Cameron Duodu
Letter from the North
A former Conservative minister in Britain, Norman Tebbitt, once suggested that one yardstick by which the loyalty of British citizens could be measured was the support they gave to the English cricket team when England was playing against another country.
Like all armchair experts, Tebbitt, I am certain, had not set foot on a cricket ground for years before making his fatuous comment. To imagine that any sane person would pay money to cheer the stolid Geoffrey Boycott or Chris Broad against the stylish Michael Holding or Malcolm Marshall is to engage in fantasy.
Indeed, England has been played out of the current World Cup. Yet the stands are not empty anywhere, despite the best efforts of the English “summer” weather. For English cricket lovers are having a ball, enjoying perhaps the most brilliant cricket ever seen.
The carnival atmosphere often observed at matches is occurring in spite of the fact that the British cricket authorities have tried to drive out the “ordinary” cricket spectator with their ticket sales policy. This mainly favours corporate entertainers and the fan who possesses a credit card.
The game between India and Pakistan was an eye-opener. Despite the obstacles, it was packed full of noisy “ordinary” spectators. But it wasn’t only the partisan nationalists from Asia who enjoyed it. Ditto for the game between South Africa and Zimbabwe. English fans were always in the majority, proving that cricket is a game for all that.
I hope this World Cup will inspire the South African cricket authorities to redouble their efforts to discover and nurture black cricketers. It is absurd to find Kenya and Zimbabwe – both countries which have suffered from the same racist past as South Africa – being able to display other colours in their rainbow makeup, while South Africa is still only coated in lily-white livery. This is unfair to the excellent South African players, for many who would support them stop themselves, after remarking, “Ho? Are they still pursuing a racist policy?”
Okay, so Makhaya Ntini would have been there had he not fallen foul of a most foul crime. But why must it be either Ntini or no black?
Look at the name Zimbabwean bowler Henry Olonga made for himself in the game against India, in which he took three wickets in a single over to win the match almost single- handedly. What would the dreadlock-haired Olonga be today if Ian Smith and his cowboys still held sway in “Rhodesia”? A “blinking kaffir” looking after the cows of some white baas, no doubt.
Which reminds me: I wonder whether Ali Bacher’s crowd have caught up yet with a young lad I saw on the fringes of the Oppenheimer Cricket Ground in Midrand during a match between the West Indies and an Oppenheimer Eleven in 1993.
In between the Portakabins in which hot- dogs and soft drinks were being sold, I saw this guy of about 13 who was batting in front of stumps made from dead sticks picked up from the brush. He was holding whatever it was that passed for a bat with only one hand, while his other hand was ostentatiously placed at his back, immobile, as if deliberately tied to the place.
I found this ploy astonishing, and went to him when a ball he had dispatched was being collected. I asked, “Why are you batting with one hand placed at your back?”
He answered: “It’s because I am the professor of cricket, and I don’t need to bat with two hands like ordinary players!”
This made me very optimistic about South African cricket. I remembered how, in my childhood, I had won football matches for my country by dribbling Nigerian players from one end of the field to the other, before tapping the ball deftly under the open legs of the sprawling goalkeeper, while the enthralled crowd yelled, “Soooooliyaaah!”
Now, if you had a boy who thought he was too good to bat with two hands batting in your last over, needing 29 runs to the match, he would get there. For in his mind’s eye, he would see something like six sixes – just like he’d heard Garfield Sobers once made in one over.
Certainly, the most extravagant imaginations come from the poorest backgrounds. No games master is going to encourage anyone to bat with one hand tied to his back. It will be cancelled out as “unrealistic”. Can you imagine Viv Richards and Sobers retaining their flair if they had been taught cricket at a public school in England?
Another exhibitor of supreme self-confidence I encountered on a South African trip was Waqar Younis. I was sharing a hotel with the Pakistani team in Durban, and the morning after yet another deadly bout of tail-gobbling swing bowling by Waqar against South Africa, I asked him, “So when you eat up the tail so easily like that, how does it make you feel?”
Waqar’s answer, delivered with just the tiniest flicker of irritation at the question, was: “But I normally do this.”
Well, the World Cup is still in full swing. I rate South Africa’s chances of winning as quite high; they have lived down the defeat by Zimbabwe. India, Pakistan and Australia are, of course, the other favourites.
In fact, all the “super sixes” are playing exciting cricket. And as the crowds pour into the stands to watch the marvellous play – even though there is not so much as an Englishman at long leg – their yells of delight will undoubtedly be one in the eye for the Norman Tebbitt school of cricket quackology.