South Africa’s journey towards the 2003 world cup starts on Monday in one of cricket’s more exotic outposts, Morocco. It hardly needs to be said that the route to the Wanderers next March 23 will be a tortuous one, nor should anyone be under the illusion that home advantage somehow guarantees South Africa success.
During the past three World Cups the tournament has been won only once by a host country — Sri Lanka in 1996. And the Sri Lankans, as one of three co-hosts, had to travel to Lahore to win it.
Success or failure should not be judged by whether the home team actually wins the world cup at its fourth attempt. The South Africans should coast through the first phase and will be expected to negotiate the second, or Super Six, round. Thereafter, it all becomes a lottery.
In the condensed, highly charged world of the semifinals and final, matches can as easily be won or lost by good or bad luck as by skill and determination. A dropped catch here, a dodgy decision there or a missed single can decide the event as the South Africans know all too well.
South Africa should make the World Cup semis, but we may yet be forced to look off the field for a more sharply focused definition of success or failure. The longer the stand-off between Minister of Sport and Recreation Ngconde Balfour and the United Cricket Board (UCB) continues, the more threatened are South Africa’s hopes of staging the most successful world cup yet.
It is an absurd situation that a well-meaning body should not be able to talk civilly to its sports minister — one of whose most recent antics was to dismiss ”contemptuously” an invitation to the UCB’s meeting last weekend.
The UCB has now engaged in a war of words with the minister over the composition of the task force he has set up to investigate cricket’s quotas, but his entire approach to the issue appears to be based on the view that bullying and bluster is what cricket needs. Why this should be the case is difficult to say, as is the question of why cricket has been singled out for special treatment.
We must assume that the prospect of a world cup, with its attendant world-wide attention, appeals to the minister’s sense of self-importance, but it would be folly of the worst kind if ego were to harm a wonderful opportunity for South Africa to parade itself to the world.