It is somehow fitting that cricket should have got the concept of ratings so badly wrong. It is, after all, a sport in which a draw is as noble as a win, and in which rivalries can exist simultaneously over 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 weeks or 10 years.
Cricket’s entire relationship with rankings and long-term progressions is an eccentric one, with demon chuckers from the matting snake-pits of the 1890s still dutifully named in the company of the consummate professionals of the post-Jayasuriya age in the all-time wickets lists.
Head down the runs list that starts with Lara, and you will, eventually, come across some fellow killed in World War I, who played one Test for England and scored nought not out in the second innings. Brash empirical pronouncements about current form seem almost unwelcome in this statistical long-room, lined with dark wooden boards bearing cherished but forgotten names.
Perhaps this is why cricket has lost the ratings plot so thoroughly: it has failed to understand what they are for. Any sporting rankings are useful in only two ways.
Firstly, they tend to freeze the endless tides of a game, which shift across many beaches all over the world. And secondly, they attempt to engender some sort of excitement in the sport’s less attentive followers, those who need lists rather than set-pieces or cameos.
The current team rankings administered by the International Cricket Council manage the first role fairly well, although fairly redundantly: you don’t need a calculator to work out that South Africa and Australia are the best one-day teams in the world. But they fail dismally in the second regard. The battle for statistical world domination in one-day cricket is about as exciting as an algorithm written on wet newspaper. The best team in the world isn’t crowned in the evening sun, sweaty and jubilant. Instead, late at night, deep inside a hard-drive in a deserted room, something goes ka-chunk, and presto! South Africa are anointed the best team in the world.
All of which perhaps explains why the reaction to the Proteas’ ascension to the summit of the limited-overs cricket has been so muted. Indeed, one would almost think — given the dearth of predictable questions for Graeme Smith about the pressure of being Number One at the World Cup — that nobody quite believes the statistics. The local media seem sheepishly silenced, too embarrassed to start basing questions on the firm assumption that the Proteas are the best.
Of course it’s not only the local media who aren’t convinced. Tim de Lisle, editor of Wisden, said it all with his headline in a feature on the Cricinfo website: ”Reaching the top by stealth.” ”Are [the Proteas] the best in the world?” he wrote. ”Not really. Australia may be having their worst sequence since 1997, but it’s still too short, too blip-like, to constitute a changing of the guard.”
And so on and so on, along the same tired old lines. South Africans crack, South Africans stumble at the last hurdle, South Africans are soooo predictable. And once again there were the old charges, laid against the South African character, namely, our apparent spinelessness, or at least a tendency to crack under pressure; to believe the sledging of our opponents and to let the erudite condemnation of our critics creep under our skins. Perhaps it’s guilt, perhaps it’s an inferiority complex, perhaps it’s ignorance or naivety. But whatever it is, it’s believed to be real. And it’s not being helped by our media.
Indeed, on Monday night, as the happy sums filtered down from the ICC’s churning hard-drive, e.tv news reported that the Proteas had moved up to top spot because Australia had just lost its fourth game in five outings. Apparently the fact that South Africa have won 13 of their last 16 didn’t seem important. No wonder the lads aren’t exploding with confidence.
De Lisle was right, of course. South Africa are not the best team in the world. But neither are Australia. After the walloping handed them by lowly New Zealand, that much is crystal clear. Experienced and insightful pundits like De Lisle have spent their professional lives watching Australia roar back from slumps: no wonder they are hesitant about writing the champions off, or backing the challenger. But even they must admit that psychologically damaging massacres, like those handed out by Stephen Fleming’s wonderful Kiwis, are something new.
World War II pilot and Australian golden boy Keith Miller once famously dismissed the notion that Test cricket was pressurised. ”Cricket is not pressure,” he said. ”A Messerschmidt up your arse is pressure.” Quite right, too; but in a less epic context, pressure is also suddenly realising that your bowlers are capable of bowling a shower of shit. South Africa might be experiencing butterflies at the top of the pile, but Australia have now been the beaten party in four of the highest run-chases in history. Worse, all have happened since December 2005.
In other words, Australia’s batsmen are going to the World Cup with the knowledge that there is no total large enough for their bowlers to defend. Once upon a time you could be dropped from a team for charging an Australian seamer and trying to hoik him for six over cow. Today, it’s apparently expected of you.
Suddenly the decision to select tearaway Shaun Tait, who has gone for 60 runs or more in three of his first four ODIs — ahead of almost unplayable Stuart Clark, is looking a little dicey.
And suddenly the Proteas are looking a little, well, Australian. Smith’s reaction to the Proteas’ elevation was vintage Steve Waugh, a shrug and a self-deprecating comment about how being number one didn’t necessarily mean you’re the best team. And then there was the manner in which they destroyed Pakistan. This team, six months or a year ago, would have been quite happy to toddle home by five wickets. But the way in which Smith and De Villiers have been tearing into run-chases — apparently hell-bent on winning by 10 wickets in the 15th over — is startlingly new, and deeply satisfying.
Let’s not be arrogant. The Australians have taught us almost everything we know. But now their evolution in one-day cricket has stalled, and smaller, fitter varmints are nipping at their heels …