still warm
Neil Manthorp Cricket
In ancient Muslim culture a man was required to marry his brother’s widow, in the event of his death, of course, within a month. Not much time for grieving, let alone getting to know each other. To those outside the culture, the practice might even seem a little crude.
There are good reasons for it, though. The unfortunate lady would not be required to fend for herself in a society that made women subservient, and the man would have, well, another wife to help with the chores and to keep his house in order.
While the South African cricket team was slipping towards that numbing death in the World Cup semi-final, its family was already planning the re-marriage. At the announcement on Tuesday of a series of home and away one day internationals between South Africa and Australia in April and September, it was confirmed, with some pride, that negotiations had started “literally within minutes” of the death, sorry, match.
Am I the only one to feel that a nation’s sporting grief, and shock, was being compromised? Not even a fortnight, or even a week to grieve.
Presumably Joost van der Westhuizen and John Eales will be lining their boys up against each other in a double header at Ellis Park and Stadium Australia each year to commemorate the “other” semi?
You know why the Australians are so happy to squeeze yet more money-making one-dayers into a schedule that is even tighter than South Africa’s? Because they have two teams!
A year-and-a-half ago their big chiefs decided to go ahead and create two teams. They dropped Ian Healy and were hated for it. Mark Taylor publicly criticised the system and eventually resigned, partly over the two-teams issue. There was lots of criticism, including relentless public disquiet and majority media disapproval, especially with the team losing, which they did often.
The original decision remained. Now Australia are world champions, the majority of their players are fresh entering every international and they have a pool of 22 players with international experience on whom to call. South Africa has 14.
Hansie Cronje spoke out against the two- teams approach from the moment it first appeared, and has maintained the “best team for every match” philosophy since his appointment as captain. The world series was definitely lost on the last tour of Australia because of this attitude and maybe, just maybe, it contributed towards the World Cup defeat.
Manchester United have three “first” teams, Australia’s cricketers have two “first” teams and we want to dominate the world with one. It is, admittedly, a damn fine first team and I’d bet my house on them beating anyone else in world cricket over five Tests or seven one-dayers (make that “at home”), provided they didn’t do anything else for three months beforehand and didn’t have to nurse themselves for a tour starting four days later.
But they can’t do it in Sharjah, Rajkot, Nairobi, Kandy, Adelaide, Toronto, Kuala Lumpur and Disneyland. They can’t play all the time. Not while remaining fit and winning.
South Africa don’t have to copy the Australian model. Let’s build our own. Instead of two teams, why not have nominated substitutes in key positions? Based on current form, for Jonty Rhodes or Hansie Cronje read Dale Benkenstein. The back-up fast bowlers are David Terbrugge, Mornantau Hayward, Roger Telemachus and Victor Mpitsang. Nic Pothas is the replacement for Mark Boucher, Boeta Dippenaar for Herschelle Gibbs.
Fast bowlers should be restricted to a maximum of 70% of matches, with a compulsory one out of five one-day series off. A similar, but less rigid criterion should exist with batsmen.
The administrators of the sport have a duty to make money, that is their job. So let’s spread the word – let’s go and play a triangular with Kenya and Israel in Tel Aviv. Bring on Bangladesh and Burkina Faso, but let’s have a system that allows us to pick different players and preserve our stars. And it’s funny how that will, soon enough, produce even more stars.
Otherwise we’ll keep getting killed at the point of glory and being forced to marry our ugly brother-in-law.