• In June 21 years ago, with near-perfect resources to do it, South Africa royally botched a chance to win CWC.
• Two pulsating games in four days against old foes Australia remain ODI classics … though entirely more memorable Down Under.
• Lance Klusener was awash with conflicting emotions as he collected the coveted Player of the World Cup award.

You might say there’s a drawn-out “21st” on the go ... only the music is jarring and the beer lamentably flat for many South Africans.

It was during this month in 1999 that the Bob Woolmer-coached and Hansie Cronje-led national men’s cricket team negotiated (and mostly quite well, up to an infamously brutal point) the advanced stages of the World Cup in England.

Yes, THAT World Cup: the one that perhaps sticks out like the sorest thumb of all, in the enduring Proteas hoodoo around the event.

It was a tournament marked in advance by no single, especially scream-out-at-you ascendants to the crown, although South Africa will go down, from it, as probably the ones who should have prevailed on the overall balance of things.

“Should” ... ah, that word. It has stalked teams and individuals for decades and even centuries, only adding to the allure and sometimes heavy cruelty of sport.

The SA squad entered CWC 1999 barely short of a machine in the one-day international format: they’d beaten host country England on their own soil in the Texaco Trophy one summer earlier, won what was effectively the maiden edition of the ICC Champions Trophy in Bangladesh, thrashed West Indies 6-1 in South Africa, and also pipped New Zealand 3-2 in their unique conditions in the last lead-up series.

Apart from a cohesive work ethic, peerless levels of athleticism in the field and excellent balance – featuring abundant all-rounders – there was the experience and proven credentials of Cronje, Daryll Cullinan, Gary Kirsten, Jonty Rhodes and Allan Donald (still bowling with great gas at 32), coupled with the exciting “youth” factor driven by the likes of

vice-captain Shaun Pollock (25) Jacques Kallis (23), Herschelle Gibbs (24) and the increasingly assertive 22-year-old wicketkeeper Mark Boucher.

Then there was a certain Lance Klusener ... ah, we’ll get to him.

My own “raid” on that World Cup was to terrain I was already pretty familiar to and comfortable with as a visitor, as I have an English wife and also boast Nottingham in the heart of the Midlands as my birthplace, despite having lived overwhelmingly in South Africa since the age of one.

The visit, as a writer for then-SA Sports Illustrated, was timed to take in the entire Super Six phase (we’d taken the confident assumption Cronje and company would progress from their initial group, which they duly did) and then full knockout period, including the 20 June Lord’s showpiece.

South Africa had topped Group A, with victories over India, Sri Lanka, England and Kenya, although there’d been a shock humbling from neighbours Zimbabwe at Chelmsford where Neil Johnson - well familiar to fans of the KZN Dolphins, and elsewhere in SA - had one of the blue-chip games of his life.

Now 50, the oft-smiling “Johnno” smashed 76 and then bagged three for 27 with his useful seamers for the chuffed minnows: perhaps it was a handy little wake-up call, too, for the more fancied outfit as they braced for the next stage of the event.

As driver of a hired, nippy little Ford Fiesta, I was able to do relatively easy city hops (many scribes, whether from the UK itself or abroad, were using public transport) although I found traffic levels formidable at certain times of day.

No, almost all times of day.

And have YOU ever tried negotiating those intimidating, demonically busy “circles within circles within circles” at major intersections on British motorways when you aren’t familiar with the area in question and the degree of multi-town signage overwhelms you while the car behind beeps you impatiently for your flummoxed indecision on which lane to occupy?

Still, much of South Africa’s Super Six and knockout activity was centred around the Midlands, which meant I was largely able to “commute” to matches from my parents-in-laws’ base in rural Lincolnshire, even if the specific journey might take two hours or more.

But it was a big saving on accommodation; as South Africans we were lamenting the rand-pound exchange rate even then, and it meant a few bob more of my Touchline Media travel allowance was available for pub grub, shortbread (I know, a less than ideal weakness) and a pint or two of English bitter (further weakness).

The most noticeable thing to me upon arrival, with the event already a couple of weeks old, was the lack of specific CWC 1999 hype evident in the country.

England is like that, though, unless you’re talking football at the very loftiest tier every four years and local dreams (inevitably futile) of “revisiting ’66” take firm hold.

There are just so many major events in the UK, whether cultural, sporting or other - and especially around London - that excitement for each tends to come and go in a flash.

Remember also that the lumbering England outfit of the time (nothing like the dynamic 50-overs force they are nowadays) under Alec Stewart blew out in the pool stage, which was a killer blow to any for tangible, durable local interest in that World Cup.

Instead it became a festival, and really just on specific match days, for expat communities - no lack of UK-based “Saffers”, of course - and supporters who might have flown in from far and wide.

I was able to feel just a little like a lucky charm for the first two Super Sixes games I witnessed involving South Africa: a three-wicket triumph over talented but typically unpredictable Pakistan at Trent Bridge, and then more comprehensive 74-run disposal of New Zealand at Edgbaston.

It seemed a timely head of steam for SA ... and I remember the best English newspapers I studied every morning saying as much.

What’s more, Cronje’s side had the knowledge that if they could knock over Australia – inconsistent at the tournament, though fielding such dangerous customers as the Waugh brothers, Michael Bevan, Ricky Ponting, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne – they would simultaneously eliminate their fierce southern foes and enviably renowned “peak at the right time” competitors.

It was my first visit to Headingley, still featuring a certain rustic Yorkshire charm (this was well ahead of its redevelopment) and the rough and ready, beer-swilling brigade on the notorious Western Terrace.

From the “spill-over” press seating geared for journalists not filing on-day copy, I remember being alongside Mike Haysman - his loyalties at least slightly split, of course, given his lengthy playing and media associations with South Africa - for what would turn into the first of two humdingers between the two powers in the space of four unforgettable days.

A homeward-bound ticket for the Aussies looked so likely when, after being set a stiff 272 to win following Gibbs’s wonderfully crisp and commanding century, they stumbled to 48 for three against South Africa’s almost unfailingly penetrative attack.

But it was roughly from there that 33-year-old, tough-as-teak skipper Steve Waugh played what I still feel is the gutsiest, most temperamentally awe-inspiring century I have yet witnessed when present at any international fixture.

His unbeaten 120 was massively responsible for turning the tide in a match decided with two balls to spare.

It is also remembered for the fateful event when he was on 56; his dismissal at that point might well have been terminally damaging to the Australian cause that day.

Waugh spooned up a relatively simple catch to ace fielder Gibbs, whose throw-it-away celebration gesture preceded, by a split second, his proper securing of the ball in his hands.

Or read, rather more pertinently: Hersch spilled it.

Legend has it that the instinctively combative Waugh chirped the young Capetonian that he had “just dropped the World Cup” although in his weighty 2005 autobiography “Out of my Comfort Zone” (Penguin), he says it was instead: “Hey Herschelle ... do you realise you’ve just cost your team the match?”.

The book, a page or two earlier, mentions a fascinating precursor to the flashpoint: that in the Aussie pre-game team talk, leg-spin wizard - and just as often frustrated non-captain – Warne had advised his slightly sceptical colleagues that Gibbs had a “habit of showboating and might drop the ball in the process … so if he catches you, don’t walk straight away”.

Waugh puts in print his own pre-match theory, too, that “if we could overcome South Africa (at Headingley) I knew we’d go on to win it all ... deep down South Africa feared us as their real dangers”.

Well, it is history now that Cronje and company didn’t lose the swift follow-up semi-final duel, back further south in Birmingham in a sizzler to equal or even eclipse the Leeds one: they tied it ... but meaning their old foes advanced to Lord’s on the agonising grounds of superior run-rate in the Super Sixes phase.

The match was teasingly see-sawing.

Australia, once 68 for four after being inserted by Cronje, recovered reasonably enough to 213 all out in 49.2 overs, an innings marked mainly by the nine wickets shared between SA strike bowlers Pollock and Donald.

In reply, South Africa breezing to 48 before the fall of the first wicket (Gibbs the victim of a sublime near-carbon copy “Gatting ball” from the indefatigable Warne) brought such a sense of hope and promise to SA enthusiasts.

But with that frequent nemesis Warne still enormously to the fore, the chasers slumped to 61 for four … before Kallis and Rhodes posted 84 for the fifth wicket to thoroughly stabilise things: game right back on.

The knife-edge hallmark only continued - into the final, unbearable over.

South Africa did have one great comfort; on strike was Klusener, a quite outstanding “finisher” for them around the No 8 berth, more or less throughout the tournament.

Whether ensuring significantly (often crucially so) better totals than had seemed likely when batting first or more actively taking the country over the line in matches, “Zulu” was a platinum element of the broader SA cause at that World Cup - remember he was also joint fourth-highest wicket-taker with 17.

He kept registering blistering-tempo, boundary-studded “not outs” at the crease; these innings all had healthy asterisks after them: 12 against India, 52 Sri Lanka, 48 England, 52 Zimbabwe, 46 Pakistan … and yes, eventually also an unbeaten 31 against Australia in the ill-fated semi.

South Africa needed nine off the critical last over from Damien Fleming and, as if simply on cue, Klusener lashed the first two deliveries (“with pure brute force through the covers”, Waugh reminds) to the fence.

The scores were level (213), four deliveries left, and at that point with a seemingly super-cool Zulu still on strike, I will never forget a convivial Aussie scribe next to me offering a hand, in a clear throwing-in-the-towel gesture: “Good on yer, mate ... well done South Africa”.

I also remember, in the bedlam of the moment, instinctively accepting the handshake, though the thought did strike me just a moment later: uh-oh, you shouldn’t touch the money.

We know so ruefully that when Waugh brought up his field in a desperate, last roll of the dice, Klusener was just not able to find any further gaps and that the situation culminated in the fateful run-out - minus bat in hand, an iconic image - of Donald.

There have been subsequent suggestions that failure by the last-wicket pair to convene a mini-conference over strategy for the last three balls cost South Africa dearly.

Own theory? Klusener had the right to feel momentum was with him (yet again) and that he didn’t need any last-minute cluttering of his mind.

Donald, similarly, might well have figured that Klusener “has got this”, considering his event-long reliability as a deal-sealer, and fully anticipated his senior partner coolly piercing the field just one more time without the need for any harum-scarum single to clinch it.

Captain Cronje was an ashen-faced, shellshocked figure at the immediate post-match press conference: I still don’t know how he got any platitudinal words out, and only saw him look so distressed and rattled subsequently during the tumult of his testimony to the King Commission.

Impartial though we try to be as journalists, I think the true disappointment of South Africa’s cruel exit only really hit me when I stopped for a service-station snack on the way back to Lincolnshire in the slow summer dusk.

“Did that really just happen?” I asked myself repeatedly as I bit, rather dispassionately, into a chicken-mayo baguette.

Making matters worse, the final between the Aussies and Pakistan - look, it was nice just to be there for the occasion - was an appallingly one-sided anti-climax under gloomy skies, Waugh’s ruthless brigade prevailing by eight wickets with almost 30 overs to spare.

A neutral, urbane fellow-scribe from Bangladesh suddenly cracking a bottle of French champagne as we watched, and offering me a plastic cup of it, was a merciful antidote to the pallid tussle.

There was one South African on the presentations balcony afterwards: Klusener, unusually (for him) attired in a very dark suit and tie and looking more as though he was attending a funeral.

He was there to receive the Player of the World Cup award, a wonderful personal achievement although it required a politely brave face to accept it with any semblance of relish, considering the broader backdrop.

Gee, I felt for him during that mixed-emotion, kissing-your-sister obligation.

Mind you, he thoroughly deserved the laurel.

Despite everything.

*Follow our chief writer on Twitter: @RobHouwing