'A great chance to do our country proud'

No South African knockout match can be spoken about without the mention of the 1992 World Cup semifinal which they lost to England in a farcical finish.

“It's not something we're thinking about, but I watched that game,” said South African skipper AB de Villiers when asked if he remembered watching that match. South Africa lost the match after their target was revised to 22 from one ball from a realistic 22 off 13 after a rain interruption. “It's a long time ago, and it was quite sad actually. I think I was crying that night, similar to what happened in the 1999 World Cup.”

De Villiers, however, said it no longer bothers either him or the team. “It's a new game, we're a fresh team. Like I said, it's something that doesn't bother us what happened in the past. We know what we're about as a team and as a unit, and we are all really excited about tomorrow. We've got a great opportunity to do our country proud, and we'll just take it one step at a time, make sure we do the basics well early on and then hopefully a big upset in the result,” he remarked.

Steyn’s fitness

While expressing concern over Dale Steyn’s fitness, de Villiers hoped the paceman will play in Wednesday’s semifinal. “We're just managing his workload at the moment. We know he's played a lot of cricket of late. He's got a few niggles around, which is very worrying, but we're going to do all we can to get him on the park tomorrow. He's close to 100 percent, he's running around. We didn't want to run him too much today because we knew he's one of the best in the world and he's got the skill to just rock up and do the business, so we're just making sure that he gets that extra day of rest,” he explained.

 De Villiers said that if the accusations of ball-tampering against English bowlers were true the it was a big concern. “If they are doing something funny with the ball, then it's definitely a concern, yes,” he began.

“But we've got no proof of that. Look, they seem to get it to reverse a bit quicker than the rest of the teams so maybe they've just got really good skill in their bowlers. We've tried, as well I think all teams try to do that, and we haven't really managed to succeed in that. It's something that the umpires and the ICC will probably look into why England and some of the other teams might get it to reverse quicker. It’s really not up to me to decide or to comment.”