Miller applies Heimlich Manoeuvre

New York Mets hosting more than venue for India vs Pakistan

    There’s been an awful lot of nonsense said and written about South Africa ‘choking’ under pressure at World Cups over the years, most of uninformed and born from anger and frustration. Sometimes shit just happens.

Today was an example of choke recovered, a Heimlich manoeuvre, if you like. All the pretence that the two previous World Cup losses to the Netherlands didn’t bother the team, that they weren’t mentioned in team meetings, that they weren’t a ‘thing’ – all evidence that they were very much on the players’ minds.

    The crash to 12-4 in 4.3 overs in reply to a paltry 103-9 was shot through with nerves and tentativeness. But it’s if, and how, teams recover from these things that matters, not what caused them to suffer the jitters. Of all the magnificent innings Davis Miller has played in his long career for his country, this might just turn out to be the most important. And it has nothing to do with how they fare in this tournament.

   Generation after generation has seen and then experienced the failure to arrest such a quick spiral towards disaster. Now, finally, they have evidence that it can be done. There is a long list of ‘clutch’ Miller innings to chose from, but when asked if this was amongst his top three, if not the best, he smiled and his eyes glistened: “Yeah, I really, really enjoyed this one.”

    His comment about “controlling my breathing” when he walked out to bat at 12-4 told a hundred stories. He won’t yet appreciate the significance of his leadership, in the company of Tristan Stubbs, but he will in later years. I asked Stubbs afterwards what he was thinking and feeling when the two of them faced an almost unprecedented 11 consecutive dot balls during the Power Play:

“I don’t like one dot ball,” he chuckled, shrugging his shoulders. But he wasn’t in charge out there, and he knew exactly who was. The ramifications of failing to chase 104 in a World Cup, and a third successive loss to the Netherlands, would have been catastrophic. The small picture is that South Africa beat the Dutch in a group game which was almost certainly not material to their progress to the next round. The big picture is much bigger than that.

Miller also had the good grace to praise the men in orange afterwards and concede “they’re still 2-1 up on us in World Cup games.” Occasionally you can feel a different, out-of-the-ordinary energy in the middle of a cricket field, even from an air-conditioned room 100 metres away. Apart from his breathing, Miller spoke about controlling his body language. He needed to present calm, cold steel to the Dutch. Anyone paying attention would have seen and felt it.  

The India vs Pakistan match has been sold out for months, but did you know it’s been sold out twice? The hilariously exorbitant prices at the Nassau County Stadium in Long Island did not deter people paying $450 for the cheapest seats and (take a deep breath) $10,000 for the most expensive, and that’s ‘face-value’, so do the sums on a stadium seating almost 35,000.

But downtown, at the New York Mets Citi Field Stadium, you can watch the match for free on a 16,500 square feet screen, the largest in North America, I’m told. (Surely that makes it the largest anywhere?) There will be 42,000 in attendance and parking is $40 so it’s not entirely free, but all of the concession stands will be open and fans will be welcome to spend as much as they like pretzels, burgers and beer. However thirsty and hungry fans might be, it’s hard to imagine them spending $450 eating and drinking.

    The VIP and ‘Exclusive’ suites for matches at the Nassau Stadium have been 98% empty for every match so far. $2000 for a comfortable seat, air-con and good view seems excessive but marketing the tickets with ‘unlimited food and drinks’ just seems bizarre. Anybody who can afford to pay $2000 for a ticket to watch SA vs Netherlands is, surely, not someone interested in loads of ‘free’ booze and grub for four hours? The ‘cheap’ seats, at $250, will do just fine.

The first day traumas of the sniffer dog have mellowed into a pleasant routie now. Nobody but media are permitted to bring bags into the venue. We leave them in front of K9, Biffo is brought to sniff them and his controller waves us on with “have a good day, Sir.” There are still plenty of ‘nasties’ on duty to make sure everyone complies.

The Feds are here, too. Some in ‘plain’ clothes which make them just as obvious as their colleagues with advertising on their backs.

    And finally, the humdrum twee normality of East Meadow and its picket-fence, Stars and Stripes conformation obviously forces some residents to rebel. Thank goodness for the influence of children.