Quinton de Kock scored his fourth hundred of this World Cup. ©AFP
This is getting...not silly, old, or boring. Maybe familiar. Predictable, even. South Africa bat first and add a small mountain of runs to the men's World Cup landscape, with the help of one, two or even three centuries. News at 11. By which time they have wrapped up another win.
Names and places are changed, not to protect the innocent but to offer further evidence that this South Africa team are different from those who have come and gone before. Now, seven matches into their campaign with just one of them lost - batting second, it bears pointing out - only a fool would say they aren't bound for the semifinals.
On Wednesday in Pune it was New Zealand's turn. Actually make that in Pimpri-Chinchwad. Or was it in Gahunje? What cricket calls Pune seems to be a loosely connected string of educational institutions - "the Oxford of the East" - military bases - passengers arriving at the airport are warned it is forbidden to take photographs there - high-rise apartment buildings - some completed, others not - the skeletal beginnings of what will be a metro system, and the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium. Much of all that is more or less connected by the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, which morphs the Pune-Bengaluru Road, and its clogged tributaries.
As a metaphor for the nebulousness of New Zealand's performance, that will have to do. First Tom Latham made the strange decision to field - against a side who had reeled off seven totals above 300 in the last seven ODIs in which they have batted first. Make that eight after Wednesday.
Maybe the Kiwis were emboldened by their 383/9 against Australia in their last match, in Dharamsala on Saturday. Maybe they forgot that the Aussies had put up 388 to start with. And that the South Africans had rolled Australia for 177 in Lucknow on October 12 to win by 134 runs.
Maybe matters would have unfolded differently had Matt Henry not left the field with a
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