South Africa Will Be Quietly Confident with Playing Sri Lanka in Quarter-Final

South Africa will be quietly pleased that they ended up playing Sri Lanka in the quarter-finals of the 2015 Cricket World Cup rather than Australia.

Australia’s home-ground advantage and the history of the two teams against each other in knockouts is something that will be playing on the minds of the South Africans. They were also hammered 4-1 in their most recent ODI series in the country so playing Sri Lanka offers some reprieve, if only from the mental side of things.

Even some Australian fans are pleased about the two missing each other in the first round of knockout matches.

The big challenge for South Africa is that Sri Lanka have some of the best batsmen in the tournament. Kumar Sangakkara is in incredible form, as is Tillakaratne Dilshan. Then there is the lower-order power hitting of Angelo Mathews to ponder, too.

South Africa’s bowlers, in particular Dale Steyn, have not fired at full tilt during the tournament yet, but it is expected that they should finally show up. But a knockout match in an ICC event involving South Africa is not complete without the dreaded mention of the "c-word," and South Africa's coach, Russell Domingo, confronted the albatross hanging over his troops' necks head on.

When quizzed about South Africa's tendency to crumble under pressure, Domingo interrupted a reporter asking the question and blurted out the c-word all on his own, as reported by ibnlive.in.com:

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Choking! It's choking! It's taken you four minutes, that's a bit slow. It's been part of South African cricket for quite some time, every time we get to these events it's going to be questioned. We've faced the fact that in the past we have let opportunities slip by us. Hopefully we'd have learned from the mistakes that previous sides have made at events like this.And by all means we want to avoid that happening to us but at the end of the day, we just want to play good cricket if the opportunity arises.

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For South Africa, chasing has been a big worry in the competition, but they can take some solace from the fact that over the last five years, more teams have won chasing than batting first at the SCG (eight vs five).

Both teams have played at the Sydney Cricket Ground in this tournament already, so they are all somewhat familiar with conditions.

However, the pitch will play a big part. South Africa smashed more than 400 runs in Sydney when they played West Indies, while Sri Lanka lost to Australia.

But the surface can sometimes be low and slow with a par first innings score of just 250. A slow pitch will be a massive boost for Sri Lanka, especially if Rangana Herath recovers from the injury he sustained. According to reports, Herath is on track for recovery ahead of the quarter-final. 

Herath’s recovery will ease some of the pressure on Lasith Malinga, a player some pundits say Sri Lanka rely on far too much.

Still, South Africa got away lightly by facing Sri Lanka in the quarter-finals and not Australia. Sri Lanka and South Africa are not too dissimilar in terms of their balance, and both teams have had trouble wit the bowling in the last ten overs of the innings.

Sri Lanka are a good team, but avoiding the hosts and the hostile crowd that comes with it will be a big relief for the Proteas as they begin their journey to try and exorcise the ghosts of ICC tournaments past.