff. In South Africa, we say we got moered. Tonight, we got a proper snotklap, also a South African word meaning a real hiding.”

Does this hurt South Africans more than the other World Cup losses? Yeah, because of the nature of it, the eighth time in nine semifinals in World Cups the Proteas have not made the final. The best team at the World Cup is done like a kipper.

The talk about reflection, going back to drawing boards, picking themselves up again, and getting “better as a team moving forward” has already begun.

It feels, as does this loss, hollow. Like the streets of Kolkata, South Africa had looked on a one-way street to the final and redemption. Instead, they could not handle being forced to change direction when it mattered.