On the potholed road that leads to Langa Cricket Club there is little outward sign that it is home to one of the World Cup’s unlikeliest venues. Three official World Cup flags flutter in a warm breeze blowing across the Cape Flats, but the broken glass on the roadside and the razor-wire that tops the whitewashed wall of the ground do not suggest a grand cricketing heritage.
Step inside, however, and the contrast with the sprawling poverty of the rest of Langa, South Africa’s oldest planned township, could not be more marked. A verdant outfield stretches for 150 metres to a tidy brick pavilion and a small, freshly painted grandstand. In the middle the groundsman is on his hands and knees easing a weed from the pitch.
It is a scene that would not be out of place in one of Cape Town’s plush white suburbs. That it should stand in one of the most deprived quarters, in the shadow of a power station and hard by a motorway, makes it all the more remarkable.
The World Cup is the reason for the relative riches of the club. The tournament’s director, Ali Bacher, made the development of cricket in deprived areas a priority. While all the games in the tournament proper will be played at wealthier venues such as nearby Newlands — where black South Africans were banned from playing for many years — warm-up games were scheduled for deprived areas. Langa was one.
The club, the oldest black African cricket side in Cape Town and the only one now playing in the Western Province premier league, played host to a warm-up match between World Cup minnows Holland and Western Province B. It was the club’s second international visit in five years. In 1998 West Indies B played here in front of 6,000 people.
For the Holland match World Cup organisers provided R70 000 rand to improve the pitch and the outfield. Bacher’s hope is that improvements such as these, as well as 50 new grass ovals planned for deprived areas across the country, will provide a positive legacy from the tournament.
Eric Dilima, a former South African schools cricketer who now runs township tours from his home in Harlem Avenue near the ground, has watched the club grow. Cricket has been played in the township since its foundation in 1927, but not until 1976, when the disparate clubs merged to form Langa CC, did a single side represent its people.
”When the club started in 1976 the club had just one side that played here,” Dilima said. ”Now there are three senior sides, with the first team playing in the premier league, and eight junior teams. We also have 500 kids who come here to play mini-cricket.
”Cricket has always been a big part of life in Langa. In my street you could find 11 good cricketers right now. Three of us from this street alone have played for South African schools, including Thami Tsolekile, who is a regular for South Africa A and the Western Province first team.”
Tradition
There has always been a strong cricketing tradition among the Malay and other ”coloured” communities. Basil D’Oliveira, whose selection for England in 1969 led to the apartheid boycott, was from the Cape. Despite their exclusion cricket thrived among these communities.
Not so among the black Africans. Despite the oasis of Langa the feeling remains that black Africans are at the bottom of the pile in cricket, as in the rest of South African society.
A report commissioned by the sports minister, Ngconde Balfour, last year concluded that despite the work of the United Cricket Board of South Africa, the community is still marginalised in the game. As if to prove the point, Makhaya Ntini was the only black African to take the field for South Africa against New Zealand.
Dilima says part of the problem is the cricket establishment’s reluctance to understand the passion for the game in the townships, and to trust the community to make its own decisions. Others feel the organisers should have staged a full World Cup match in a township.
”They don’t truly appreciate how much passion there is here,” Dilima said. ”Every night the streets are full of kids playing cricket, but they play a ‘street’ game. The kids love it but there’s not a lot of faith that they can really make it to the top.
Trust
”Then there is trust. For the Holland game I organised a marimba band to come and play. They were going to charge just R2 500 but the organisers wouldn’t pay. Then they spent R10 000 rand on a PA system. I hope they are not just interested in making a good show for one day. I hope they are interested in coming back tomorrow to try to change things for good.”
Despite Dilima’s pessimism there are shining examples for the local children. Tsolekile is rated the most promising wicketkeeper in South Africa, with some experts tipping him to take over from the incumbent Mark Boucher. Cricket has brought him relative wealth — he has a car and is still enlarging the family home.
Tsolekile acknowledges the opportunity to shine given him by Langa. He is a peer of established South African stars Herschelle Gibbs and Jacques Kallis, and hopes to join them in the first team soon.
”I give myself two years to make it into the national side,” he says. ”It doesn’t matter where I’m from. All I can do is take catches and make the runs, and make sure I put as much pressure on the guy in front of me.” – Guardian Unlimited