A young sportsman with the world at his feet threw his career away for his captain
Marianne Merten
The young man once described as South Africa’s sporting “wunderkind” could have represented his country in several sports. His first love, soccer, even stirred interest from overseas clubs, including Tottenham Hotspur. But parental advice and a knee injury, which ended his rugby flyhalf career in 1994, meant it had to be cricket for Herschelle Gibbs.
This week, however, the golf course became his refuge from the fall after his sensational revelations that Hansie Cronje offered to secure him $15E000 three months ago for scoring fewer than 20 runs at a one-day international in Nagpur.
It has been a career studded with records. In 1984 he became the youngest player ever to receive the Cricketer of the Year Award; he made his Western Province cricket debut at age 16 at Newlands; and he was the first schoolboy to score 100% in the Mobil coaching fielding exam. Now, he will also go down as the first South African cricketer to blow away Cronje’s flimsy defences in the match-fixing scandal.
Gibbs (26) is currently on a forced break from his international sporting career – which took off more than a decade ago, when he received a sports bursary to attend Cape Town’s prestigious Bishops College.
Academic pursuits were never his strong point; he once boasted that he had never read a book.
It was a Claremont street, which his parents passed while discussing possible names for their yet-to-be-born child in 1974, that inspired his moniker. An “-le” was added to Herschel Road for extra flair.
The freckle-faced opening batsman is no stranger to public scrutiny – it was he who threw the ball into the air and then dropped it in the 1999 World Cup game against the Australians. At the time much was made of his showboating, but it was blamed on an injured middle finger.
Gibbs’s dad Herman says his son always wanted to excel. Although he may have delivered a stunning overall performance on the field, be it in rugby or cricket, he would always remember a single move or shot.
“A glorious cover drive will stand out.
He will remember a single move,” Gibbs Snr says. “Herschelle got this burning desire not to do well, but to excel. That’s his nature.”
And perhaps this has been a driving force, coming from a family which has excelled in sports. His father was a Western Province sprinter and his sister Lucinda plays tennis at national level.
Herschelle Gibbs has been compared to the likes of Graeme Pollock and touted as a future Springbok rugby player, and has even made an honorary All Black after training with the New Zealand side in 1992.
When Gibbs tours the cricket world, his kit bag always includes a “good luck” cricket stump, men’s magazines, Baker’s biscuits and a discman. When international players like the West Indies are in town, Gibbs is not above taking them for a short-back-and-sides to his local old-style barber in Landsdowne.
On his regular visits there the topic of conversation is more likely to involve clubbing than sports, but he had donated a bat and the odd T-shirt.
“It is normal. He is like a regular customer,” says the barber, who is one year older than his client. “We speak about social life.”
Those who know Gibbs say he has always done his own thing. This determination, along with the well over half-a-million- rand income he received annually from the United Cricket Board over the past two years, has paved the way from homes in modest middle-class Alphindale and Diep River on the Cape Flats to a house in the upmarket High Cape on the slopes of Table Mountain in the city bowl.
The well-dressed Gibbs – who has taken to shaving his head in the past 18 months – is popular with the girls and no stranger to the Mother City nightlife. He is frequently seen at popular clubs that often feature jazz artists – West End and Galaxy in Athlone and Sirens in Claremont – which are also frequented by local soccer star Benni McCarthy.
In April, a night of clubbing until 3am on the eve of a deciding one-day international against Australia was blamed for his dismal total of five runs. The match came at the end of the tumultuous week in which the revelations about Cronje first broke.
News of his partying was followed by revelations of a three-year-old son. Although Gibbs has apparently only seen the toddler once, he has always paid up.
Gibbs has been fired from the upcoming tour of Sri Lanka and will face a disciplinary hearing. All of which will likely make the young sporting star look back with much regret at those offers he once turned down.