No one can stop us: AB de Villiers

Ahead, lies a date next weekend in Melbourne with the winner of Thursday’s second semi-final between defending champions India and former winners Australia. “We have a lot of confidence behind us. I feel the team is in a really good space at a really good time. We have a lot of reason to be confident. If we play to our full potential, no one is going to stop us in this tournament,” de Villiers said.

In a brief series at the start of the New Zealand summer, South Africa came out on top 2-0 before New Zealand won a warm up match days before the World Cup started. In previous World Cups they have met six times with New Zealand holding the edge 4-2, including the last three encounters.

However, de Villiers was not interested in looking back. All that mattered to him was how his class of 2015 performed.

“There has been a lot of emphasis on our past and South Africa not doing well at World Cups. I have gone through the whole package of emotions, fighting it, accepting it, then fighting it again. I honestly am not putting emphasis on that at all. We know if we play a good game of cricket we will come out on top. We are that confident in our abilities as a cricket team. We have been through a lot of hardship in the past with our World Cup games but we feel very fresh and are very excited for on Tuesday,” he said.