Leading Edge: High time for West Indies to fly their flag

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

IT takes something special to make someone who has lived as much life as Ali Bacher do a double take, but even cricket’s pre-eminent global citizen of that age could not quite believe what his eyes saw at Kensington oval in Bridgetown, Barbados on the morning of April 18, 1992 in the moments before SA were to play their first test since 1970.

It would also be SA’s inaugural test against West Indies. SA played their first test in 1889. The Windies took their bow in 1928. How had the teams not met in the 64 years they had both been test-playing sides?

Long before apartheid became law, SA’s all-white teams declined to sully themselves by playing teams that were not entirely white. Shamefully, world cricket indulged them for 81 years and 172 tests.

Once apartheid was law, it was illegal for SA to pick players of colour and to play against opponents who were not a similar shade of pale. Fascism, done properly, is evil made simple.

April 18, 1992 fell into a twilight zone in SA’s history. As a society, we were inside a bubble of unreality floating in a sea of uncertainty. It was a strange time in an even stranger place.

As strange, in fact, as the look on Bacher’s face when he saw a particular flag being billowed brazenly by a spectator at the top of a stand near the scoreboard. It was a tricolour of orange, white and blue that had a cluster of three other, smaller flags at its centre ...

Here, in Barbados, a proudly black country, minutes before Kepler Wessels would lead a team onto the field that - like the 172 sides that had gone before - was lily-white, but, finally, to take on opponents who were black to a man, some doos thought it wise to exercise the freedom of speech so long denied him and his SA compatriots by waving the symbol of a murderous regime.

By the time the rest of us were done blinking, Bacher was halfway up that stand. A minute or two later, the offending - not to mention offensive - flag was furled.

Now, it would be apt to Bluetooth Bacher a pat on the back for his nous and speedy action in averting a PR disaster. But dare we wonder if he was also thinking like a cricket person?

He would have known that the home dressingroom harboured an angry lighthouse called Curtly Ambrose and a Brooklyn Bridge called Courtney Walsh, as well as a couple of guys who could bat a bit called Desmond Haynes and Brian Lara.

That flag was taken down out of respect. But surely also to avoid giving Walsh and Ambrose more reason to hunt the heads of the visiting Mlungus, and Haynes and Lara extra motivation to smack their bowlers silly.

Too late, perhaps: Ambrose and Walsh took 7/26 between them on the final morning to bowl West Indies to a famous victory.

Twenty-two years on, no-one of the quality and legend of Walsh, Ambrose, Haynes or Lara will be in West Indies’ dressingroom when the test series starts at Centurion on December 17.

It took too long, but cricket eventually did something about SA’s racist demands. How long will it wait to save West Indian cricket from itself?

Or will this be the series in which West Indies fly their flag proudly again? No-one would dare take it down.