South Africa go far to get away from it all

New Zealand is far from anywhere. Even the closest bit of Australia, the Kiwis' closest international neighbour, is 1,600 kilometres away. But is New Zealand remote enough for South Africa to forget what happened at the men's T20 World Cup?

No. For one thing, their meltdown in the semifinal at Eden Gardens was only 11 days ago. For another, they suffered it against New Zealand. For still another, it will take far more than 11 days to explain how the only unbeaten team among the 20 who started the tournament, the side who kept finding different ways to win, the players who refused to panic, could flop so abjectly that they crashed to 77/5 and were hammered by nine wickets with 43 balls unspent.

Maybe you don't explain it. Maybe you consign it to catastrophe and move on. After all, it's not as if the South Africans have a choice. They're in Mount Maunganui, where they will play the first of five T20Is on Sunday.

The New Zealanders will also be hurting in the wake of their 96-run shellacking by India in the final at the Narendra Modi Stadium. Mitchell Santner's men were surprise semifinalists, nevermind finalists. But how, they will still be asking themselves, could they play so poorly against the Indians having dismantled the tournament favourites just four days previously?

Or perhaps not, if Devon Conway's sunny view, as released by NZC on Friday, is to be believed: "Obviously it was a fantastic World Cup for the group. The way the boys played and the way they represented New Zealand was fantastic to be part of. We were a little bit gutted not to get over that final hurdle admittedly."

A "fantastic World Cup"? "Obviously"? Who does the man think he's fooling? And how, exactly, is it possible to be only "a little bit" gutted?

It's the incomprehensible versus the incredulous, and it's coming soon to a ground near you. That's if you're near the Bay Oval, Hamilton's Seddon Park, Eden Park in Auckland, the Cake Tin in Wellington or Christchurch's Hagley Oval.

"We're good to go and it's going to be a wonderful day of cricket come Sunday," Keshav Maharaj, South Africa's captain for the series, told a press conference on Saturday. Maharaj is among the most indefatigably optimistic of humans, but even he might have asked himself if he believed what he was saying.

Even so, there is a mitigating factor. Maharaj is among only three T20 World Cup victims - compared to eight New Zealanders - who are in South Africa's current squad. The other two are George Linde and Jason Smith, who between them played in just half of their team's eight matches in the tournament. So there's a chance their scarring is less serious. The South Africans have just 160 T20I caps collectively, less than a quarter of the home side's 649.

There is a healthy departure from all that in the shape of the women's teams, who will play T20Is before the men's games on the same day and on the same pitch at all five venues. Do we call them gender non-specific doubleheaders? Whatever, they are a rarity in bilateral cricket. England and Australia played them in 2011, 2013 and 2014, and India and Australia in 2016.

"It's an opportunity to see what the conditions are like first," Maharaj said. "But, more importantly, women's cricket has come along leaps and bounds, and it's wonderful for them to have the stage as well. They've played some amazing cricket and some exciting games that have gone down to the wire. It's exciting for us to be able to witness it live. Not many guys get the opportunity to watch women's cricket due to their commitments."

Laura Wolvaardt concurred: "It's a cool way to tap into [the men's] knowledge as well. They have some experienced players and coaches, so it's good to chat to them about what they think is par or what we should do or what has been working for them.

"You feel like one big team, sharing knowledge and talking to each other. And seeing how they go about things. It doesn't happen a lot that tour side-by-side, but it'll be very cool cricket-wise to watch their game after ours."

It's tempting to hope the men learn from the women. They should considering the South Africans will take 921 caps into the series and the New Zealanders 864. That makes the women more than twice as experienced as their male counterparts across both squads.

But that theory works for one side of the equation only. Wolvaardt's team shambled to a 32-run defeat against the pesky Kiwis in the 2024 T20 World Cup final in Dubai, a performance as inexplicable as the men's zombie display 11 days ago.

But the Dubai disappointment was almost 17 months ago. Hence a scab has spread over the wound. Besides, that failure has been relegated to the shadow of the memory by India's 52-run win over the South Africans in the 2025 ODI World Cup final in Navi Mumbai in November.

Unlike the men's games in this series, which hold little relevance considering the next global tournament in the format is two years away, the women are playing for something. The start of the T20 World Cup, in England and Wales, is only 91 days away.

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