Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE, Centurion
ON Wednesday, Jerome Taylor was entrusted with the first brand spanking new ball of the test series between SA and West Indies - which he promptly spewed legside, twice, like a squint tomcat aiming at unsprayed territory. Alviro Petersen had no trouble putting away both stinkers for four.
On Thursday, Sheldon Cottrell launched the second day’s play with a flaccid a no-ball. Wham, bam, sorry, ma’am. Then he bowled what would have been a maiden.
On Friday, Kraigg Brathwaite defensively dinked the first ball of the morning. And the second. No drama, then. But no comedy, either.
From a West Indian perspective, the rest of the first three days’ play did not rise far above that low base. Their bowlers were chronically inconsistent, and too many of their batsmen failed to finish innings they started competently enough.
The grass could not have been greener on the other side of the dressingroom fence. SA played proper cricket, 552 runs worth of the stuff.
SA’s dominance did not escape the attentions of the catering staff in the pressbox at Centurion. One looked up from replenishing the rooibos teabags to exclaim, “Yo - 370/4!” Then he tried to guess SA’s eventual total: “Five-hundred? No, 600.”
Instead of the pressure of public expectation in his first game in charge on home soil, SA’s captain felt the love enough to score a double century. Cricket’s most entertaining player delivered another, merely single hundred that shimmered with brilliance. Still another ton cracked off the bat of a debutant.
The West Indians also registered a trifecta of centuries, but there were not celebrated - three of their bowlers went for more than 100 runs.
It is the culture of the most loyal cricket crowd in SA to support their teams as whole-heartedly as their palms and their throats will allow, and they did themselves proud with rousing waves of adulation that leapt high with each boundary hit and milestone passed.
How they loved it all. That the calypso kings had devolved into collapso kids mattered about as much to the good burghers of Centurion as the price of bananas in Barbados. What mattered far more was that they entertained, however accidentally.
West Indian cricket, once the envy of the game for the sexy smoulder it gave a peculiar pursuit that used to be all about anal restraint, has lost its mojo where the sun don’t shine. Previously, that unhappy truth would have given South Africans reasons to watch something else.
We have an unattractive habit of turning up to see the opposition rather than the home side. So much so that who SA’s opponents are dictates the size of the crowd. Australia, England or India fill our grounds. Not so West Indies, New Zealand or Pakistan, and the rest hardly generate a queue at the gate.
This flaw is not a South African preserve. Ashes crowds, for instance, are bigger and more vociferous than any others in England and Australia. But South Africans have had too much regard for the visitors and not enough for their own players.
Centurion was far from full on the first three days of this test - Gauteng has, after all, not yet knocked off for the year - but this time there was a different buzz in the air.
SA were playing. Against who mattered less than it has done.
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