CRICKET
Peter Robinson
I had to turn off talk radio this week during the middle of a “discussion” on South African cricket, so misinformed, so blithely unaware were the participants. The Kerry Packer Revolution, for instance, was passed off as a sort of one-day circus dreamed up by Packer, organised by Tony Greig and staffed mostly by players about to be pensioned off by their countries.
Really? Australians and West Indians, who both had their Test teams whipped away from under their noses, might beg to differ. There was scarcely a mention of why Packer took on the cricket establishment in the first place (he needed to fill a local content quota and figured out, quite correctly, that six or seven hours of cricket a day was a lot cheaper than local drama, no matter how much he paid the players).
There was scarcely a mention, too, of the prevailing mood among the world’s best players who, simply put, were ripe for the plucking, so fed up were they with their lot.
All of this hazy ignorance was by no means as alarming as the claim, made by a current cricket union chairman, that too much was being made of the need for the national team to win consistently in order for the game to stay financially viable. After all, he said, look at the Springboks. They were having a terrible time of it on the field and yet rugby was still rolling in pots of money.
Perhaps he simply didn’t know that the South African Rugby Football Union is still living on the hog from the 10-year Sanzar deal, signed in the aftermath of South Africa’s World Cup triumph in 1995.
And what all of this seemed to point to was a consensus that, well, was winning really all that important anyway? If you’re talking about professional sport the short and long answers to this are: absolutely. And with next year’s World Cup in mind, more than a few sighs of relief have been heaved in South African cricket this week now that Shaun Pollock’s side have finally pulled their Australian tour back on to the rails.
If South Africa don’t win the 2003 Cricket World Cup it won’t necessarily constitute a crisis. But if the South Africans don’t do well, if they don’t compete, then no one will be able to ignore the obvious evidence that the game is in serious trouble.
Which is why both the fact and the manner of South Africa’s wins against Australia and New Zealand were so heartening. Many of the disciplines have returned and the intensity which has so characterised South African cricket for the past 10 years was in evidence again.
To an extent the presence of Jonty Rhodes lit the spark, but Rhodes alone has not transformed a previously ragged side. Several players have upped their own levels, most notably Makhaya Ntini, whose returns in the first two one-day internationals (ODI) scarcely did him justice.
A point that was almost overlooked in the fuss about his selection and then omission from the first two Tests is that the issue should not have been about a black bowler bowling poorly, but about a strike bowler bowling poorly by his own standards.
One theory, whispered by those who should know, was that he had gone off the boil since last season, perhaps believing that he had at last arrived as a regular in the side. If he was guilty of complacency, he may not have been the only one. Physiotherapist Craig Smith has acknowledged that this is by no means the fittest team to have represented South Africa.
My own view, for what it’s worth, is that it is no coincidence that Ntini lifted his game when he found himself in the same side as Allan Donald for the first time this summer in the Melbourne ODI against Australia. Ntini, I believe, has always measured his levels of performance against those of Donald. This would hardly be unusual. While bowlers often hunt in packs, there is almost inevitably competition within those groups.
I think Ntini, after the acclaim he justifiably received last summer, the Cricketer of the Year honour and whatever, needed something to get him going again. And I think Donald’s presence did that. If this is the case, then all the better for South Africa.
Even more so with Australia sliding to their third defeat in as many games yesterday. It isn’t half fun to see the world champions unsure of their best opening pair and unable to settle on their best bowling combination. Let’s enjoy it while we can.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa