This week the South African team took their first steps on an arduous tour in a country that regards them as no less than brothers
CRICKET:V Roger Prabasarkar
THE pervading national atmosphere on the three occasions that South Africa’s cricketers have visited India has been characterised by an uncommon free-wheeling of spirit. A significant percentage of India’s population is (as is the general perception) fixated with the game and the fortunes of the Indian team, on and off the field. But South Africans may not be aware of just how the spirit changes when they are playing.
The recent one-off Test victory over Australia was a tense affair that saw the crowd at the Kotla ground in New Delhi more inclined to bite their nails than sing and dance. The Australians have built quite a reputation for themselves over the last two years and many local scribes and pundits declared unashamedly that they were the best team in the world after a Test series victory in the West Indies.
India’s seven-wicket victory, in Sachin Tendulkar’s debut Test as captain, was greeted with something closer to relief than celebration but, more importantly, the pleasure was a kind of cricketing “premature ejaculation” because there is only the one match. Test cricket, in this most traditional of environments, must be decided over at least three encounters to proclaim a real winner.
Clashes with Pakistan are inevitably closer to war than sport while Sri Lanka, despite their newfound status as world one-day champions, may still be regarded as a precocious younger brother for many years to come. Some epic encounters against the West Indians, beginning in the early and middle 1970s, still excite animated tea-room chatter among the country’s older fans, but even they do not come with quite the gloss and glitter that the South Africans do.
On the face of it, it doesn’t make sense. The record of competition between the two nations is hardly something for the game’s historians to get their teeth into and, in fact, Indians have been on the receiving end more often than not.
The reason, actually, can be simply traced. Whatever the level of emotion generated in South Africa by Clive Rice’s 1991 apartheid- busting 10-day tour, it is unlikely to match the depth of feeling here. The nation still has the warm feeling of a good Samaritan who was there to hold his best friend’s hand as he went through cold turkey.
However true it may be, Indians believe they played a crucial part in helping South Africa on the road to recovery after a terrible illness and, as such, they are able to claim a part of the current Hansie Cronje-Bob Woolmer inspired success. If it sounds strange, then it probably is. But it’s true Woolmer actually has a place in many Indians’ hearts after touring with Tony Greig’s England team in the 1970s, but neither he nor the captain are the crowd’s favourites. Cronje might have had a better chance were it not for his name which Indians find impossible – Hanisee Krunjee is about as good as it gets.
Nearly five years ago the garlands of flowers and never-ending flow of goodwill overshadowed much of what happened on the field. Although Rice endeared himself as a gruff old general and Peter Kirsten was, at last, able to display his craft (along with Adrian Kuiper in the third game at Eden Gardens in front of 100 000 people), the Indians were not supplied with new South African “greats”.
They still tended to talk about Ali Bacher, the Pollocks, Jackie McGlew, and Mike Procter. And Eddie Barlow, actually. In fact, Barry Richards too … But the second trip, for the Hero Cup, was very different. Allan Donald, after his incredible 5-28 in 1991, was an easy favourite for the crowds. If there is one thing that Indians have never had, and nearly worship as a result, it is great fast bowlers.
Even the great Kapil Dev was only genuinely quick for a couple of his 12 years at the top. Donald is admired from afar. Because of his fearsome pace he is admired by Indian children much as a lion is in a zoo. I have seen young boys approach him with an autograph book in hand much as Roman gladiators must have felt entering the Colisseum for a fight to the death.
Jonty Rhodes, however, is different. Like Donald, Indians admire him because he is something they have seldom seen and never had. You see, in India you simply never dive. Outfields are barren, often grassless and frequently sprinkled with rusty bottle tops, bits of broken bottle and stones. And yet Rhodes seems unperturbed. Although it is little wonder that India cannot produce a Rhodes of their own, it is still breathtaking to watch him.
No doubt his attitude to life and cricket remains constant wherever he is in the world, but here in India, with a population well in excess of 1 000-million, almost everyone seems to have had (or knows someone who has had) some personal contact with the man.
In fact, my own 11 year-old nephew (who admittedly had the benefit of a very good seat in the grandstand) was rewarded with an autograph after Rhodes’s world record- breaking five catches against the West Indies in Bombay two-and-a-half years ago. He waited for over half an hour to get the signature and still remembers the complaints of Rhodes’s team mates who were being kept waiting in the team bus.
This third team has lost none of it’s attraction for Indians. At their first practice, at a nondescript gymkhana club ground in Hyderabad on Tuesday, four or five thousand young men resembled caged refugees as they clung to the outside of the chicken wire fence enclosing the playing field. If Rhodes could have signed an autograph through the fence, he probably would …
By the end of two months the tourists will be known to the Indians as never before. Maybe some of the younger players, too, will become heroes. We are led to believe that Derek Crookes and Herschelle Gibbs are exciting prospects.
But the man that may intrigue more than any other is Pat Symcox. It is not clear whether he will adapt better than any other to India, or not at all. He played the role of the irritated, moody old seargeant major to perfection on Tuesday and succeeded in scowling at enough autograph-seeking children to have filled a cricket field, chest to chest. But there are a lot of children in India …