CRICKET: Luke Alfred
IN HIS wildest dreams Craig Smith never imagined that he’d become the physiotherapist for the South African cricket team. During our interview at the Westbury Hotel on the Sunday of the Oval Test, Smith admits as much, although he mentions that he always wanted to “specialise in the sports side of things”.
Towards the end of his honours year doing a sports science degree under Dr Tim Noakes at UCT, however, Noakes was approached by Dr Ali Bacher. Bacher asked Noakes to recommend a physio for Mike Gatting’s rebel team. Smith’s credentials were acceptable to the south African Cricket Board, and so he started his association with South African cricket.
Smith graduated from working on Neil Foster’s very- suspect knees to accompanying the South Africans to India in November 1991. “(It was) on a Sunday afternoon, I remember distinctly,” recalls Smith. “My mother phoned me up and said Craig, the South African team is going to India, are you going with them?
“So I said to her: what the hell are you talking about, of course not — don’t be stupid … And then on Monday morning I decided to take a flyer and I phoned him up (Bacher) and as it happens he was actually trying to get hold of me.”
Smith has been ever-present in the South African set- up since the short tour of India. As an insider he’s been witness to the crises the public tend to miss, such as Brian McMillan’s cartilage problems at the MCG and Daryll Cullinan’s gastric problems on the tour of Australia.
Recently he’s had to deal not only with Jonty Rhodes being hit on the helmet, but the brouhaha involving Alan Donald’s big toe, an injury so seismic that it threatened to deprive much of white South Africa of sleep.
Donald’s sesamoid bone (one of the two floating bones in the big toe) was inflamed, an injury as rare as a Craig Matthews bouncer. As we now know, the problem cleared up before the Oval, but not before an agonising 10 days during which it was touch and go as to whether Donald would play. Such times are anxious ones for physiotherapists for there is undisguised pressure on them to perform miracles.
Smith says he is always careful to cover his tracks and consult specialists in situations such as these – – he has long since made the mistake of allowing his emotions to cloud his professional judgement.
Smith describes his role as “multi-skilling”, a job description which requires him to be everything from a doctor to a masseur to a therapist. His intimate contact with the players has not only made him an acute judge of personality, but of necessity he is sensitive to the relationship between mind and body.
“The way I see it is this,” he says. “If one of the players is carrying say, a little niggle, a little cold or something and say it’s a batsman — let’s not mention any names — say one of the top-order batsmen has got a little bit of a niggle; he goes out there and he scores 120. He comes back and he doesn’t want you to touch his body, his niggle is the furthest thing from his mind, because he’s in a state of euphoria and he’s just bathing in the moment.
‘But then you take his opening partner, or the number three or number four, and he’s got a similar niggle, different part of the body, and he’s out third or fourth ball. And I tell you, 15 or 20 minutes after he’s back in the hut he’s wanting treatment, and his injury is far worse than what it was.”
In Smith’s case treatment comes packed in two cricket “coffins”. The coffins contain everything from standard drugs such as painkillers, and anti- inflamatories, to strapping, tape, silicon-polymer substances to help protect the feet and fingers, to dumbbells and weights to improve muscle strength.
He also travels with electrical equipment such as ultrasound and laser which is invaluable in returning the body rapidly to health. As for Smith, he tells me that he has considered throwing in the towel but a sense of history combined with a naturally calm disposition and a well-developed sense of perspective has kept him going: “People out there mustn’t think that any touring team going away from home is on a holiday; you see very, very little of the towns or the countries that you go to.
“You come back home and people say, hey, you went on tour to Australia, it must’ve been great, tell me, what’s Ayer’s Rock like? Well I’m sorry, I didn’t see it from 30 000 feet.”
When interviewing Smith we get passed by several players returning to their rooms. It is difficult to miss the subtle physical contact that exists between him and the players who walk by. Often this amounts to nothing more than a greeting and a gentle tap on the shoulder, but the esteem in which he is held is evident.
One could argue that he is the guy that literally keeps things from falling apart; the medicine man in the background, holding the voodoo world of the dressing-room together (cricketers are deeply superstitious) by virtue of his relationship to the gods.