South Africa's mixed feelings
Sunday, 10 February, 2002

McKenzie saw emotions swing in the SA dressing room BBC Sport Online columnist Neil
McKenzie files his last postcard with his final thoughts of South Africa's tour to Australia.

With two days to go before we board the plane and arrive back home in South Africa, it is a
good time to reflect on how this tour of Australia has gone.

What started off as a very hopeful and expectant tour was turned into a bit of a nightmare
when we lost all three Test matches to the very powerful and well-prepared Aussie team.

There is no disgrace in losing - they clearly played the better cricket.

But we will definitely have to go home and do our preparations if we are going to be
competitive against the Aussies in the five-day format and challenge for the top spot of the
Test championship ladder.

The tour changed quite significantly with the start of the VB one-day series.

We kicked off the campaign with two solid wins and then had a hiccup in the middle when we
lost three matches in a row.

It is important to point out that we had lost Allan Donald to a broken finger, Jacques Kallis was
really struggling with an ankle injury and team's confidence had hit another low.

But we turned it around again when AD and Jacques returned for the Adelaide one-dayer
against the Kiwis and this emphatic win revitalized our tournament and we went on to make
the finals.

Much has been written about Makhaya Ntini this summer and most of it hasn't been extremely
positive for him.

However, last Wednesday night in Melbourne, Makhaya proved to the cricketing world that he
sure has it as a quickie when he bowled us to victory with a match-winning haul of 5-31.

Then, in the second final in Sydney, the whole team turned up the heat in the rain and hail
interrupted match to put on a great team performance and ensure that we only needed
two matches to sweep the VB finals 2-0 against the Kiwis.

And finally the South African cricket team had won a one-day series in Oz after twice
losing in the finals against the Aussies 2-1 after being one up after the first match.

Needless to say, the vibes and spirit in the camp were significantly different on Friday night
after our VB series win compared to that at the SCG after losing the test series 3-0.

There will be many memories etched into the minds of the guys from our celebratory fines
meeting and night out thereafter.

A few of the best were Gary Kirsten's role as the beat-box DJ, Jonty Rhodes filling the boots as
the consummate fines master (with me his assistant) and the team's singing of our national
anthem, Nkosi S'ikelele iAfrica, broadcast via cellphone over the radio backhome.

Needless to say, we were all nursing some serious headaches on Saturday morning, or should I
say Saturday afternoon.

The guys have spent their last two free days doing last minute shopping, others trying to beat
their course records on the golf courses around Sydney and the rest bidding farewell to newly
made friendships.