South Africa's and Australia's mental scars

It's the World Cup semi final between Australia and South Africa today. Everything we read seems to revolve around South Africa's mental scarring from the 1999 World Cup semi final.

In summary: Pressure mounts, bit of crazy running, scores tied, Australia win because they finished higher in the group stages or because they'd previously beaten South Africa. One or the other - we can't be bothered checking which.

What no-one seems to be mentioning is Australia's mental scarring after South Africa chased down 435 in a one-day game last year. That led to Ricky Ponting predicting that the future of one-day cricket was a team of six-hitters. Australians always cite that game when discussing modern one-day cricket. We think they're rattled.

So South Africa will be nervous about chasing a total and Australia will be nervous defending one. Looks like South Africa will be batting first.

With so much mental scarring on display there'll scarcely be a single fully-functioning human brain in the two sides put together. It is Australia against South Africa after all. (We're joking - there are literally dozens of intelligent thinkers from those two fair nations. Dozens.)