South Africa will treat their next World Cup Super Eights matches against Ireland and Bangladesh as “huge” games which could clear the way to the semi-finals, according to coach Mickey Arthur.The Proteas have two points in the second round, courtesy of a narrow one-wicket win over Sri Lanka. They could leave Guyana with six points in the bag to get ready for crucial matches against the West Indies and New Zealand in Grenada.South Africa will then lock horns with a steady, but unspectacular England, in their last Super Eights match.But Arthur has warned against complacency against Ireland and Bangladesh, two teams South Africa would normally be expected to roll over. “They are huge games because when you sit down and make plans for the rest of the tournament, they are both ‘banker’ games and, with games like that, there comes an added pressure. If things go well, we would also hope to work a little bit on our net run-rate because, in the event of two teams finishing with the same number of points after the Super Eights, they will be divided by their overall run rate,” Arthur said. “But first prize is to leave Guyana with six points—if we can do that I’ll be a very happy man,” said Arthur, whose team were given an early shock by debutants Ireland in a warm-up match.Since that great escape, the South Africa middle order has yet to fire and came a cropper in their last Group A match against Australia which they lost by 83 runs. They were also let down by the middle order against Sri Lanka, almost losing the match from a well-set 206-5 with Sri Lanka paceman Lasith Malinga recording a unique four-in-four-ball feat before the Proteas sneaked through.It was a tense win which Arthur admitted had “taken quite a few years off my life”.“At five wickets down with four runs needed to win, I started packing away the kit bags, but then it suddenly became very hectic. It was always going to take something extremely special to derail us from there and Malinga certainly nearly delivered it,” Arthur said.And a semi-final place is already on Arthur’s mind.“Based on current form I wouldn’t mind staying away from Australia in the semi-finals,” said the coach.Ireland captain Johnston said his team is not in awe of any opposition. “We gave a good account of ourselves in the match against England and need to lift our performance by at least 25 per cent in the remaining matches,” he said.“We played well in the warm-up match against South Africa and then during our win over Pakistan so if we can repeat those two performances we can achieve the best results,” Johnston added.
