Times Media
TELFORD VICE, Cape Town
ON almost any given summer Sunday, the Wanderers roars with the flavour of a ball well hit, expertly bowled or superbly caught.
There is no sound in sport quite like the Wanderers roar. It is raw, primal, and unashamed of its ballsiness. It is felt and seen as much as it is heard, and - late in the afternoon as the beer soaks into the soul - smelt.
This is how they get by in Johannesburg’s harsh reality; with a little help from their 30-odd thousand friends all voting the same way with their throats.
But, even in those terms, January 18, 2015 was no ordinary Sunday at the Wanderers. It was the day AB de Villiers shot the lights out.
Nevermind the numbers, what De Villiers achieved was an affront to physical science. Vectors will never be the same. The shortest distance between A and B is no longer a straight line. It is whatever AB wants it to be.
As somebody posted on social media, “Float like a butterfly, sting like AB”, along with a photograph of De Villiers beating Usain Bolt to the finish on the athletics track. Photoshopped? Can we be sure?
Yes, De Villiers’ innings was that good. But was it even the best seen on Sunday?
Besides being the day of De Villiers’ most outrageous outrageousness, so far, Sunday was also the day Hashim Amla made the highest score of his glittering one-day career, so far, and the day Rilee Rossouw proved he could play at international level.
All three of them scored centuries in the second one-day international between SA and West Indies. Even by Wanderers standards it was quite some day.
The quietest of the three, Amla, said nothing to the press. But here’s Rossouw on the 38.3 overs he spent batting with Amla: “Hashim was really a pillar for me, he gave me strength. He told me, ‘Even if you get your 100 in the 40th over,’ because I was on 90 in about the 30th, ‘Don’t worry about it, I am here for you’.
“I didn’t get much of the strike in the beginning. Hashim took most of it. For me, who wants to dominate and be on top of the bowling, I had to take a step back and admire the show from the other end and be patient.”
And here’s De Villiers on Rossouw: “It’s a fantastic knock. No-one has ever doubted his talent and his ability to win games. I still think there is much more to come and the best is yet to come. Even today, that was 70% of what Rilee Rossouw can play like.”
Once, to win a bet, Ernest Hemingway wrote a novel in six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Here’s another stab at it, albeit in seven words: De Villiers dazzled, Amla amazed, Rossouw rocked.
Hemingway’s words have not been forgotten. As much as De Villiers’ emphatic innings will not be forgotten, cricket owes it to Amla and Rossouw to not forget what they also did at the Wanderers on January 18, 2015.
And, of course, the roar. There can be no forgetting that.
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