Peter Robinson cricket
In many respects Daryll Cullinan is living proof of cricket’s enduring ability to incorporate difficult buggers into a team context. Try as you might, you’d be hard-pressed to get even his closest friends to describe him as easy-going or happy-go-lucky.
He’s a prickly man. He harbours grudges and perceived slights. He can be introverted and moody, sometimes too much so for his own good. He is suspicious of strangers and takes time to trust people. He does not suffer those he believes to be fools gladly.
And yet, by the same token, he’s intensely loyal to those close to him (and that includes team-mates of vastly different personality). He has, over the past decade, demonstrated far more courage, physically and emotionally, than anyone gives him credit for. Mostly, though, Cullinan is driven by pride in his craft.
He is conscious of his talent and it is this self-awareness that has made him the best South African batsman of his generation.
Cullinan’s form in the Caribbean has been simply outstanding. He has claimed the man of the match awards in the past two Test matches and it would not be overstating the case to argue that but for his two centuries and two fifties, South Africa might be one behind in the series rather than one up.
And yet, as always seems the case with Daryll Cullinan, the praise has come grudgingly. When he was dismissed by a perfect leg break from Dinanath Ramnarine in the first Test all the old theories about his weakness against leg-spin came slithering into the open again.
It is true Ramnarine has accounted for Cullinan more often than any other bowler in this series. At the same time, he’s probably bowled more balls at Cullinan than any other bowler. Cullinan’s chief weakness is his strength. He plays his shots, he wants to dominate the bowling and he hates to be bogged down.
As often as not Cullinan has got himself out in this series, but when you consider that he’s scored more than 400 runs in between dismissals, he’s not done half bad.
He has another four innings to reach 500 for the series. When you consider how comfortable he has looked at the crease (only Shaun Pollock has played with similar ease), it should be a doddle.
All of which, however, begs the question of Cullinan’s future. There has been speculation that because he has accepted a county contract this winter his future as a Test player may be in doubt. Cullinan himself has opined that he doesn’t quite know when he will get out of cricket, but it might not be a bad thing to go when he’s on top of his game.
Whatever the case, Cullinan has always responded better to praise than to threats. It might be no bad thing for someone to listen to him sympathetically and then remind him that he still has a point to prove to the Australians. Cullinan craves respect and if he could persuade the Australians that he is a good player, his career would be complete.
Just in passing, and with Ramnarine’s antics in the closing minutes of the third Test in mind, here’s a thought: it would take just one match referee to ban just one player for unbecoming conduct for just one game and you wouldn’t have to worry about blatant time-wasting again.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa (www.cricket.co.za)
@Making of a Mexican legend
Marco Antonio Barrera is a model professional capable of conquering the flash Prince
John Rawling
In 1982 few 23-year-old Mexicans could afford to drive a Porsche, but there were not many who begrudged the brilliant Salvador Sanchez his rewards for an already awesome career in the ring. He had just defended his world featherweight title for the ninth time, beating the Ghanaian Azumah Nelson, and was being spoken of in reverential terms as one of the greats.
Sanchez was on top of the world, smart and articulate outside the ring, and planning to study as a doctor once his boxing days were over. But that was for the future. Now he was behind the wheel of his gleaming white sports car, roaring through the Mexican countryside, on his way to a training camp where he would prepare for his next fight.
The young man pumped the accelerator and pulled out to overtake a truck only to slam head-on into another lorry coming in the other direction. When the rescue services arrived his body was identified in the wreckage only from the papers he was carrying in his wallet.
Marco Antonio Barrera was then just eight years old but already Sanchez was his hero. Sanchez was no one-punch knockout thug but an intelligent boxer and a wonderful technician; immensely fit, brave, and a man who would take time to see what outstanding opponents such as Nelson had to offer before finding the necessary solution.
As Barrera nears completion of his preparations for the fight he believes can establish him as a modern Mexican legend, the image of Sanchez still stands above all others as the role model he seeks to emulate when he takes on “Prince” Naseem Hamed on Saturday at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
“Julio Cesar Chavez was one of the great champions. I liked him but Sanchez was the best,” said Barrera when asked to rank the formative influences on his career. The impression is that the macho-man appeal of Chavez is not what he is about. Barrera is a thoughtful and meticulous man of discipline and he would wish to be ranked alongside Sanchez if, as he believes, his seven weeks in training camp have given him the hunger and conditioning to go alongside his unquestionable talent to beat Hamed.
The Las Vegas oddsmakers have made Hamed the favourite, but there is no shortage of respected judges who say Barrera is more than capable of springing an upset, among them Emanuel Steward who, as Hamed’s trainer, has a vested interest to hype up the fight but also seems to possess a genuine concern that Hamed is facing his toughest night.
The career of Naseem Hamed has been a masterpiece of marketing and shrewd match-making. Fight the big names but wait until they are on the way down; witness former champions Tom Johnson and Kevin Kelley. Take on live fighters, but from lower weight divisions; step forward Wayne McCullough and Vuyani Bungu. Talk about the real threats, rattle sabres by all means, but leave those fights as talk.
Barrera would be one who would have remained safely in the “talk them up, but don’t actually fight them” category were it not for the influence of Hamed’s American paymaster, the cable network HBO, which insisted that it was not prepared to cough up $5-million or more for Hamed to fight any more pushovers after the outclassed Augie Sanchez was predictably blasted out in his last fight in August.
By then Barrera had convinced the world that he had earned the right to meet Hamed by clearly doing enough to win an epic struggle against his fellow Mexican Erik Morales in Las Vegas the previous February. Inexplicably the judges gave Morales the verdict but the boxing world was outraged and Barrera has now rightly been given the chance of his life.
“I was very sad in the changing room after the Morales fight but my dad said the crowd thought that I had won. And then when I came out into the hotel all the fans were telling me I won and I had to spend two hours signing autographs. It was a very beautiful moment,” he said.
Like many of his fellow countrymen, Barrera went into the professional game early. Although only 27 years old he has been beating up men for money for 12 years and is a veteran of 56 contests only three of which he has lost.
“I definitely feel I beat Morales, and I showed that I am someone who should be considered one of the best. Naz is one of the best as well, so I feel very motivated. But I have watched many videos of him fighting, and have been analysing his weaknesses. Can I take his power? Definitely. And I hope he makes as many mistakes as he did against Sanchez because if he does it will be a quick fight.”
Somehow it is no surprise that whereas Hamed has chosen to prepare in a luxury property which once belonged to Bing Crosby in the millionaires’ playground of Palm Springs, Barrera has based himself in a more traditional training camp at Big Bear in the snowy mountains of California.
Fresh from pounding out yet more miles on the snow-covered tracks after pulling himself from his bed in a spartan log cabin, Barrera said: “It is one of the best camps I have ever had. Everything is right. This is a very big fight for me, and a big night for Mexico, one of the biggest ever.”
For a series of political reasons, too tedious to relate here, only the lightly regarded International Boxing Organisation is sanctioning this as a featherweight world title fight. Not that it matters, because the pugilistic world knows this is a contest with the necessary ingredients and uncertainties to be ranked as a genuine match determining who is the world’s best.
Perhaps the biggest question mark is whether, as WBO champion of the super-bantamweight division, Barrera is able to prosper in Hamed’s featherweight league. But he said: “I feel well at the weight. I have been weight training to build up muscle. But it has not been a difficult process and I feel very confident all the work will come to a good conclusion.”
He may well be right, but Barrera is an intelligent man and a student of the game. Doubtless he will recall a fight 20 years ago in Las Vegas when the brilliant Puerto Rican super-bantamweight champion Wilfredo Gomez was tempted to step up to featherweight in pursuit of money and glory in a “super fight” of the time. Gomez was as good as they come, with blinding hand speed and every move in the book, but he was stopped in eight rounds.
It demonstrated the old boxing adage that “a good big ‘un will almost always beat a good little ‘un” and it also meant the man who beat Gomez was assured of a place in Mexican sporting folklore. The winner was one Salvador Sanchez.
Deon Potgieter reports that two of the best featherweights in the world will be in action in Las Vegas this weekend and although they won’t be facing each other this time round, chances are they will in the near future.
Following Mbulelo Botile’s demolition of Paul Ingle in December last year to win the International Boxing Federation (IBF) featherweight world title, which saw Ingle rushed to hospital in a critical condition, Hamed said he would like to fight Botile to avenge Ingle.
Botile defends his title against Frankie Toledo on Friday night. Toledo lost a 12-round decision to current World Boxing Union featherweight world champion Cassius Baloyi in 1996. He’s known as a busy fighter, but with only 15 knockouts in 39 wins with five losses and a draw he’s clearly no banger.