South Africa are getting the job of winning done in India, but playing is more than work for the players – it’s a way of life
CRICKET:V Roger Prabasarkar
INDIA is undergoing a social, economic and cultural revolution to compare with any in the last decade. In fact, the mother of all change, the French Revolution, will seem like a petty peasants’ squabble when the 1 000- million inhabitants of this country finally have their say. And that will be in no more than four or five years’ time.
So what has all this got to do with the South African cricket team? Well, in a stunning departure from years and years of Taj-style autocracy that exacerbated the Indian class system, a local television programme began making a weekly half-hour documentary called Open Forum.
A truck carrying TV cameras travelled the length and breadth of the country picking the lowest of the low and poorest of the poor and then gave those people exactly a minute to say what they wanted to say to the prime minister. Aristocratic and bureaucratic feathers have been ruffled, and will continue to be ruffled, but sporting feathers will also suffer something of a plucking next month when a particular episode of the programme is shown.
An “untouchable” man, living on scraps from the rubbish dumps outside the city of Jaipur, was given his chance. He was too old to complain about his lot in life – when you are born as an untouchable in the 1930s then you do not expect your situation to improve. Apart from survival itself, the man had little to look forward to apart from the small black and white television in the street cafe close to his rubbish dump. He is not allowed in, but nobody objects that he stands outside to watch the game.
When his chance came to speak to the prime minister, he complained: “Why can’t the cricket team play properly? Why do they not win … why can’t they play like the South African team?”
Yes, indeed, Hansie Cronje and Bob Woolmer have drawn the country’s admiration and touched its imagination right down to the core. The Indian team appeased the nation’s cricket fanatics with their unlikely and dramatic two-wicket victory over Australia on Monday night in Bangalore, but showed in their second loss to the South Africans on Wednesday that they still have light years to travel before they even come close to the approach and attitude of the Proteas.
Sports writers around the country have been despatched to the team’s practices to find the secret. Woolmer and Cronje have already answered the same questions so often that it seems difficult for them to remain straightfaced when answering them. “Mr Woolmer,” said one reporter, “you have made an incredible difference to the approach of the team, yes?” Woolmer was momentarily at a loss for words before replying: “Er, well, I hope I’ve made some difference. That’s why the United Cricket Board pay me. That’s my job.” But that is where Woolmer is wrong. That is the essence of the difference between India and South Africa.
Fitness trainer Paddy Upton may strap high- tech heart monitors to the players as he puts them individually through their paces during the searing afternoon heat. Cronje may sit up in his hotel room until 2.30 in the morning watching videos of his opponents until he has worked out a plan. Woolmer may stay behind after practice to throw halt-volleys for two hours to Derek Crookes who feels a little unhappy with his straight drives. Yes, every member of the South African squad works very hard, but for none of them does it seem like a job. Least of all Woolmer. For all of them, cricket is a way of life.
The Indian team, on the other hand, treat their cricket careers very much as jobs. The players know that their future may lie with the whim of a white-collar executive whose goals are wholly self-promotional and political. But selection and non-selection are not only areas of provincial bias in India. England, Australia and even New Zealand have the same problem. It’s just that in India it is considerably worse. Woolmer patiently explains that, although there are “fashionable” provinces, there is no bias.
“Faith and trust are a very important part of our set-up. You can’t expect a player to perform at his best if he constantly thinks his place is on the line. In fact, the fear of failure is one of the biggest stranglers of initiative, flair and talent. You can’t tell a batsman to try something different in the nets and then drop him if it doesn’t work in the middle,” says Woolmer.
India, on the other hand, live with the daily threat and even managerial insinuation of team change. Left-arm spinner Sunil Joshi conceded 63 runs from his 10 overs against South African and Sachin Tendulkar, the young Indian skipper, told reporters after the game that he didn’t want to blame anyone but “I thought he (Joshi) might have bowled a lot better … we’ll have to look at the composition of our team very closely for the next match”. As it happened, Joshi was retained for the Bangalore game against Australia and bowled extremely well. But the young man confided to friends that he had performed in spite of his emotions, not because of them. It does not take long to become a cynical old pro in this country …
So, back to what makes the South African team different. Cronje is a leader of men and a diplomat, Tendulkar can also be both. But Tendulkar likes (and needs, more than Cronje) to escape, even when he is on tour. To switch off and think about something else. To put cricket completely out of his conscious mind. Cronje, Woolmer and most of the rest of the current South African squad seem not to have this need. But, of course, they are currently enjoying a run of success never matched by any other team, and it is easy to be positive, dedicated and pleasant when you are winning. It is another chicken-and-egg situation – does the winning habit come from a positive attitude or do you need a positive attitude to obtain the winning habit?
If the Indian team had a motto it would probably be something like: as long as we are doing our best, then the result doesn’t matter. Cronje best sums up the difference between the teams with the motto, coined by Woolmer, that his team play by: “We strive for perfection but will settle for excellence.”