He wouldn’t want to acknowledge this publicly, but the most anxious person at Newlands this weekend will be groundsman Christo Erasmus.
Come 8.30pm on Saturday, Erasmus will have around 5 000 dancers, singers and entertainers, not to mention comedian Marc Lottering, leaping about his turf for two hours during the official 2003 Cricket World Cup opening ceremony.
The playing surface will be completely covered for the ceremony, but Scott won’t know what damage, if any, has been done to his field. In a cricketing sense, the wisdom of staging the opening ceremony and the opening match on the same surface inside 24 hours may be open to question, but with a worldwide television audience estimated at 1,4-billion expected to tune in on Saturday night and a budget of R30-million set aside for the spectacular, compromises have had to be made.
Cricket World Cups have had opening ceremonies of varying scale for the past few tournaments. In 1992, with most of the teams spread around Australia, a few floats trundled around Auckland’s Eden Park with the odd ex-player representing the various countries (South Africa’s man on the float was Clive Rice, whose omission from the squad had caused a fairly boisterous uproar around the Wanderers).
In 1996, a spectacular at Calcutta’s Eden Gardens flopped because wind ruined the light show and the announcer kept forgetting which teams he was supposed to be introducing.
Three years later at Lord’s the first match of the tournament between England and Sri Lanka was preceded by another relatively low-key affair which was quickly got out of the way to allow the cricket to start, but Newlands tomorrow night will offer the biggest spectacular the sport (and the continent) has seen.
It’s African themed, of course, and for a couple of hours Newlands will be transformed, by smoke and mirrors, into an African glade, complete with water holes, wild life and San hunters. There will be celebrities, singers, politicians, Cape minstrels, dancers and the squads of all 14 competing nations.
And, of course, there is the poor old groundsman, Christo Erasmus who has had to spend this week trying to prepare his pitch around dress rehearsals.
It is not known whether he intends to watch the opening ceremony. In similar circumstances, many reasonable men might seek the solace of a darkened room and a good bottle of whisky.