If there’s any consolation for Graeme Smith, the one-day series now beyond the reach of his outclassed team, it’s that things could be much worse. For starters, he could be captaining Bangladesh.Â
According to the trend-spotters, spectators around the world are being treated to a new Golden Age of Batting. This would have come as news to those in Harare who had to endure Bangladesh’s crawl through the Stone Age of Batting towards what, with a great deal of luck, will develop into a Bronze Age in a decade or so.Â
The Tigers almost won a Test once. Their only draw to date was a nail-biter, their batsmen dourly hanging on to their armchairs in the clubhouse as rain robbed Zimbabwe of an innings victory. For the rest their Tests have been genuine wastes of time; three-day reflections on the greed of those faceless officials who fast-tracked Bangladesh’s lucrative elevation to Test status.
Whether or not it is practical, sensible or advisable to play cricket with certain teams and in certain conditions has long ago become irrelevant to corporate sport. Bangladesh plays Tests, and Dunedin hosts one-day internationals. Given the events of the week, neither is comprehensible.
The Port Stanley Municipal Oval on the Falklands aside, no cricket field is closer to Antarctica than the miserable paddock of Carrisbrook. The first attempt at play was obliterated by what is euphemistically known as inclement weather: a blizzard straight out of Viking hell.
Indeed the South Africans could claim with some justification that their loss the next day was due in part to having to contend with frostbite and snow-blindness, but that would not account for the unmistakable air of resignation that has settled over the tourists in their past two games.
Even Smith’s usually belligerent rhetoric is strangely absent. Ordinarily by now he would have made it clear that the guys were gutted but they are ready to give 110% because it’s crunch-time, and although the cookie is crumbling, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And all that.
Not that we’d believe him even if he did say something. The South Africans have campaigned unflinchingly through a season almost two years long, but the turkey-shoot of the West Indies tour should have been their reward and the start of a meaningful leave of absence from the game.
Smith can motivate until he’s blue in the face (a result achieved by peeping out of one’s balaclava at Dunedin) but mentally and emotionally his squad clearly has nothing left to offer, and the prospect of the three-Test series — still an agonising two one-dayers and a tour match away — must be a ghastly one.Â
The disintegration of the team’s motivation has been most obvious among the bowlers. Shaun Pollock’s perfect technique and immense experience have ensured an economical series to date, but he has yet to take a wicket in three outings.
Makhaya Ntini is just quick enough to demand some respect, but like Andre Nel — back to his explosively ineffectual worst on this tour — he has so far failed to learn that if you give Chris Cairns and Craig McMillan an inch they’ll take 80 yards, usually over midwicket.
Jacques Kallis clearly wants to be somewhere else, perhaps Newlands on a warm Sunday afternoon with Corey Collymore bowling at him, and frankly one can’t blame him. And Nicky Boje should save everyone a lot of time and bother by dispensing with the middle-man and bowling straight at long-off.
So are South Africa in trouble, or just very very tired? These seem to be one and the same thing on modern cricket’s treadmill.
But perhaps a slow decline into exhaustion and homesickness isn’t a foregone conclusion.
On South Africa’s last tour of New Zealand in 1999 Jacques Kallis had run himself ragged, manfully bowling on a pitch infamously held together with wood-glue and sheep spit, and was getting the ball to do exactly nothing. At last he walked in off his mark, screwed the ball into his fingers and started bowling leg-spin. He mixed up his flight, now floating one through at chest-height, now dragging one down past-leg stump on the third bounce.
But inevitably he got one to pitch, a ripper that bit and fizzed. For a moment Kallis thought he was Shane Warne, and until dutiful professionalism evaporated it, there was fun to be had from playing the game.
One hopes the tourists will opt to have fun at Auckland and Napier, to slip Lance Klusener off his leash at least once before he’s sent home. But if it all gets too much they should remember that it could be a lot worse. They should remember Bangladesh.