Official estimates for the attendance at last week’s Currie Cup final vary, but you probably wouldn’t be too far off the mark if you settled on a crowd of 62 000. You’ll be lucky if you get more than 62 through the gate on Friday morning for cricket’s equivalent — the first day of the Supersport Series final between Easterns and Western Province at Willowmoore Park.
Which would be a pity. Although you might be hard pressed to describe this summer’s truncated first-class season as ideal, it has at least thrown up a final that offers a fascinating contrast in styles, skills and cultures.
It is so tempting to see this final as a clash between the aristocrats of Cape Town and the East Rand boytjies that I won’t bother to resist. Even without Jacques Kallis, officially the world’s top all-rounder, the Province top five will feature four batsmen who have have played Test cricket within the past two weeks, with three of them scoring hundreds. Gary Kirsten has twice reached 150 and Graeme Smith’s maiden Test century was a double-hundred.
At six Province will have Neil Johnson, who would surely still be playing regular international cricket had he so chosen. It’s a top six as good as, if not better, than most current Test sides.
And yet you can’t for a moment imagine that Easterns are about to turn up at their home ground just to make up the numbers. Aggressive, abrasive and confrontational, they are a team moulded very much in the image of their coach Ray Jennings, who might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but who has transformed Easterns from no-hopers into contenders.
A compulsive seeker after success, Jennings respects neither convention nor political correctness. This is not to say he deliberately flouts rules and regulations, but let’s say, if he were a loose forward, he’d constantly hover around, about or just over the off-sides line, just to establish exactly what he could get away with.
If nothing else, Province will expect a scrap in Benoni over the next few days. This is not to disparage Easterns as cricketers. Andre Nel, Andrew Hall and Derek Crookes have all been on the fringes of the international game without fully establishing themselves, but the fact is that in this instance the whole tends to be greater than the sum of its parts.
Province, then, will start as overwhelming favourites, but they’ll have to battle every inch of the way. Which is as it should be. Last summer’s final proved to be an exercise in stupefying tedium even if, as KwaZulu-Natal argued, they bagged the trophy and played within the rules.
The game, though, did little to enhance the stature of a sport that is not in the most robust of health in this country, either at international or provincial level.
It would be stretching a point to argue that this match will be a fight for the soul of South African cricket, but an Easterns victory will have re- established qualities like spirit and teamwork and defiance that were too often lacking against Australia last summer. Much the same qualities, in fact, as demonstrated by the Blue Bulls at Ellis Park last Saturday.