It all began with Madonna. Had she not performed at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the summer of 1993, and had her devotees not trampled that magisterial paddock into dust, and had the shameful conditions not wrecked Brian McMillan’s knee, Gary Kirsten might not have played his 101st Test this week and signed off as the premier South African batsman of his generation.
Of course it is easy to say with hindsight that Kirsten was destined for international cricket with or without the intervention of the material girl, but fate can be particularly arbitrary where selection is concerned.
In the end it was his brief designation as a temporary stop-gap allrounder that won Kirsten the trip to Australia: with perfect timing he had burgled a five-for for Western Province with his innocent off-spin just as McMillan’s joint gave way with the sound of a falling redwood.
That the selectors should have felt compelled to defend their decision by talking up Kirsten’s extremely limited use as a bowler was an early sign of what was to follow, the curious brand of slander that has been practised for the past 11 years and which will no doubt be enshrined as lore in the inevitable tributes and biographies that his retirement should trigger.
They couldn’t take him to Australia as a specialist batsman, the feeling seemed to be, because he simply wasn’t one. Great team player, lovely guy, but not by any stretch of the imagination a thoroughbred.
The left-hander, the crickerati quickly concurred, had been passed over when natural talent was being handed out to the Kirsten family. But all those runs for Western Province couldn’t be overlooked, and so it was announced by the court wordsmiths who shape so much of South African sporting thought: Gary Kirsten was a fighter who played very well within his limitations.
It was a phrase permanently grafted to Kirsten’s game, irrespective of his form or fortunes, and for a decade it went unchallenged by editors or journalists who failed to see its deeply patronising origins.
But 2 000, then 5 000, and finally 7 289 Test runs later one had to wonder just what those limitations were. There were no shots he couldn’t play, and more tellingly, some he wouldn’t play.
His concentration was tangible. If Jacques Kallis plays in a bubble, Kirsten batted in a bomb-shelter. And when technical problems infiltrated his game — pushing away from his body, chopping deliveries on to his stumps — he simply made them go away.
To those spoiled by the baroque elegance of Daryll Cullinan or the ascetic deftness of Andrew Hudson, Kirsten’s trademark square drive would have looked like someone swatting a mosquito with a Wellington boot, and perhaps this contributed to the faulty assumption that hard work was a substitute for ability.
His pedigree thus denied, his ground-breaking batting was soon taken for granted by the public who saw it as his job, an attitude partly encouraged by his modesty. When Hansie Cronje or Cullinan thumped a pyrotechnic one-day century, they were lauded as showmen.
When Kirsten helped himself to 188 against the United Arab Emirates in the 1996 World Cup — the third highest one-day innings in history — he seemed merely to have satisfied expectations. After all, if the senior pro isn’t going to hit the rubbish, who is? Anything under 150 would have seemed a failure.
By early 1997, still playing within his limitations, usually off his pads over wide long-on, he was rated the second best one-day batsman in the world behind Sachin Tendulkar, and the fourth in the Test rankings in a list that included the Indian, Brian Lara and Steve Waugh.
Two centuries in the Calcutta Test drew a distinct line under a four-year period in which Asian wickets and attacks had confounded South African batsmen, and while Kallis and Herschelle Gibbs have since made merry on those dusty strips, it was Kirsten who dispelled the mystique of the turning ball.
It is no coincidence that Kallis, Gibbs and Graeme Smith all started their first-class careers with Kirsten at the other end. Gibbs especially has fed on the left-hander’s resolve, and their mid-pitch conversations were private batting tutorials held in public, the eternally worried-looking Kirsten perhaps making an undemonstrative observation about the usefulness of charging a spinner one has just hit for six.
By late in 2002 it was time for Kirsten to move. Smith had taken the opening berth by the neck, beaten it senseless, and dragged it back to his cave, and so the options were clear: move down or move out. Kirsten moved down.
The demotion down the batting order is one of cricket’s more gentle traditions, a sad and often understated moment in which an ageing star is allowed to squeeze in another handful of Tests relatively safe from the indignity of being outpaced or outfoxed by younger bowlers.
Well aware of his weakening bones and fading eyesight, Kirsten decided the best thing to do was to play within his limitations, and scored seven more Test centuries. If cold numbers mean anything, Kirsten’s past 18 Tests yielded two centuries more and a higher average than Graeme Pollock’s last 18.
It was fitting that in the end he went beyond his own limitations and allowed himself to cry as he left his Test career behind him. Real batsmen, of course, don’t cry. But then Kirsten was never a real batsman, was he?