New cliques will form, fresh grievances will fester, but for now, as spring erupts into summer and the winter’s constrictions fade into long evenings, South African cricket seems to be genuinely, impossibly, happy.
A little pragmatism, it seems, goes a very long way. Coach Ray Jennings caused a few stifled sniggers in the English cricketing press with his effusive comments last week about the importance of learning to lose (‘Jennings prepares to failâ€, read one sneering headline, conveniently forgetting England’s abject convulsions and pre-emptive surrenders throughout the 1990s).
However, with a single stroke it appears he has managed to lift the burden of oppressive optimism and anguished hope that has for so long caused both players and fans to despair.
It was extraordinary that a coach specifically hired to graft some backbone onto the team should talk with so much sensitivity and sense about the necessity for failure; but it suddenly made one realise how terribly constipated and afraid the previous administration was.
Think of Eric Simons and Graeme Smith at press conferences and one remembers only tortured silences as both men tried to find new ways to paraphrase long-bankrupt promises of future success. Yes, the guys aren’t gelling, but we’re confident of doing better next time, and we’ve thrown the Americans back into the sea at Normandy, and the war will be over by Christmas.
Perhaps the new openness reportedly flushing through the desiccated spirits of the national squad is a product of Jennings’s limited tenure as coach: relieved of the anxieties of having to consolidate his power, he is free to trample on as many eggshells and name as many spades as he wants.
Certainly, honesty is energising, but the wide-eyed admiration with which even his seasoned charges are describing his methods suggests that Jennings has already provided an invaluable service to South African cricket: he has reminded our professionals what it is they’re doing, and why they chose to do it in the first place.
Not that it’s all futons and group hugs; not by a long shot. Jennings and his team can be under no illusion about the fact that they are going to be pulped by India’s batsmen, but it hasn’t stopped them from piling into steaming climate-controlled chambers and waking up in the wee hours in preparation for the rigours of the subcontinent. One assumes they are also being fed incendiary food of dubious origin, but here team management modestly draws a veil.
This frenzy of preparation, perhaps futile from a cynic’s point of view, has provided another indication that Jennings is a sporting animal distinct from the herd.
Handed a situation where he and the team had nothing to lose, most South African coaches would have adopted a happy-go-lucky approach, or instituted ponderous schemes for long-term development. But where many would have seen a blank slate, Jennings sees a blank cheque.
Freed from the pressures of winning, will his team establish a healthy ‘new normalâ€, where pragmatism disarms and then dissolves the fear of falling further?
The West Indies, caught between looking back at their magnificent past and looking forward to some fantastical Lara-fuelled renaissance, have failed to do this for the past decade. They have kicked against the quicksand, and sunk deeper.
But certainly in this country the foundations for a new workmanlike normality are waiting to be laid.
On Wednesday, county team Somerset announced its intention to sign the South African captain and all-rounder Albie Morkel. It was a vote of confidence in the captain, and a reassuring reminder of the grand, understated rhythms of the game. Such encounters with the workaday responsibilities of cricket will not be wasted on Jennings’s young team as they jog wearily through the haze after Sachin Tendulkar on-drives.
Given a choice between quoting Hamlet to his squad and watching a four-hour experimental French film about a blind novice in a nunnery, Jennings would no doubt choose the nun. But should he relent, his squad would do well to remember: if it be not now, yet it will come — the readiness is all.