Johannesburg - With the amount of over-hyped cricket that goes on these days, it’s easy to forget just how special it is to be one of the chosen few to go to a World Cup.
Football knows how special the showpiece is because the world stops for a month to observe the magnificent melodrama.
Rugby, too, places great emphasis on peaking at the right time for that one chance to hopefully catch the All Blacks in a cold sweat and hijack the bragging rights for four years.
Cricket, though, with its Champions Trophy, and World Twenty20, and IPL, and Champions League, seems to have a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow.
However, when you look in the eyes of those on the fringes of the World Cup squad, those whose ticket is still pending, it’s heartening to know that this is the one that still truly matters.
Money can’t buy you a ticket, nor can an overseas pro inspire you to that lofty stage. You simply have to be playing well enough when the selectors look your way.
Either that, or wait four more years.
It’s not long now before the speculation ends, when Andrew Hudson and his wise men reveal their chosen few.
For those on the pending list, the next two months promise to be an examination of skill and nerve.
There was a point on Friday, deep into the South African chase, when AB de Villiers – and the rest of the country, mind – would have been forgiven for thinking that he finally had his finisher, as well as the immediate evidence to back up such a bold claim.
David Miller had just sashayed down the wicket and punched Shane Watson straight over his head, 20 rows deep, with not much more than a short-arm jab. In that one shot, in that one moment, Miller was the personification of the Marlboro Man that De Villiers and his team require at the business end of the tense situations they will no doubt encounter next February.
But, the fairy-tale didn’t have quite the happy ending the Proteas had in mind as Miller went out to the sort of shot that still speaks of a touch of uncertainty at the very highest level.
Of course, he remains very much in the conversation, but the southpaw – like Rillee Rossouw, like Farhaan Behardien – knows that though promise buys you time, the only currency that secures a World Cup ticket is form and familiarity at that late, throttling stage.
Miller already knows what it feels like to be close and miss the World Cup bus; that’s precisely what happened to him in 2011. But, disappointed though he was, he couldn’t grumble for too long because he hadn’t quite done it at the highest level.
Fast forward four years and he has a better standing in the national set-up, experienced and popular, his power now known to his colleagues.
But his CV is still missing a reference to a starring role or five in a winning cause in national colours. Ask anyone at Kingsmead and they will tell you that he is the man for the job, capable of blowing away any attack on his day.
But they will say the same of Rossouw in Bloem, and the Titans lot will speak just as highly of Behardien. And so they should. The absence of JP Duminy for this leg of the tour is timely because it allows the Proteas to hold a late round of auditions for that Cinderella role, where there is still a vacancy for a knight in shining armour.
There is no hiding place as a finisher; either the shoe fits and you hog the next morning’s headlines, or you catch the pumpkin home, the near riches reduced back to common rags.
It’s that brutally simple at the business end of tournament cricket.
Sunday Independent