South Africa face biggest test of all early on

ST AUGUSTINE, Trinidad, Mar 11 (Reuters) Although South Africa have threatened in each of their four World Cup, recent form suggests they could finally break a run of wretched luck and ham-fistedness to triumph in the West Indies.

But first the top-ranked team have to play world champions Australia in Basseterre, St Kitts on March 24 in a group match which will decide which team takes two points through to the second round.

''They have one crucial match in the group stages and that's the game against Australia,'' Kepler Wessels, who played for Australia before captaining his native South Africa, told Reuters.

''They're going to have to try to peak in that match, and from there it's a case of consistency, consistency, consistency.

''But that game will sum up how far South Africa go in the tournament.'' SILVER LINING The consistency that South Africa have shown over the past two years, and which has earned them their number one ranking, was noticeably absent when they struggled to beat Ireland in their first warm-up match in St Augustine on Monday.

South Africa slumped to 91 for eight before recovering to a total of 192 on their way to a 35-run win.

Coach Mickey Arthur found a silver lining in the performance.

''It was the best wake-up call we've had,'' Arthur told reporters. ''Our batters walked out there and thought they could simply take the bowlers on and it didn't work out that way.

''But it did impress me that when the game was on a knife edge the guys stepped up and their spirit came through.

''That's big match temperament, and hopefully it gets us all the way to (the final in) Barbados on April 28.'' Concerns over what Arthur and captain Graeme Smith termed an ''unfit'' pitch in South Africa's second and last warm-up match against Pakistan in St Augustine on Friday left the South Africans unsure about the form of their key batsmen.

South Africans have suffered dramatic exits in most of their World Cup appearances, which started in 1992 after the end of the country's isolation from international sport because of their apartheid (racial separation) policy.

That year, South Africa reached the semi-finals against England in Sydney only to be thwarted by controversial rain rules that called for them to score 21 runs off one ball.

Four years later in Karachi, South Africa were eliminated in the quarter-finals by a West Indies side who were powered to an upset victory by Brian Lara's brilliant 111.

In 1999 in Birmingham, Lance Klusener and Allan Donald contrived one of the most memorable run-outs in cricket history to tie the match and end South Africa's semi-final hopes against Australia.

Ignominy followed on home soil in 2003, when the South Africans failed to read their Duckworth-Lewis target correctly in a first-round match against Sri Lanka. The result was another tie, which resulted in South Africa's elimination.

REUTERS SAM BST1216