Somehow, South Africa are in the semifinals
How much balance is too much? This much: at exactly halfway through their innings at Lord's on Sunday, South Africa were exactly halfway through their chase to beat Bangladesh in their T20 World Cup match.
The South Africans required a modest 118 to win, but needed to score quickly to hike their sagging net run rate (NRR) and stay in the running for a semifinal spot. Going into Sunday's games, South Africa's NRR was 0.734 and India's 2.268 — a gap probably too large to close.
Had South Africa taken better care of their NRR earlier in the tournament, they would have been on more level terms with India. For instance, being bowled out for 107 chasing 173 against Australia, or taking 16.5 overs and losing eight wickets to chase 127 against Pakistan.
On Sunday, when Dane van Niekerk was trapped plumb in front, reducing South Africa to 59/3, the chase seemed in danger of collapse. Then South Africa lost Annerie Dercksen, Marizanne Kapp, and Nadine de Klerk a scant 26 runs and 29 deliveries apart. They reached the last over needing five runs. Chloe Tryon edged four off Marufa Akter's first ball, and sealed it next ball with a chipped single.
"That sums up South Africa's performance," Ian Smith said on commentary. "They've done just enough to win."
Kapp exploited the swing for figures of 1/9 and was run out for 16, earning player of the match. But she said: "Ugh, I want to give this back after our batting innings. We seem to always do this. I don't know why. But we'll take the win."
Laura Wolvaardt said: "Today we needed a win and it's frustrating how we got ourselves into that position. But we won the game, we got our points and now we sit and watch the next game. Maybe it was a mindset thing today. Knowing we only needed to chase 118, we maybe batted within ourselves and didn't go to our positive options early enough."
After the match, Australia beat India by six wickets to knock India out, sending South Africa through.
South Africa made the semis for the fourth time in as many editions of the competition. Their only convincing performance was against India, when they chased 159 to win by four wickets with five balls to spare.
Unbeaten England await in the semifinal at the Oval on Thursday. But as South Africa have proven, you don't need to be emphatic. You just need to win.
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