Champions Trophy - South Africa 'bullish' about their chances - like Australia always are

South Africa know better than to underestimate an Australian side at a major tournament, even one that is shorn of their entire World Cup-winning pace attack. They are, after all, a team that has won eight ICC white-ball trophies since South Africa’s last (and only) one in 1998, and who seem to have mastered the formula for tournament success no matter which personnel they have at their disposal.

“Any Australian outfit that comes together for an ICC event is one that you don’t take lightly,” Temba Bavuma, South Africa’s ODI captain, said. “Yes, they don’t have their mainstay bowling attack, but I think they still have enough to be successful as a team.”

On the evidence of their opening win against England, you’d have to agree with Bavuma. Even though Australia conceded a massive 351, they paced their chase perfectly and won with 15 deliveries to spare.

The way Australia see it is that what they lack in terms of the prestige of a pace attack, they’ll make up for with their spinners and the explosive batting line-up. “It’s an inexperienced bowling attack, there’s no hiding away from that, but around that we’ve got some experience with our leg spinner Adam Zampa, Glenn Maxwell who’s really smart when he bowls and Steve Smith who’s a fantastic captain,” Alex Carey said. “The way that Steve Smith uses the bowlers is a strength of ours. He is a great captain tactically and he reads the play really well so I’m still really confident with 50 overs of bowling however that looks for us.”

And though their attack of Nathan Ellis, Ben Dwarshuis and Spencer Johnson only have 17 caps between them, Carey also threw his weight behind them to get the job done if they have to defend a score. “If we are to bat first throughout the tournament, I’ll back our boys to defend, hopefully a good score of 300-plus but if not, Nathan Ellis has got a lot of tricks, he’s got a lot of good slower bowls, Spencer Johnson’s really damaging up the top, so is Ben Dwarshuis and you’ve got Sean Abbott ready to go as well,” he said. “We’ve come into this tournament really confident that our bowling attack will still do a fantastic job without the big three [Cummins, Starc, Hazlewood], and hopefully as a batting group we can score as many runs and make it easy for our bowlers.”

All that said, Australia still know better than to crow about their achievements to an ambitious South African side, who seem themselves as getting closer and closer to getting their hands on a trophy. It was just nine months ago that South Africa reached their first World Cup final and, having also reached the World Test Championship final, they’re starting to believe a cup is around the corner, especially when they have all their best players available. “South Africa are playing really good one day cricket at the moment and they look like they’ve got a great balance across their 11 players,” Carey said. “We know they’re a great team and they’ll be strong throughout the tournament.”

“South Africa are playing really good one day cricket at the moment and they look like they’ve got a great balance across their 11 players. We know they’re a great team and they’ll be strong throughout the tournament.”

Alex Carey

Though both South Africa and Australia’s squads were hit by absentees, South Africa lost fewer than Australia (only Anrich Nortje was included and then had to withdraw, though Gerak Coetzee was being considered before he suffered a niggle and Heinrich Klaasen missed the last match with an elbow concern) and have retained an experienced core. That may be why they’re no longer tip-toeing around questions over whether they think they can win. Bavuma, asked directly how he rates his team chances, answered just as frankly. “We’re quite bullish about our chances,” he said. “Our confidence is good, so we’re quite optimistic about our chances and how far we can go in this competition,” he said.

Whether it’s advisable to be so candid before playing the two former champions you’ve been grouped with is debatable but at least Bavuma isn’t shying away from expectation. Instead, he is leaning into it in a way South Africans seldom do. And you could argue that South Africa’s performances in the last two years across all cricket – they have been to the knockouts of every tournament across men’s, women’s and under-19 cricket since the Women’s T20 World Cup in 2023 – has earned them some licence to dream, something Australia have always had.

You won’t be surprised to hear that even without their regular captain Pat Cummins, Mitch Marsh, Josh Hazlewood, Marcus Stoinis and Mitchell Starc they still rate the confidence level as “really high”, as Carey put it, and barely flinch by the magnitude of any task. On what is expected to be a run-fest in Rawalpindi, Carey casually threw in that since defending could be difficult, he hopes Australia will be able to score “400 if we bat first” because it’s “always good to play one-day cricket when the scores are high”.

And if you need reminding of how both Australia and South Africa thrive in batter-friendly conditions rewind 19 years to this game, which only had a bilateral series win riding on it but brought out the best in sides who love to compete against each other. It’s not the Ashes, or India-Pakistan, but Australia-South Africa is a rivalry built on two evenly matched sides who promise to provide something special.

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