South Africa have taken an 18-hour stopover in Dubai between matches in Pakistan in their stride and used the opportunity to "get out and walk and have some nice steak" between the end of the
Champions Trophy group stage and their semi-final against New Zealand on Wednesday.
They are one of two teams, the other being Australia, who
left Pakistan after their last pool match, in case they were required to play in Tuesday's semi-final against India in Dubai. Australia are confirmed for that match and so, South Africa have returned to Pakistan and view the quick turnaround between flights as just another part of the tournament.
"We knew that there was a big possibility that we might have to fly up and down,"
Heinrich Klaasen said from Lahore. "It's not ideal for the bodies, but at least we had some time to get out and walk around and get loose and just had some nice steak, to be fair. We knew it's gonna happen and it's part of the scheduling so two teams had to do it, and unfortunately, we were one of them."
South Africa left Karachi on Sunday morning after confirming their final four spot with a
seven-wicket victory over England. They flew back to Pakistan on Monday at 11am, later than New Zealand, who left at 4am after
losing to India on Sunday evening. As a result, Klaasen expects South Africa to be slightly more rested, especially since they did not have to leave Pakistan, as the other teams in Group A did, during the league stage.
"We haven't really travelled a lot in this competition," he said. "It was obviously just a crazy 18 hours. They [New Zealand] played a game and they had to travel six hours after the game. We had, at least, that off time and we could stretch our legs and recover as well before we had to come back. I think our bodies will be in a better position than their bodies but it's part of professional cricket at this moment. You just have to suck it up and go back and see if you can recover well and just get the job done at the end of the day."
Part of the downtime for three of the South African players, including Marco Jansen, also included night golf in Dubai. Though the teams are allowed to go out of their hotels in Pakistan to play golf, South Africa have not made use of this provision and have remained in their hotels, as necessitated by the security situation in the country, which is not the case in Dubai, where they are allowed out. Several other squad members used the time in Dubai to visit a mall and Klaasen confirmed none of them, apart from some support staff, watched the match between India and New Zealand.