Batting rather than bowling is now South Africa’s strength Peter Robinson Herschelle Gibbs started the year with a duck. He ends it with more than 1 000 Test runs to his name (and still two Tests against Australia to come in this calendar). In many respects the re-emergence of Gibbs has mirrored a gradual shift in South African cricket, both on and off the field. Gibbs came back into the South African team for the New Year Test match against Sri Lanka at Newlands after serving a six-month ban for agreeing to accept a bribe from Hansie Cronje to underperform. He was chosen for the Newlands Test which started two days after his ban expired amid some controversy and was out second ball. He made one against Sri Lanka at Centurion and eight in the first innings of the Georgetown Test against the West Indies. Then came that slice of luck that all players need. He had two in the second innings when he was dropped at slip before going on to make an unbeaten 83. He has scarcely looked back since, finishing his year at home with centuries in the first and second Test matches against India. In between all this, Gibbs managed to involve himself in a dope-smoking incident in the West Indies. He was fortunate not to have a suspended sentence from a previous transgression invoked and instead the United Cricket Board (UCB) opted to pack him off for”life-skills” training. To be fair to those at the UCB who have had a curate’s egg of a year, this last may prove to have been a stroke of genius. Gibbs has played quite magnificently since his time with Morne du Plessis and company and with Gary Kirsten and Jacques Kallis in the best form of their lives, South Africa have had a top three to rival any in the world. Which, it hardly needs to be said, breaks a pattern evident throughout the last decade of the 20th century when the side depended, sometimes almost exclusively, on their bowling to get them through. That South Africa have chosen to go to Australia for the cricket world heavyweight championship with two fast bowlers in their mid-30s, neither of whom has played a Test match this summer, speaks volumes for the changing character of the national side. Of course, it might have looked different had Mfuneko Ngam been available. From virtually nowhere, Ngam burst onto the stage last summer. Shy and unassuming, he was the real deal an authentic fast bowler, someone, it seemed, capable of stepping into Allan Donald’s shoes. More to the point, Ngam was an African player who set white pulses racing. More than Gibbs, more than Paul Adams and more than Makhaya Ntini, Ngam appeared as the bridge between the old and the new. With just three Test caps under his belt, he was honoured as one of South Africa’s Cricketers of the Year and the prospect of him bowling against the mighty Australians sent a shiver down the spine. And then he broke down. It remains to be seen whether Ngam will play Test cricket again, indeed whether he will ever bowl genuinely fast again. If he doesn’t, the difficult and uneasy process of transformation may take a few years longer to run its course.
Even as the South African team swaggered through the West Indies before returning home to score hundreds of runs against Zimbabwe and then brush aside India, there were rumblings and ructions off the field. The South Africans, it must be said, have had a splendid year, well led by Shaun Pollock. If this is not the best combination since readmission, it is only because Donald and Ngam have, for the most part, not been available. But in the board room, not to mention the court room, matters were far more complicated. Cronje made an attempt to re-establish himself, marrying a challenge to his life ban with a charm offensive that proved, if nothing else, that many South Africans are more readily persuaded by style than content. In the end, Cronje was sent packing again by the Pretoria High Court, but this, almost certainly, will not be the last of him. There was also an ugly challenge to Percy Sonn’s presidency of the UCB mounted by a relative newcomer to cricket, Mtutulezi Nyoka. There were significant racial and political undertones to Nyoka’s campaign, a point he confirmed after Sonn’s re-election. The obvious downside of this is that the dream of non-racialism remains as elusive as ever. Still, given that this applies to all things South African, cricket can hardly be singled out. Sonn largely kept his belligerence in check and as a result had a good year for the most part. Gerald Majola still seems to be taking time finding his feet as the new UCB chief executive, but both men emerged from the St George’s Park shambles with more credit than they received. In an almost impossible situation, Sonn and Majola trod a middle path as they persuaded India not to pull out of the tour, averted a huge financial loss and came out of the other side with South African cricket more or less intact. Some, in fact, would argue that not only are South Africa now well positioned to push for a complete overhaul of the match referee system, but also that by going ahead with the unofficial”Test” at Centurion they staved off a split in world cricket. Inevitably, the International Cricket Council and India came to a compromise to allow the Mohali Test to proceed and much of the criticism of the UCB over the affair has missed the point. Some of it, in fact, has been downright silly. It is difficult, for instance, to take Clive Rice’s new-found concern for the well-being of the ICC and international cricket all that seriously. Rice, after all, was happy to sign up for the Kerry Packer circus and played a central part on the field during the rebel tours to South Africa. Even so, there are pressing concerns for South African cricket, even before the World Cup lands here. Transformation continues apace, but the UCB needs to remember that the process is part of a whole and not an end in itself. The cricketing public (and that includes the sponsors and television) will always see South African cricket in terms of performances and not it terms of how well it has transformed itself. The first-class system, in its present state, is unsustainable (and it ought to be a matter of huge concern that Gauteng are enduring another dismal season). There are plans to revamp the first-class game, reducing the number of teams to seven, and even though some provinces North West, for example fear being swallowed by larger neighbours, the sooner this takes place the better.
Most importantly, the administrators and the players need to close the distance between each other. It would be stretching the point to call it a rift, but an”us-and-them” mentality has emerged, one not helped by the confusion in the national selection panel. In this last respect, consider this: if Graeme Pollock was not a selector, would anyone on the panel know what the national players were thinking? Answers on a postcard to Rushdi Magiet.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa