Close, but no cigar — or World Cup

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. That’s what they used to say about certain of Great Britain’s military misadventures (Singapore and the whole of America come to mind).

It’s also something the Proteas have been frustratingly good at.

There’s a litany of lost battles for our national team, starting in Sydney in 1992 and rolling through the ages to Kolkata in 2023.

Choked, said the pundits and Monday morning wicketkeepers. That’s what they do.

Not on Saturday in Bridgetown, Barbados, though. Saturday was not a choke. It should have been different.

The trophy was so close they could have smelt the polish. But for a spectacular catch and some blistering bowling by the lethal Jasprit Bumrah, it would have been Aiden Markram holding the cup aloft.

Seven runs. Seven. Not just a cat’s whisker from victory, but fewer than the whiskers on an actual cat.

There won’t be much to console the team. Not even beating the US — wait, the US has a cricket team?

It’s been an unusual time. First the 16 games held in huge US stadiums where 190,000 fans came to watch matches, and that’s excluding the thousands who watched from fan parks in places as baseball-bedonner as New York City.

The Nassau County International Cricket Stadium on Long Island can hold 34,000 people, which means 28 people had to stand for the Pakistan vs India game.

And 22,000 people watched games at the Grand Prairie Stadium — in Texas.

Truly we live in a time where anything is possible, even for the Proteas to win a world cup title.

Maybe not this time around — and some of the players, whose years are working against them, won’t get the chance again.

But for the others, the choke’s worn thin and the field is wide open.