It’s all over and there’s barely enough time for both sides to lick their wounds, never mind carry on with their `other’ lives. Neil Manthorp reports from Leeds
Cricket boasts the cruellest, most finite moments of any sport. Soccer, through golden goals and penalty shoot-outs, has managed to emulate the “immediate death” nature of the last wicket falling, but that game very rarely produces the dagger blade to the heart that Hansie Cronje felt when Makhaya Ntini was given out lbw to give England victory by 23 runs in the final Test.
For one thing, a soccer match lasts 90 minutes of normal time. At worst, the build-up to the moment of agony lasts 10 minutes or so over two hours. Cronje and his team had been playing England for two months and two days when Darren Gough, or rather Javed Akhtar, struck the sickening blow to remove Ntini.
For Cronje, Bob Woolmer, Ali Bacher and almost the whole squad for that matter, the moment was immediately clouded with blurred vision, spinning heads, dry throats and an empty, empty feeling in the pits of every stomach.
The second phase, as reformed gamblers and alcoholics know, was denial and then regret. For a few brief moments the heart refused to accept that the dagger had penetrated. Then the worst part; the “what ifs” and the “if onlys”.
But as Jonty Rhodes repeated his tears of the fourth evening when he was out for 85 and Brian McMillan silently chastised himself for attempting to hook when he had 54, and the top order hated themselves for leaving the team at 27 for five, Cronje was stealing himself to tell the greatest truth of all. South Africa should have won, despite anything and everything.
The umpiring was bloody awful. The unpalatable truth, however, is that officiating was a distant third amongst reasons that caused South Africa’s cricketers to lose a series as badly as their rugby counterparts did against the British Lions a year ago. Both lost 2-1 when they should have won 2-1, maybe even 3-0.
The umpiring did have an effect but the proof that it was not decisive lies in the answer to this question: could South Africa have won anyway, even with the incompetence of George Sharpe, Steve Dunne, Mervyn Kitchen and Javed Akhtar? The answer is yes. That is why Cronje pointed to the failure to bowl England out on the last two days in the third test and a meagre total of 208 in the second innings at Trent Bridge.
The second reason, more significant than the umpiring, was injuries. It is far easier to say with conviction that if Adam Bacher had been fit for the series, it would have impacted far more positively than if so-and-so had not been given out in such-and-such innings to a dodgy lbw.
The case is even stronger for Lance Klusener. Very few would argue against the notion that England’s heroic struggle (batting over 12 hours on days four and five constitutes a cricketing form of heroism, anyway!) would never have happened had Klusener not been injured for the entire second innings. Shaun Pollock, for that matter, did not even start the match.
But the most critical reason for the end of tour demise was, for want of a better word, fatigue. They are fit men, the South African cricket squad, but physical fitness has nothing to do with the mental strength required to maintain a “life” outside the game via long-distance telephone calls, faxes and e-mails (for the more advanced).
There is certainly no need or requirement for sympathy. These men are well paid to travel the world playing the game they love and stay in fine hotels (in England, anyway). But statistics would suggest that enough people reading this newspaper know what it is like to live out of a suitcase for a long weekend, a week, or even a fortnight.
This tour has lasted just over three months, so far, and we have another two weeks to go. It is not possible to single out any specific aspect of touring life that is harder than others, but the collective spirit was weak some time ago.
The difficulties of attempting to keep intimate relationships alive were supposed to be helped by helping wives and girlfriends to come on tour but the reality is very different. The girlfriends, no matter how long- standing, must stay in bed-and- breakfast establishments away from the team hotel, and for wives, the thrill of staying in a fancy hotel lasts about 48 hours; 12 hours if children are involved.
Since cricket tours began, life and society changed. A lot. Three- and four-month cricket tours are a sad relic from times gone by. The game is enough of a challenge with bat and ball without trying to live two, and sometimes three, different personal lives.
With the Test World Championship “just around the corner” in the words of Ali Bacher, the time has come to get rid of the relics and move forward. Five- Test series can easily be played in two months, and that is the longest that any tour need, and should, be.
Otherwise teams will continue to shrug their shoulders at the end of another lifetime away from home, whatever the result, and say: “Well, at least my wife hasn’t left me. And no one died while I was away.”