After thrashing England by 112 runs in the 3rd ODI on Friday, South Africa were apparently the team carrying all the so-called ‘momentum’ into today’s 4th ODI.
Now I’m not getting carried away as an England fan by a couple of recent wins, they are still far from the finished article and in my opinion playing a very average South African ONE DAY unit.
But this recent buzz word phenomenon that is ‘momentum’ would appear to need to be treated with a bit more caution.
Was it this ‘momentum’ that caused Graeme Smith to overlook the fact that there was grass on the pitch when he won the toss today and elected to bat? Does this also mean you can completely disregard the conditions and carry on playing in the manner that you did two days previous on a different ground?
Is this also the same ‘momentum’ carried forward by Australia from the Headingley Test to the Oval Test last summer? The ‘momentum’ that gave Ricky Ponting the wisdom not to change a winning side and recall his spinner?
Hopefully should England reach the dizzy heights of having ‘momentum’ they will also have the calmness of mind (ie,from Flower and Strauss) to treat each game or innings on its individual merits and not get carried away with media hysteria of this myth.