/ 1 August 2008

Smith’s shaky support

According to Ali Bacher, his only job as South Africa’s captain was to win the toss. That done, his team duly whipped the opposition.

If only things were that simple for Graeme Smith.
Bacher’s side was exclusively drawn from and almost exclusively supported by the pale sliver of our society.

They wore caps bearing the Springbok, then a proud symbol of strident white supremacy and not the mere marketing device it is today.

The crowds who turned up to watch that team helped keep in power an evil government that could have taught South Africa’s current rulers a thing or two about corruption, maladministration, injustice, murder and subverting sport for political ends.

Those supporters of all things apartheid, including the alleged national cricket side, cheered Bacher every time the coin plinked on to the pitch right side up.

But perhaps a country does get the teams it deserves: Bacher donned his blazer for the toss just four times before the world wised up and kicked South Africa in the balls by way of isolation.

Fast forward the 38 years since Bacher’s boys hammered Bill Lawry’s Australians 4-0 and Smith might just think that generation had it easy.

Smith leads a team that — if we suspend our disbelief for a moment and humour the marketing suits — purports to represent the whole nation. It may look nothing like the whole nation, but it’s a sweet thought nonetheless.

That makes Smith the poster boy for cricket’s attempts to pass itself off as a bling version of a ‘wassup” game of the ghetto. Kinda doesn’t really work, does it, homeboy?

Yes, the figures say that cricket is the second most-watched sport in the country after football. Thing is, that’s not unlike comparing the Great Wall of China to a concrete fence.

Makhaya Ntini may indeed be our most popular sporting figure. So how come there are still more kids in townships dribbling tennis balls than bowling them?

Even around the braai fires of the ‘burbs, a mention of Smith and his team is charged with the potential to freeze all conversation as solid as the boepe that billow in the brassy light of the Blitz blaze beyond.

Much is forgiven when the Proteas win, as they did at Headingley last week to make up for the mess they looked like leaving in the drawn first Test at Lord’s.

But nothing is forgotten when they lose. Why? Here’s a plausible theory, albeit that Bacher happened upon it inadvertently as he swaddled Smith in praise: ‘He made an appointment to see me soon after he was made captain in 2003,” Bacher told the Mail & Guardian this week. ‘He arrived in jacket and tie, and we spent about an hour together.

‘I was impressed with his commitment, his passion, his determination. He’s like an Australian.”

Now we know why some South Africans can’t stand the sight or sound of a man they see as a jut-jawed oaf with a shoebox for a mouth. It’s because the damn fool’s a shackle-dragging convict in disguise.

More seriously, the impression Smith often gives jars with even the unshaven sensibilities of his fellow South Africans. He can come across as if he would think nothing of lobbing a hand grenade at an offending cockroach. Sometimes, reporters’ questions elicit from him a glazed look of floundering bemusement, and then his answers slide flatly out of a sneering mouth.

Doubtless such unfair swill will surface once more should the current Test at Edgbaston swing England’s way.

That may well happen, not least because the pitch will turn, England have Monty Panesar and South Africa are without Dale Steyn. The injured Steyn is half the size of Andre Nel, his replacement, but twice the bowler.

The Poms are a nation gone soft since the days of the miners’ strike and the Clash. Nothing exposes their quivering innards quite like the rasping hiss of a cricket ball ripping through the air at a pace that can be heard but not quite seen. Morne Morkel will scare them, but he is not yet the consistent menace that Steyn can be.

In fact, the bloodthirstiest bowler on either side might have been Stephen Harmison, who was left out of the England team. This is an odd case to make, but what the hell.

Harmison’s recall into the squad was met with derision and disgust, mainly because he is stricken with a temperament as fragile as freshly flushed one-ply toilet paper.

He is not the most enthusiastic tourist, and former England coach Duncan Fletcher once quipped that he was capable of ‘getting homesick on his way to fetch the paper from the postbox”.

Even when Harmison is held firmly in the embrace of England’s green and, for some, pleasant land, he would seem to be a flake.

‘I’ve never seen a cricketer as low as he was,” said Allan Donald, who was England’s bowling coach when Harmison lost the plot and struggled to hit any part of the pitch against the West Indies in Manchester last June. ‘He came off the field and told me he was scared. It was so sad.”

Sniff. But Harmison does have Steynesque pace and a punctured psyche. All he needs now to remember the top gun he once was is for the South Africans to tell him he never could bowl.

They might get the chance to do so in the fourth Test at the Oval next week, and there is no doubt that they will take it.