Reaching the top by stealth

Glenn McGrath: one of only three Aussies in the present team who are used to being in the driving seat. And he's feeling his age © Getty Images

Greetings from Cape Town, where it's easy for a holidaymaker to feel on top of the world. The sky is blue, the light is sharp, the smiles are warm, the rand is weak, the politics are not quite as grim as they once were, and the wine is a deep dark red, with, the in-store sommelier at Pick'n'Pay assured me yesterday morning, "lovely notes of chocolate and mernt". Right now, the pampered tourist is not alone: South African cricket is on top of the world too.

The Cape Times cleared the back page and dusted off its trumpet. "Proteas push Aussies off the No.1 spot," blared the headline, showing more pride than precision. If the Aussies were knocked off their one-day pedestal by anyone, it was Collingwood and Flintoff, Bond, Taylor and Fulton. But the fact that they have lost evenhandedly to England and New Zealand, both of whom were their playthings a month ago, shows that the Aussies weren't pushed. They fell. South Africa played very well against Pakistan, but it was only good enough to keep the pressure on. For the South Africans to overtake, Australia had to self-destruct. They had to choke. And they did; to make 336 in a crunch game and lose is quite an achievement.

"No excuses" is the cry that routinely rings out on these occasions, from the chastened players right down to the furious fans. But some excuses are perfectly reasonable. Australia are missing five players, including most of their one-day leaders. Adam Gilchrist leads the charge, Ricky Ponting leads the team, Andrew Symonds leads the fielding, Brett Lee leads the pack. Of those left standing, only Hayden, McGrath and Hussey are used to the driving seat, and two of them are feeling their age, while the third is trying to get his head round one-day international captaincy, a business so tricky that even Steve Waugh, with far more experience, floundered at first. But still: it is possible to win without five first-choice players - England just did, against Australia (Trescothick, Vaughan, Pietersen, Anderson, Lewis).

Waugh it was who famously described South Africa as a bunch of chokers. It was a harsh remark, but not unfair. Even at their post-apartheid peak, under Hansie Cronje in the late Nineties, South Africa could do everything except win the biggest prizes. They could draw a Test series against Australia, but they couldn't steal a victory as India and England went on to do. They could make the running for much of a World Cup, but they couldn't reach the final, let alone win it. When they hosted the cup in 2003, they crumpled like a sheet of figures in a damp pocket. (Mind you, so did Australia in 1992. When the World Cup comes to town, home advantage does a runner.)

Among Australians, it is received wisdom that the South African sporting psyche suffers from some deep insecurity, which shrivels their self-belief just when they need it most. Out here, I've been reading Adult Book by Malcolm Knox, the only novel to be chosen as Wisden's book of the year. It is partly set in the middle of a Test at the SCG. South Africa are the visitors and the author takes us inside the head of an Australian batsman, Chris Brand. Crusty, foul-mouthed, compulsively adulterous and playing to save his career, he is possibly the most believable cricketer in fiction. And he has strong views about the South Africans.

Australia are missing five players, including most of their one-day leaders. Adam Gilchrist leads the charge, Ricky Ponting leads the team, Andrew Symonds leads the fielding, Brett Lee leads the pack

"The Yaapies jump around. Busy, punky, athletic. They think they're like us," Chris muses, "but they're not, they're f---ing not at all. Something in their history makes them tough but insecure, hard on the surface but soft-centred. They fight and fight and never give up, but when you've beaten them, there's something in them that accepts it. As if deep down they're too guilty to take the last step." This may be the first recorded case of a national team being sledged by a literary novelist.

Graeme Smith's challenge, over the next two months, is to shatter that stereotype. His team are improving in Tests after bottoming out a year ago, but are already much improved in one-dayers. In Tests, the thing that has held them back, whether deep-rooted or not, has been a shortage of spin and an excess of defensiveness. In one-day cricket, you can manage without a frontline spinner, and you cannot be defensive. The rules don't allow either defensive fields or the dreary bowling wide of off stump to which the South Africans are prone. And defensive batting is suicide. So that helps. But Smith's team have done more than they have to. They bat with a swash and buckle that can be traced back to Smith's own success in Twenty20 cricket when he captained Somerset briefly in 2005.

They have two middle-order batsmen, Justin Kemp and Mark Boucher, who can rattle along at the magical strike-rate of two runs per ball. This used to be exclusive to Shahid Afridi, but is now catching on worldwide, thanks to Twenty20. And their bowling has developed more guile. Kemp bowls off-cutters, Smith trusts himself to fiddle through four overs, and the seamers have started bowling wicket to wicket (or in Makhaya Ntini's case, mid-off to wicket). It counts for a lot that they have the world's greatest exponent of that art, Shaun Pollock, back on top form. They should be aiming to win the World Cup for him.

Are they the best in the world? Not really. Australia may be having their worst sequence since 1997, but it's still too short, too blip-like, to constitute a changing of the guard. They are riddled with injuries and tired at the end of an over-long season. (If this doesn't persuade their administrators to cut down on unwanted one-day games, nothing will.) Yes, as Ian Chappell says, they have been guilty of arrogance. But there is plenty of time for them to regain their swagger before the business end of the World Cup. They may have peaked too soon, but they have also flopped too soon for it to make much difference. They are still favourites, just not such hot ones.