Neil Manthorp CRICKET
For those with an unquenchable thirst for one-day cricket, a reliable alarm clock and a subscription to M-Net today represents nirvana. With Hansie Cronje attempting to take the five-match series against India into a deciding fifth game from 5:30am and Gauteng attempting to reach their second final of the season, fans can enjoy/ endure somewhere in the region of 13 hours of the game.
Cronje has lived up to his pre-tour promise to play the game with a smile on his face, although Captain Thunderbrow might return if things go as badly in game four as they did in the first two matches. Somehow that doesn’t seem likely, though.
Like it or not, the reality of what Cronje and his team are going through at the moment is this: the bigger the party and the later the night, the bigger the mess in the morning and the bigger the hangover with which to clear it up. The Test victories represented the biggest party of the year.
Of many years, in fact.
Gauteng, however, have the luxury of following their own party with another one – treating the hangover with Bucks Fizz, a hair-of-the-dog, if you like. Their all-conquering season reaches the beginning of the end with the second Standard Bank semi-final against Eastern Province at the Wanderers, and with the Supersport Series trophy safely tucked away in the boardroom after a near-epic final against Border, the chance of a “double” is inevitably on the team’s collective mind.
“You can’t help wondering if it’s the only chance you’ll get [to do the double],” admits Adam Bacher. “If it’s the chance of a lifetime then you want to make sure you’re ready to take it.”
Bacher’s stint in charge of Gauteng, in Clive Eksteen’s absence, invigorated the opener and provided him with a fresh perspective and renewed enthusiasm as the prospect of an international recall stagnated. “There are certainly pressures but that’s no bad thing. You can only benefit by testing yourself in pressure situations and seeing how you cope.”
By general consensus, he coped very well. “It took me three or four games to get used to it. When you suddenly realise that you’ve got 36 minutes left in an innings and you have to bowl 11 overs it dawns on you how little you were involved when you stood at backward point minding your own business!”
After so many years of underachievement, Gauteng are suddenly going to sweep all before them – maybe. So is it the beginning of a golden era with Bacher eventually taking over from Eksteen on a full-time basis and keeping the trophy cabinet gloriously stocked year after year?
“Well, actually I’m more concerned that it’s the end of an era,” Bacher says. “Ken Rutherford is retiring and we’re losing talented young players just when we need them to take their place in the side. Neil McKenzie is at Northerns and Grant Elliott went to Griquas. It’s difficult to keep a squad together. Players want to play regularly and they will move in order to get a game.”
It is another reason that so many high- profile ex-players continue to bemoan the fact that South Africa’s first-class structure continues, and struggles, to support 11 provinces. A “strength versus strength” system with five or six provinces would enable those sides to develop and maintain a squad with suitable depth of talent.
Be that as it may, if Daryll Cullinan is fit to play then there will be no shortage of talent on display. Rutherford, Cullinan, Kenny Benjamin, David Terbrugge, Bacher, Andrew Hall and Eksteen are all internationals (and Nic Pothas is as good as any), while EP boast Meyrick Pringle, Dave Callaghan and Mark Rushmere as existing internationals, with Justin Kemp and Garnett Kruger as future internationals.
Meanwhile, Cronje and his smiling troop do battle in Baroda. It took a couple of matches and several rude slaps in the face, but the Test series hangover has now gone. The basic disciplines of one- day cricket that served the team so well over the past couple of years were compromised by overconfidence with the ball in defending 300 in Cochin, and then with the bat in sliding to 199 all out in Jamshedpur. It won’t happen again in Baroda. We can expect the series to be decided in the final match on Sunday … then it all starts again in Sharjah!
So here’s to the glut: 5.30am to 10.30pm with a couple of hours in between to squeeze in a spot of lunch and make sure the beer fridge is stocked for the week end. As odd as it sounds, the domestic match seems far, far more important. If the battle of Baroda is lost then … so what? We won the Test series. But for Bacher, and for Rutherford and Benjamin, and Callaghan and Rushmere and everyone else starting or finishing their careers, the Wanderers is very important today. And if you see Bacher nervously glancing at the pavilion clock while Gauteng are in the field, you’ll know why.