'We didn't speak about it' - Steyn looks back at emotions after 2015 semi-final heartbreak
Former South Africa speedster says the team moved on from that defeat within 24 hours, which left many players dealing with emotions in their own way
Sreshth Shah
13-Nov-2023
The last time South Africa reached the men's World Cup semi-final in 2015, it was yet another heartbreak in their pursuit of an elusive world title in cricket when New Zealand's Grant Elliott knocked them out in a dramatic finish. Dale Steyn was at the centre of that defeat, and looking back eight years later, he says that the team moved on from that loss very quickly, or perhaps, even too quickly.
"I think we dealt with it really well in that 24 hours, and then we went home and everyone went our own way. But getting together the next time as a South African team and walking back to the dressing room, I felt like we hadn't spoken about what happened few months ago," Steyn told ESPNcricinfo. "And we needed to make sure that that elephant was out of that room. It was certainly still in the room for what I felt was a long time."
Describing the aftermath of that evening in Auckland where a golden generation of South Africa ODI cricketers lost their chance to reach the final, Steyn said that the first thing he did was "put a smile on his face and be a professional."
"I went into the dressing room and I sat down and I was like 'this is where you have to be the true professional you are. You are a senior player.' I went around to some of the younger guys, the Quinton de Kocks. Morne [Morkel] was incredibly upset, visibly upset even on TV.
"But I thought to the public eye, when you're on TV, you have to maintain that professional image. Put a smile on your face, be professional when you've been beaten in a big game. You've got to take the losses with the wins and the good with the bad. But as soon as you get in the dressing room, my role was to pick up all the players around me. And that was very heavy. We all kind of went to our rooms that night, I'm sure everyone was upset.
"The next morning there was a group message, 'guys, there's a breakfast planned somewhere', and we all got together. Then it was as if the night before never happened. We tried to move on as quickly as we could.
"A year or two years after that had happened, did we start to address it as a team. As individuals, everyone dealt with it their own way. But as a team, we hadn't unraveled it or spoken about it."
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Dale Steyn talks about that iconic moment from the 2015 World Cup pic.twitter.com/WVJIxdLah5
South Africa have reached the semi-finals of the ODI World Cup four times before - 1992, 1999, 2007 and 2015, with the team falling on the wrong side of the result on all four times, including three in dispiriting circumstances. In 2003, at home, it was a miscalculation of the par scores that sent them out.
All that has built a dubious history when it comes to South Africa and big moments, but Steyn said as a player of that generation, he did not feel the baggage of the defeats in 1992 and 1999 because he was not a player in those dressing rooms. Similarly, he does not expect the current South African team to feel weighed down by past results (only de Kock and David Miller played in 2015).
"They're more battle hardened now," he said. "From 1999 through all those years, there was one World Cup every four years. Now it feels like there's a World Cup every year, be it 50-over or 20-over and a lot of these players are participating in all of them. So they've learnt how to handle losing, going home, and preparing for the next one happening in a very short time.
"For this one, they are as ready as they can be. It can feel like they've had baggage for a very long time, they've lost out on other World Cups due to simple things - maybe net run-rate…. but certainly not for bad cricket."
Sreshth Shah is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo. @sreshthx