Which political organisation devoted its energies this week to describing the controlling body of a major sport as a ‘white heaven†(sic) before demanding that that sport’s ‘Chief Executive Officer and all other staff members of the board are crucified for all their sins of promoting racial intoleranceâ€?
Yes, it was the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) but, no, it wasn’t talking about rugby. The ANCYL’s indignation was directed at cricket, which had just managed to elect itself its first African president to go with its African chief executive.
It’s possible, of course, that the ANCYL is simply confused by Cronjegate II and has its sports muddled up.
Whatever, cricket continues to transform itself, but perhaps the most important change to the game last weekend, in the short and medium terms, wasn’t the election of Ray Mali but the long overdue overhaul of the first-class system.
As widely reported, from the 2004/5 season senior provincial cricket will be contested by six franchises probably, although not yet definitely, drawn from Cape Town, the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Bloemfontein-Kimberley and two representing the Gauteng sprawl.
Below these franchises will be 16 teams drawn from the 11 existing provincial unions, bolstered by sides from regions such is Limpopo and KZN-Inland.
The fact that the United Cricket Board has accepted the need to maintain playing standards is significant. In a sense, the turkeys have voted for Christmas, but the other side of the coin is that some of the country’s underdeveloped (in a cricketing sense) regions will now have a chance to forge their own identities.
From this vantage point, it is difficult to imagine Limpopo and KZN-Inland becoming major cricket powers, but they could be sound nurseries. The UCB has sought with one stroke to both sharpen and broaden the focus of provincial cricket.
This is no easy ambition and you would imagine that, for a couple of years at least, there will be any number of bruised egos and any amount of furious bickering between regions.
But the old way simply could not be sustained. South Africa doesn’t have the playing resources to provide for 11 squads of professional cricketers, and if a number of first-class players now have to go out and find proper jobs, well, that’s the sacrifice that has to be made.
The new format is bound to need fine-tuning and there is no clarity yet as to how the nuts and bolts will all fit in. Will the second tier of teams, for instance, be regarded as first-class? I wouldn’t think so, but there will be arguments for this to be the case and the old Currie Cup B section does offer some sort of precedent. Broadly speaking, though, the UCB should be commended for getting going at last.
The best news of the week, though, in a more immediate sense, was Gary Kirsten’s decision to prolong his Test career, for a little while longer, anyway. It is a tribute to the personality of Graeme Smith that Kirsten should have so enjoyed his current England tour that he has put aside thoughts of retirement for the moment.
His hundred at Headingley gave the Kirsten family a matching pair: Peter’s solitary Test century was also made at Headingley nine years ago. Which effort was the most valuable is a matter of opinion. Peter’s 104 gave South Africa a share of a match in which Kepler Wessels’s team mostly came off second best. As it turned out, the innings also enabled South Africa to draw the series.
Gary’s batting in Leeds set up a remarkably assured victory for Smith’s 2003 tourists and, with the last Test match now under way at the Oval, may well have turned the series decisively in South Africa’s favour. Come Monday evening we will know for certain.
Dissimilar in technique, the Kirsten brothers share at last two invaluable assets. Peter may have been the artist to Gary’s artisan, but the younger brother has acquired Peter’s wonderfully soft hands, while the desire to stay at the crease as long as possible is a family trademark.
They have another quality in common, too, and that is their self-deprecation. Peter spent much of his career suspicious of the media, perhaps with some justification. He was not always given a fair shake of the stick by the press. As far as Gary goes, when he’s in form about as much as you can get from him is an acknowledgment that he’s seeing it quite well.
Blowing their own trumpets is not the Kirsten style, but they both have careers worthy of the highest acclaim.
Whatever happens at the Oval this weekend, Gary will be around for a while longer. And there may be more than one occasion during the coming summer, against a reviving West Indian team, that South Africa will have cause to be thankful for this.