Smith in for the long haul

All around South Africa the tension is all but touchable. You could cut it with a knife, if there was any hope of getting a blade past the security.

The whole country had come to believe that it was their team's destiny to win the World Cup, whether because of old Afrikaner beliefs of superiority, or the clearly burgeoning pride of the Rainbow Nation, or because they simply wanted it so badly that it became an obsession.

That has been revised slightly. For now, the population would settle for reaching the second stage of the tournament, the Super Sixes. To do so, they have to beat Sri Lanka under the floodlights of Durban tomorrow in their final pool match. At least, this destiny was back in their own hands after a crucial rain-ruined match between West Indies and Bangladesh altered the points balance.

If South Africa fail, the nation will feel wretched. This is only a game in a country with a million other problems – most related to Aids and vast unemployment among black people – but it has dominated the agenda here. Nobody could possibly underestimate sport's power for good.

But it has got to the players. They have looked fraught, they have not played with freedom of expression or technique. They have epitomised what the burden of expectation can do to a team.

"We know that we haven't played as we can do and that the expectation has been huge," said the opening batsman Graeme Smith. "We've had a lot of discussion after games for up to an hour, trying to let things off our chest and letting our emotions out, working out what this means for ourselves and our country."

Smith was called into the squad after the tournament began when the national icon, Jonty Rhodes, was injured. Coming from his armchair, he could see that the team were suffering.

"The media has been very harsh on us," he said. "We haven't done ourselves justice. Perhaps the pressure has got to us. Maybe we expected to beat West Indies and New Zealand and without knowing it almost were not quite there. But there is a sense among us now that someone is going to see what we can do. If we get past Sri Lanka then we feel we could easily explode."

There is nothing presumptuous or arrogant about Smith, who is only 22. Everybody around the South African team speaks highly of his approach and his bearing. That he will open the batting for his country for years to come in both forms of the game seems inevitable.

"I guess I was always going to be a cricketer if anything," he said. "I played other sports growing up and provincial soccer. But the only one that I still loved when it got really competitive was cricket."

He is a Johannesburg lad who played a few games for Gauteng, the home province, until he moved to Western Province for the more obvious delights of Cape Town.

"Moving helped me grow up," he said. "It helped me to become a better cricketer because I was fending for myself, doing my own cooking and washing up and not having mum and dad around to do everything. I matured a lot more than I might have done.

"I think something similar has happened now that I'm back in the squad. I was so hurt to be left out. But when I was in before I maybe followed others, did what they expected. Now I'm determined to be Graeme Smith."

The team have undoubtedly missed Rhodes's spark, that apparent joie de vivre in the field that can so rattle opponents until they want to throttle him. Yet perhaps they have done so more because they have been incessantly told how much they miss him.

Smith has partly ridden above this. He has played three of the five games so far and made a crucial 63 against Canada on Thursday when the team slipped to 21 for 3.

In its way it is the most unified South African team of all. The arbitrariness of the quota system still rankles among some and a taxi driver on the way from the airport the other day said: "I'm a South African, I love South Africa, but I'm not a patriot yet."

But it is beyond doubt that Herschelle Gibbs is their best batsman and that Makhaya Ntini at least vies with Shaun Pollock to be their best bowler – and these are two of the players who are filling the controversial quota placements.

Where this will take them will be known tomorrow. Smith pointed out that at the start of the tournament they and Australia were the big two. If they explode, if they find freedom he thinks that Australia can still be defeated.

On the day after the loss to New Zealand, the front page headline in the country's biggest selling newspaper was: "In Mourning". Relief was provided from a lucky quarter but they will not have thrown away the type.