Kridaya Cricket Blog

You don’t get a lot of games when the team you have been supporting for the entire match wins, but suddenly you don’t feel like cheering for them anymore. The 1992 World Cup semifinal between England and South Africa was one such experience for me. I was rooting for England to win the match and they seemed to have a good chance of closing out the match when South Africa needed 22 runs off 13 balls for victory.

Suddenly rain intervened in the match and the officials, instead of doing the common sense thing in a big match, lopped off 2 overs for South Africa, resulting in a farcical, absurd target of 22 runs off a single ball. The two SA batsmen, Brian McMillan and Dave Richardson, were shattered and disgusted. The World Cup has always been a bucket of sorrows for South Africa, but nothing (even the 1999 semifinal with Australia) can compare with the way they were robbed of a place in the final.

It had been a crazy World Cup, with the favorites Australia not even reaching the semi-finals. Pakistan, making a return from the dead after a poor start to their campaign, squeezed into the semi-final and then, in an unforgettable semi-final, riding on a stunning batting display by the then-youngster Inzamam-ul-Haq, eliminated New Zealand, who had defeated everyone else in the tournament. Pakistan would go on to defeat England in another enthralling match, thus landing the World Cup and preventing it from falling into the hands of a team which was stained by its rain-rule-assisted victory.