If it’s true that a dying buffalo often lurches to life in a spasmodic fit soon before expiring, cricket may well do something similar this summer when the Test series against England begins in earnest in December.
Cricket isn’t actually dying, of course — at least, not all of it. The game’s money-grabbing administrators are doing their best to kill off parts of it, but the best bits — hard-fought Test cricket between top nations — have survived for more than 130 years and will continue to endure.
It would do so even more successfully, and maybe even attract new fans, if it could be contextualised in a way that makes sense to people who think five days is a long time to play a game of anything; but the proposal for an International Cricket Council (ICC) Test World Championship was shot down by India, England and Australia.
The Indians don’t want their schedule to be dictated to them and insist on their right to play whomever they want to, whenever they want to, depending on how much money they can make. England and Australia fill their stadiums every two years for a five-match Ashes series which keeps the silver coins rolling in, so why would they want to risk that?
Actually, it goes beyond mere selfish greed. Any number of options were proposed — including the simplest and easiest: a single Test match between all nations within a two-year time frame — but all were rejected by India and England. They are well-fed citizens; the others must fend for themselves.
So now India and Australia are coming to the end of another obscenely bloated seven-match one-day series that means nothing. Bangladesh dismissed Zimbabwe for 44 to clinch the ‘So What?†cup while New Zealand and Pakistan square up to each other in Abu Dhabi and Dubai for a chance to lay their hands on the ‘What the Hell Are We Doing Here?†trophy.
As reported on this page a couple of weeks ago, the ICC’s elite 12-person cricket committee reached the unanimous conclusion earlier this year that the best way for Test cricket to compete with the short-skirt and braless attractions of T20 and the Indian Premier League was to make it more relevant than before, more imaginative (day/night Tests) and more lucrative. A two-yearly prize fund of $10-million was proposed. India and England could not, or would not, agree.
Which gives South Africa all the more reason to hammer them out of sight this summer.
Not that they are lacking in motivation. ‘They are the only team apart from Australia to have won a series on our soil and it still hurts, even after four years,†says Jacques Kallis.
‘You can call it a ‘revenge mission’ or whatever you like. But all I know is that winning the series this time will go a long way towards easing the memory of that series.â€
For Mark Boucher, the series was bleak because he started it on the sidelines, dropped from the first two Tests because the selection convenor, Haroon Lorgat, felt that he’d become too big for his boots.
‘It was the only time in the last 15 years that I’d spent Christmas and New Year at home. I spent a lot of time on the beach thinking about the game and what it meant to me. I was desperate to play in the first two Tests and then, when we lost at the Wanderers when we should never have, and it rained at Centurion in the fifth Test, denying us the chance to square the series, it was one of the low points of my career. I’m as excited and as determined about this series as I have ever been,†Boucher said.
There is the little matter of two topless waitresses and five middle-aged, slightly overweight ladies to get past before the good stuff can begin, but that’s fine because not only has Cricket South Africa scheduled all the one-dayers on Friday nights and Sundays, but rumour has it that a new trophy has been created for the winners. Whereas the Test teams will still contest the prestigious Basil D’Oliveira Trophy, the one-day teams, courtesy of England’s administrators, will compete for the ‘Means Nothing Whatsoever†trophy. Brought to you by MTN.
Paul Harris against Graeme Swann is just one of many intriguing head-to-heads to look forward to, but it may well be decided by the number of financially secure cricketers in each team. When successful sportsmen reach a certain point — no longer motivated by money — they either ‘lose it†or discover a higher level of motivation. Smith, Kallis, Boucher and Makhaya Ntini are all financially secure, and they all have extra reason to avenge the result of the last series.