Andy Capostagno Cricket
A collective sigh of relief echoed through the corridors of power in the smaller unions this week when the United Cricket Board (UCB) decided not to impose a two-tier system on the Supersport Series. It was, by all accounts, the most conciliatory UCB meeting for years. The outcome was that, while note was taken of arguments in favour of a strength- against-strength system, the climate was felt to be not yet right for what would effectively have been a reversion to the old Currie Cup/Bowl system.
That means a reprieve for the likes of Border, Boland and Griquas, all of whom can now get on with the job of growing the game outside the major centres of population. For Griquas in particular it is a welcome reprieve. They have just secured new sponsorship courtesy of the cricket-mad Oppenheimer family, they are in the process of upgrading an already lovely ground at Kimberley Country Club and they have just signed two of the finest old men in South African cricket.
The Kepler Wessels era has finally come to an end at Eastern Province, but who is to say that a new Wessels era is not about to begin at Griquas? He is 41 now and can look back on more than two decades of defying the norm. His knee is beyond repair, yet he still drags himself home at the head of the field in pre-match jogs.
His method at the crease is fundamentally flawed yet he has scored more than 24E000 first-class runs at an average in excess of 50. Last year only HD Ackerman could keep up with the remarkable Wessels run-scoring prowess.
He will be joined in the Kimberley dressing room by Pat Symcox, another man for whom time appears to stand still. At the age of 38 Symcox is going home. When he began his career with Griquas in 1977 it was as a batsman who turned his arm over in the nets.
Cynics may suggest that upon his return few things have changed. Except that Symcox now has the kind of belief in his own batting ability that can move mountains, or perhaps more pertinently, dig big holes. And in addition to that, in his own mind he is now also the master of the off- spinner’s craft.
There are those who will suggest that the UCB’s idea of growing the game is in direct opposition to the idea that Griquas can sign a couple of old men to prop up their ailing side. Should those two places not have gone to promising youngsters? The answer is, probably not.
The presence of a pair of competitors like Wessels and Symcox cannot help but improve the overall games of the players alongside them. As good a judge as Hylton Ackerman believes that the future of South African wicket- keeping lies in the gloves of Griquas’s Wendell Bossenger. He can only make huge strides with the benefit of having Wessels standing next to him at first slip for the season.
But perhaps the principal reason for believing that Griquas are going to have a good season lies with the culture of success that has come to the diamond-mining town. Griquas rugby team under Andr Markgraaff have won the Vodacom Cup this year and they have a better-than-even chance of annexing the Currie Cup.
As a cricketing province, Griquas have produced their fair share of international players down the years, but have struggled to hang on to them. There is another good crop on the way and this time they may find the money and motivation to stay at home.
Rugby has belatedly discovered the benefits of taking the game to the minor provinces and the UCB must be commended for sticking to its guns. There will have been smiles all around the country, although few in the Cape, over North-West’s prodigious win against Western Province in the opening match of the Standard Bank League last week.
And on the same day Mike Rindel thumbed his nose at the national selectors, who had dropped him from the one-day squad, with a thunderous century against Free State. Gary Kirsten has a badly damaged finger and is being given three weeks to declare himself fit for the month-end one-day tournament in Pakistan.
Do the selectors really need reminding that there is a rather important Test series against the West Indies coming up? If not, why the dithering over a replacement for Kirsten in a well- paid, but essentially meaningless one- day thrash? Because Kirsten feels insecure and wants to play? What nonsense.
Rindel should be told now, not in three weeks, that he will open the batting for South Africa in Bangladesh. Like Wessels and Symcox, Rindel is a stopgap, not a long-term choice. But if all a man does is prepare himself for the future he never gets a chance to live in the present. Rindel is currently in rich form. Pick him.
ENDS