South Africa’s players are cursed with administrators who couldn’t organise a cake sale without losing millions of rand.
TELFORD VICE in London
BEFORE Mitchell Johnson’s first Ashes test, in Cardiff in 2009, Kevin bloody Pietersen had some fun deliberately hitting tennis balls onto the Aussie bowlers’ run-ups.
Had Pietersen pulled this move in South Africa, he would have been told to stop being a doos. Which he might have struggled with. Once a doos, always a doos.
The Australians objected and Pietersen desisted. But not for long. And so it continued: a tennis ball, an objection, a brief compliance, a tennis ball …
Johnson’s goat was duly got, and Stuart Clark had to restrain him from visiting violence on Pietersen.
Pity. Not because Pietersen didn’t deserve a snotklap — when doesn’t he? — for recklessly setting the trap for a sprained ankle. But, with managers and minders depressingly galore in the modern game, how progressive wouldn’t it be for players to resolve a conflict without some suit getting in the way. And probably getting it wrong.
South Africa’s players are particularly badly afflicted by this malaise, cursed as they are with administrators who, it seems, couldn’t organise a cake sale without losing millions of rand. Now the only one who does know what they’re doing, Mohammed Moosajee, has left the building.
Too many suits spoils the brotherhood — and sisterhood — of the dressingroom. And leads to players thinking they’re more important than they are.
Take Graeme Swann and his underwear. The pair he wore when he made his test debut, in Chennai in December 2008.
Swann took 2/42 and 2/103, scored one and seven, and India won by six wickets. Yet he got it into his head that those underpants were lucky.
So he wore them every day he played test cricket. Just to the ground, mind. Then he would change. Still, for someone who played 60 tests that’s around 300 times of taking the team bus to the ground in the same underwear.
Once, on his way to an overseas tour, he had left his house in Nottingham and was driving to Luton airport, some 160 kilometres southward, when he realised he had neglected to pack the precious pants.
So he pulled over and got on the phone to his wife, Sarah Swann, asking her to send the maid down the motorway, underwear and all. His wife was, credibly, incredulous: you cannot be serious. But Swanny was serious. Enough to offer to pay the maid however much she wanted to perform this extracurricular duty.
A suit worth their pinstripes would have told Swann where to get off: right there, on the side of the road. Don’t come on tour until you’ve had your ego examined and declared dressingroom fit.
The relationship between players and administrators is always tricky. One lot see the other as parasites. The other bunch roll their eyes at the prima donnas who make too much money for being famous.
But, like bad doctors who bury their mistakes, inept or corrupt administrators hide their misdoings under piles of paper and droning doublespeak. Players can’t do that. They are held to the same standard regardless of who is in charge, how much money is being made or lost, or who is taking who to court.
Good luck, okes.
First published in the Sunday Times on August 18, 2019.
On the button as always Telford.