If the world were a just place, Wednesday night’s emphatic victory by South Africa would have come as an immense relief to United Cricket Board (UCB) boss Gerald Majola. Indeed, in a utopian society where merit was rewarded and ineptitude censured, Majola would have trundled down on to the Buffalo Park turf and given Graeme Smith a hug.
For in such a world, Smith’s dogmatic century – and his team’s slick trouncing of England – would have saved Majola’s job.
But of course his job has never been in jeopardy. Ours is a world that not only accepts but demands the oxymoron that is professional sport, and administrators live and work in a space completely removed from the teams they allegedly guide.
This is the consequence-free domain of the CEO, whose annual bonus bares no relation to his company’s performance, whose ”earnings” reflect almost nothing tangible in the real world far below his office’s windows. This is sheltered employment, the kind dished out to the gravely defective or the astutely connected. Of course, sometimes they’re the same person.
Still, the prospect of what must surely end as a series win for South Africa would have reassured Majola no end, in the manner of a sweatshop owner hearing that the outbreak in Warehouse Six is just whooping cough and not typhoid. Because he will know, as will all those with memories longer than a fortnight, that South African cricket is still very sick.
Smith has regained the monastic grip on his mind and faculties of seasons past, and Justin Kemp is setting tiny feminine hearts a-flutter with his lantern-jawed butchery and Dan Dare bedside manner but, as a contest, the one-day series has been scuppered by the psychological and emotional absenteeism of the English tourists.
To say that England have been going through the motions would be to imply, falsely, that they have shown any signs of life at all. Steven Harmison has spent the one-day series wishing he’d be sent home; Matthew Hoggard’s been wondering why he hasn’t.
Michael Vaughan and his top order have displayed the backbone of jelly-babies, and why wouldn’t they, with the Test series gone, and only a procession of patchy outfields, brass bands and Andre Nel molars to look forward to? In the final analysis, South Africa will have beaten Kevin Pietersen, high on some sort of potent macho revenge-juice, a 35-year-old Darren Gough, and the admirable Ashley Giles. It’s a start, but the chart is still critical.
So does that mean we’re in a building phase? Majola would know, but he hasn’t said much recently. It makes sense, though: building phases in South African sports generally involve losing streaks punctuated by rearguard victories against depleted and bored opposition.
Yes, we must be building. And we’ve been building ever since Majola took over in 2001, evidenced by steadily dropping win percentages in Test and one-day cricket and the axing of two (soon to be three) coaches in four years.
To be fair, Majola wasn’t appointed to win South Africa cricket matches. He was appointed to dismantle white hegemony in the sport, to kick-start real representivity by promoting black interests, by legislation or financial bullying if necessary. And this is where his greatest failures lie.
Since his ascension to Ali’s Big Leather Chair in January 2001, 19 players have been awarded Test caps for South Africa. Five of these were coloured or Asian. One was black. And the other 13 were white as the driven snow.
In other words, this Eliot Ness of transformation has presided over the selection of an entirely new team (plus twelfth man and bag carrier) consisting exclusively of whites. In retrospect, it seems that Makhaya Ntini has done very well to survive Majola’s reforms.
The prevailing mood of stagnation, of hope pinned on temporary form and mayhap, is fertile ground for fantasies of solidity and action. The rumours touting Steve Waugh as a possible replacement for Ray Jennings were hastily quashed by the UCB on Wednesday and attributed to an English journalist; but it was a rumour with considerable appeal to South Africans starved of direction.
Waugh is an unknown quantity as a coach, and any stint with South African would simply arm Australia with another 10 year’s worth of domination once he took his bulging laptop back home for a debriefing in Sydney. But he has earned the respect of every player and fan that has ever opposed him; and earning respect is something administrators rarely, if ever, get right.