I do hope that when next the English cricket team grace our fields they leave their cherished Barmy Army behind. The Englishman abroad is seldom a pleasant sight, but when he’s a crowd of drunken rowdies intent on bringing to cricket all the taste and reserve of English soccer hooligans, then he’s better left at home.
And congratulations to the managers of Kingsmead, Newlands, the Wanderers and Centurion Park for banning the dreaded vuvuzela and other ‘musical” instruments. St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth, with its magnificently untalented amateur band, remains the cricket ground from hell.
Ex-fast bowler of note Allan Donald started off as a most satisfactory cricket commentator. He confined himself to saying what was useful and didn’t indulge in watery humour and endless analysis like many of his contemporaries. Sadly, he is now beginning to emulate cricket’s leading tit-babbler, Mike Haysman, who believes no cricket match is complete without non-stop verbal accompaniment in the fractured adolescent tones that are common to so many sportsmen. Why do these heroes so often sound like someone’s got their knackers in a nutcracker?
I remain impressed, though, by Donald’s natty turnout. Now that he’s becoming a media celebrity, it’s debonair button-downs, an excellent array of moderate ties, every hair tastefully lacquered in place. His fine and clear aspect is a triumph of painstaking facial upkeep and maintenance. Regular avocado packs, kelp-extract moisturisers, deep-pore cleansing creams, subcutaneous vitamin supplements, essence of milkweed and enzyme toning catalysts, have worked their wonders. Dainty eyebrow care sets off a steady and perceptive gaze at the world around him. From delicately shaped cuticle to crown, allan Donald is both a credit to himself and metrosexualism.
Why then does he ruin the whole and fastidiously achieved effect by chewing gum with his mouth wide open? Hasn’t someone told him this vacant mastication is in emphatic contradiction of his cosmopolitan mien? Someone should.
And, allan dear boy, we know you commentate for the SABC, not exactly renowned for its respect for the English language, but really: ‘He’s looking for two runs and he’ll get it”. Write a hundred lines please.
Back for a moment to the dreaded chewing gum. Will someone else please tell Proteas captain, Graeme Smith, that even if you aren’t as exquisitely turned out as Donald, chewing gum in public becomes especially disgusting when the chewing is done with the mouth open and the mucous-shrouded wad rolled around the front teeth for all the world to admire. Come on, Graeme, you’re the captain of a national cricket team. Try not to look like some dysfunctional teenager with his cap on backwards, lounging against the graffiti outside a Brakpan massage parlour.
Or is that image going a bit too upmarket?
The real question is why hasn’t our national cricket team got someone to instruct players on matters of basic public etiquette? Like telling them that gobbing out great oysters of phlegm on the field is strictly for yobs. I remember some years ago commenting on the sight of the South African cricket team lolling around in the players’ enclosure wearing shorts, barefoot and sucking at bottles and tins: the genuine Sunday afternoon at the Doosfontein Plesieroord touch. That charming display seems to have been stopped. Now let’s be done with the Wrigley’s.
In last weekend’s Sunday Independent, Rodney Hartman wrote another of his perceptive articles, this one in tribute to the visiting cricket commentator, Geoffrey Boycott. I hope Hartman forgives me for filling in a bit, but his mini-biography mistakenly overlooked an important moment in Boycott’s admirable career.
We are continually being counselled not to discount the sins of our past, so is it not ironic that Supersport elected to import Boycott as a commentator given that, only a month or so ago, South Africa had a week dedicated to a national campaign decrying violence against women and children? The irony is that in France in 1996, the very same Geoffrey Boycott was found guilty in a French court on charges of beating the living daylights out of his girlfriend at the time, Margaret Moore. In defence, Boycott said he had become sick and tired of Moore continually asking him to marry her.
Boycott put an end to Moore’s insistent proposals by punching her in the face, some 20 times. He then checked out of the hotel where they’d been staying, leaving Margaret to pay the bill. The French court found the ex-England cricket captain guilty of common assault, fining him the equivalent of £5 100 (about R55 000) and a suspended four months prison sentence. On appeal the judgement was upheld. As far as I know, Boycott has not been the recipient of a pardon from the head of the French government, unlike the absolution granted to a certain local reverend who specialised in mugging donor funds intended for the poor.
But then, in South Africa you have to be of an especially squalid breed of Christian to get the reprieving nod from the South African president. It’s the archbishops who get kicked in the backside.
Anyone wishing to see a colour photograph of the pitch damage after ‘Sir” Geoffrey’s history-making innings might try http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/uk/211569.stm.