It's white-knuckle time

In the words of that profound articulator of Stone Age angst and innocent pleasure Fred Flintstone: yabba-dabba-doo. Or as Emerson, Lake and Palmer should have had the wit to put it: welcome back, my friends, to the show that ends too soon.

Yup, the knockouts are here. Squeaky-bum time. Or, as Tom Moody prefers, the pointy bit. There's nothing quite like the smell of the Last Chance Saloon in the morning. Hence yesterday, when this column simultaneously watched the sun rise and South Africa's spinners confound Sri Lanka. Who says old dogs are averse to surreal new tricks?

For all the charms of its supporting cast, how we recall this World Cup will depend almost exclusively on less than 15% of its fixtures. Thus far, it has satisfied our hunger for rope-clearing but not for the unscriptable drama, suspense and tingles that can distinguish sport from all other laudable human pursuits. Call it the price of inclusiveness. Call it the enemy of electricity. After a month of nets, we're due a few volts.

Not until its laws were more than 200 years old did first-class cricket regard cup ties as anything but irredeemably vulgar. Leave that to the pig-bladder-chasing oiks. Even now, for reasons too familiar to list, the ICC keeps knockouts to the barest minimum. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, the fact that it remains the only (alleged) governing body in sport that has yet to institute a world championship in the game's original international format remains even more shameful than regrettable.

All the same, there is something admirable about this disdain for the shrill spills and cheap(ish) thrills of sudden death. Leagues and series have integrity. Only here can we hope to combat Dame Fortune and her random, fickle, heartless ways: the sudden breeze or shower; the loose lace; the Spidercam that turns a dolly into a grenade; the bat that bobs up after making its ground. Never mind the pulled hamstring, the shattered thumb, the busted jaw or the bail in the eye.

The series, at its best, is both perfect antidote and immaculate compromise: a fusion of league and cup, where, in its most time-rich guise, best-of-five trumps best-of-three and better-of-two. Lose the first encounter, even the first two, and you can still take all the marbles. Baseball, basketball and ice hockey all adopted this as their basic currency, then adapted it: while their regular season is constructed around two-, three- and four-game sets, playoffs cease as soon as the requisite number of wins has been achieved. Ask an American what a dead rubber is and he'll probably assume you're quoting Monty Python's Flying Circus, have a bit of a titter, then mutter something about a deceased prophylactic or an ex-Durex.

The intrusion of sudden death, nevertheless, is welcome for its scarcity. How scarce? Of the 435 World Cup matches preceding this year's knockouts, just 37, including finals, could legitimately be classified as cup ties.

So who, then, are the masters of this domain? Tirelessly rummaging through every one of those 37 scorecards in Wisden, this column compiled what might well be an exclusive table while South Africa were finally landing their first knockout punch, thus vacating bottom place:

Few surprises there, nor in this pitiful titbit: not only have England failed to win a single win-or-bust match for 23 years, they have never pulled off consecutive wins come pointy-bit time.

Pressure may impair excellence, but it is when every match might be your last - whether literally, as it was for Mahela Jayawardene in Sydney, or in that particular tournament - that sport can attain its most theatrical, even cinematic, expression.

When context is everything and everything is on the line. When ecstasy can slide so speedily into agony. When one moment of brilliance, born of skill, daring or wisdom, can conjure victory from defeat. When minor aberrations and marginal misses can ripple for decades. That's how we file these episodes, shrinking them for ease of access: Mike Gatting reverse-sweeping Allan Border in '87, Wasim Akram skewering Allan Lamb in '92, Lance Klusener freezing in '99, Kumar Sangakkara following suit yesterday.

Ray Knight was named Most Valuable Player after the New York Mets' consummate brinkmanship brought victory in the 1986 World Series. To him, winning the big games, the death-or-glory bouts, was born not of inspiration but proficiency. Not raising but maintaining standards. There you are, assailed by turbo-charged butterflies and baying, beseeching crowds, by managerial demands and collective responsibility, trying like buggery just to keep on keeping on. To do what you've learned to do without thinking, to perform as you do when dogs outnumber spectators and the TV cameras have better places to be. To succeed, in short, is to normalise.

In Sydney, Sri Lanka merely had to pretend they were in Galle. Jayawardene doubtless warned them about Imran Tahir, but who knew JP Duminy would have such a ball? Still, at least Angelo's boys weren't as cravenly complicit in their own downfall as Chelsea were against Paris St-Germain last week. Guided by José Mourinho, commonly cited as the sharpest strategist in European f***ball, the London side, playing most of the match against ten men, went about ensuring a place in the last eight of the Champions League with shameless negativity.

Trouble was, having drawn the first leg in Paris 1-1 - away goals count double - they kicked off eyeing a goalless draw, that sworn enemy of joy. Indeed, the London club's only fruitful ploy of the night was to bully the referee into unjustly sending off the opposition's star striker - and even that backfired. United in fury, undaunted by numerical disadvantage, PSG were far more enterprising (unlike their hosts, to be fair, not scoring was not an option). When Chelsea went ahead with nine minutes left, and again in extra time, PSG roared back, prevailing on away goals. Mourinho had been stripped bare, justice deliciously done.

Not that this should dissuade the ICC from dancing the two-legged tango - although this would mean, with away runs counting double, memorising scorelines such as 324-276. Balancing home advantage is a good thing. So are second chances and prolonged tension. Sure, this can also breed caution, that murderer of adventure - and sport bereft of adventure is like music devoid of rhythm. Fortunately, defensive cricket doesn't get you very far these days, especially not when a draw is off the menu.

That's why even the canniest, shrewdest, most calculated strategy can founder when the opposition counterattacks. Hence Gatting and his decision to unsheathe that reverse sweep. The idea was sound: second-string bowler, grab initiative, seize day. What hurt was the imperfect execution.

Consider another departure from the norm, this time from a decisive contest where the draw was an option. Cape Town 2011 and a historic series victory looms. With India protecting a negligible first-innings lead, Harbhajan Singh is on song, exploiting some spiteful rough and netting South Africa's top three in his first four overs. Then, with nary a hint of a glimmer of a scintilla of a warning, Jacques Kallis, the Emperor of Orthodox, unveils a reverse sweep; unlike Gatting, he executes it properly. Again and again he goes for it, ten times all told; only once does he fail to score. Tide turned, he cruises to an unbeaten hundred, saving match and rubber.

To pull off that coup, Kallis had to undergo a radical metamorphosis: change his habitual mindset, reconfigure his game face, chuck out the script and improvise. Not every competitor is able to achieve such a rapid transition, let alone prepared to take the risks required: meddling with the tried and trusted, inviting failure and condemnation.

In other words, whether it's a knockout, winner-takes-all or the final act of a five-day gripper, the most priceless assets are serenity, flexibility and fearlessness: all the virtues England currently lack. The mantra? "He who blinks sinks" has a nice ring, but the nod goes to "Relish or perish". Think Ricky Ponting in the 2003 World Cup final, cooking up his highest and most brutal ODI score to date against searching opposition; think Collis King in the 1979 final, uncowed by nerves, anonymity or even His Vivness; above all, think MS Dhoni promoting himself in the 2011 showpiece, laughing in the face of unfeasible, relentless expectation, lifted rather than diminished by the occasion. Not the least potent signifier of Sachin Tendulkar's greatness is that, among those who have played in two or more World Cup semi-finals, he is alone in scoring a half-century every time.

The greatest collective World Cup deeds thus far have been performed by Pakistan (1992) and Australia (1999). Both faced an early exit (Pakistan won just one of their first five games, Australia one of their first three) then streaked to the final (Pakistan won their last five, Australia six of their last seven, plus a tie that qualified them for the final). Momentum was all.

The San Francisco Giants went on a similar roll en route to taking the 2012 World Series, emulating the 1985 Kansas City Royals by winning six eliminators on the trot. Forget the flash stuff, the walk-off homers or other last-gasp heroics; the secret, such as it was, was strong pitching and "fundamentals", i.e. fielding, base-running and resistance to temptation (to swing at every pitch); i.e. efficiency at the bare necessities.

Time, then, for white knuckles and blue-sky thinking, purple patches, red faces and the unsung virtues of competence. As they perch on their stools at the end of the bar, may the calmest thirsts win.