In an age defined by the staggering amounts of information sloshing about, it is remarkable how many questions, abroad and at home, remain unanswered. How many doppelgängers does Saddam have? Do they have to pass crash courses in trilby hat maintenance and random rifle shooting into the sky at rallies? Must they possess their own moustaches or are chinchilla lip-toupees provided gratis? How did Heinz Winckler, a fellow with all the glamour of a bag of wet cement, become a pop idol? What has since happened to him? Has he been recruited as a Saddam double?
If so, when and for how long is the United States Air Force planning to bomb Baghdad, and can I come and watch?
One truth, however, has remained unshakable throughout the year: you can’t keep a good medieval French mystic down. Yet again that pesky prescient Michel Nostradamus has proved that you can fool most of the people all of the time. It’s a licence to print money. Then shall come a great thunder, and the waters shall rise and sweep the unclean away. To me that sounds like flushing the loo, but if your tastes run to the more apocalyptic … women and children first. And be honest: you thought that quatrain was real (which it isn’t). That’s the beauty of the old fellow. Nobody’s going to read all 25-million quatrains. I bet not even Nostradamus’s mum and dad managed to get further than page seven. (‘Come on son, make yourself useful for a change and tell us what happens in the end.â€) But when the cry of jihad goes up, the doom-laden quatrains fly off the shelves and suddenly entirely new manuscripts by the Gallic bestseller are discovered, wrapped in oilcloth in the musty rafters of ancient publishing firms in Park Avenue, and the new editions pour out as fast as they are devoured: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Fiery Nuclear Death But Were too Afraid to Ask; Bush Is from Texas, Saddam Is from Hell; The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for Dummies et cetera.
Unfortunately this monument to ambiguity is utterly useless to those more interested in battles of the non-thermonuclear variety: it seems the old man just wasn’t interested in sport (understandably, as to him it was all a highlights package and there’s only so much of that a self-respecting psychic monk can take, even purged of SuperSport adverts); but alas, he told us nothing about the games we play, and those wanting to divine the outcomes of sports events have had to meet with shadowy fellows called ‘John†or ‘Banjo†between prayer meetings and team talks. But what if he had turned his gaze upon the little sport of cricket in South Africa? What would he have seen for 2002 and 2003?
The relevant quatrain would have been poetic but stern: the marsupial menace shall migrate westward after stuffing the Proteas 3-0 and stuff the Proteas all over again. How is this possible, our incredulous band of supporters would have demanded, when we have Black Thunder, the Alice Kid, raring to sling some heat in tandem with White Lightning? Indeed, speed merchant Mfuneko Ngam was reportedly doing splendidly after it was discovered last season that his bones are made of a unique compound of Waterford crystal, damp tissue paper and uncooked spaghetti. Tidings of glad news were pouring in every day: Ngam’s bowling off a two-yard run-up with a Slazball! Ngam’s bowling off a three-yard run-up and nearly hit Jacques Kallis on the helmet after Kallis bent down to tie his shoelace! Ngam’s bowling off a four-yard run-up, and is quicker than Dennis Lillee (even if Dennis is turning 54 next year) …
Naturally it was subsequently discovered that a fourth component — medieval Florentine stained glass — had not been taken into account in Ngam’s bones, and the sound of raucous Australian laughter could be heard over the whine of the Qantas jumbo taxiing to a stop in Johannesburg as the local media tried to suggest that the tourists were in for a closer fight. As it turned out there was only one unknown in the series: whether or not Adam Gilchrist’s swatted six in Johannesburg would hit the sponsor’s billboard and win him a gold bar. That moment at the Wanderers summed up the series; Australia playing a game all by themselves, measured only against records they had already broken. One didn’t need to be a soothsayer to see a wasteland of ball-chasing beyond the retirement of Donald and Pollock as the tourists made 652 for 7 declared in their first Test innings on South African soil: stand-in captain Mark Boucher kept clapping his gloves together, safe in the knowledge that they weren’t going to be feeling a ball in them for days.
Almost a season later, only fleeting memories remain in the South African subconscious: Matthew Hayden eating orphans for breakfast, Adam Gilchrist setting fire to convents, Shane Warne herding blind pensioners over cliffs. But one thing is carved in stone for eternity (or for at least two seasons, which in sport is the same thing): South Africa will never beat the ‘real†Australia in a Test series or a World Cup, the Australia of the Waughs, Warne and Glenn McGrath, the Australia that kept Hansie Cronje up at night when he was still young and naive enough to believe that sporting pride meant anything, the Australia that left Donald and Klusener stranded and thunderstruck in The Match That Shall Not Be Mentioned at Edgbaston. You’ll never take me alive, sang the jolly swagman in Waltzing Matilda, and, true to his word, he will jump into the billabong of retirement before South Africa has another crack at him. Well done, you crafty buggers, and well played.
Indeed, that unbeatable force of the 1990s has already begun to disband. In October 2002 the Australian selectors did what the US Air Force — so relentlessly pursuing Heinz Winckler across the Euphrates — had refrained from: they dropped The Bomb on Afghanistan. Mark Waugh, nicknamed after the blighted country before it became known as Talibanland (because Mark is the Forgotten Waugh, geddit?), was axed from the team. No longer will he adorn Test matches with his elegance and aloofness, his unparalleled virtuosity through the leg side and his supernatural anticipation and silkiness in the slips. Thank God. Nobody likes an overachiever.
While on the subject of overachievers, if Nostradamus had hinted that Minister of Sports Ngconde Balfour would reveal a new facet to his personality in 2002, it would have come as a welcome relief to the millions of us who have always suspected, against all odds, that his looks were not his only asset. Indeed, Balfour gave a glimpse of his esoteric nature when he inquired, ‘Who is Jacques Kallis?†In the face of such profound existential interrogation, Kallis could have countered with ‘I average 50, therefore I am,†but he was too busy being the best all-rounder in the world to formulate a thorough response. (Spurred on by this philosophical success, Monsignor Balfour is reportedly working on a refutation of the accountability of politicians, based on the premise Re vera, cara mea, mea nil refert, roughly translated as ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a shit.â€)
Nostradamus would certainly not have been complicit in such scatological stinginess if he had turned his gaze towards the Cricket World Cup. What a show it will be! True, it has been declared a federal crime to smuggle beer into the grounds (we wouldn’t want the Bacchanalian revelries after the Namibia-Canada spectacular at the Piet Pompies Municipal Oval to degenerate into anything unbefitting of the occasion), and the Pepstapo, Pepsi’s secret police, will be on hand to attach electrodes to your nether regions should you even comtemplate enjoying The Pause That Refreshes, but who needs civil liberties when the boys are back in town?
Already Topsport is dusting off its brigade of commentators (many of whom can clearly remember the Crimean War), flushing Gilbey’s through their carburettors in readiness for the big day when they must hit top gear, mispronouncing every Asian surname longer than two syllables while getting bogged down in murky generalisations about West Indies fast bowlers and how much rhythm they have. In soundproof booths in the subterranean SuperSport bunker, technicians are testing various Bon Jovi and Aerosmith ballads on lab rats, noting whether or not there is enough time to play an entire song with accompanying super-slow-motion action shots before the animal’s brain liquefies and trickles out of its nose. And away in the dreaming spires of Illovo, the good doctor Ali Bacher is penning his opening ceremony speech, saying how delahded he is that Safrican Grigd should have the graidonner of hostin’ such a tournament …
Perhaps if Nostradamus had taken a glimpse into the happier side of the future, and looked at puppies and Marilyn Monroe and cricket matches instead of plague and war, he might have chucked in the whole soothsaying bit once and for all, to keep bees or brew beer in his garage. As it is, he left us nothing but hearsay and hope for the future of our little sport. Have you heard the news? Ngam has moved on to solid food and soon might be bowling off a two-yard run-up with a Slazball! Depending on the prevailing wind.