Leading Edge: Roots of modern malaise are in the past

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

Maybe the moment of our growing up was Lance Klusener and Allan Donald being caught with their pants down in their Y-front shirts on that awful day at Edgbaston in 1999.

Perhaps it was the slap of the Springboks being good enough to beat the rest of the world twice.

Or was it that not even wheeling out Nelson Mandela to secure the World Cup made mediocrities like Bafana win when they had no right to do so?

Whatever. The fact is South Africans have grown weary of waiting for their cricket team to straighten up and fly right at major tournaments. The teenage crush has ended, the honeymoon is over, the blind faith that they are the best side in the game, no matter the format or anything else, has seen the light.

If South Africans of a particular political persuasion had not spent the years between 1970 and 1991 moaning that the all-white “national” team had been unfairly kicked out of world cricket at the apex of their dominance of the test arena - and over something as disconnected from sport as apartheid; honestly, next blacks will have the vote - the unhealthy myth-making of the past 23 years would not have happened.

The denial that pervaded every aspect of white South African life during isolation had to seep into cricket. Incredibly, white cricket thought co-opting a few black players would solve the problem. Shamefully, rebel games were called “tests” in our newspapers, which virtually ignored black cricket. Stupidly, it was assumed that SA would pick up from where they left off and be as competitive when they were re-admitted as when they were shut out.

If none of that had happened, we would not have claimed the right to consider SA to be favourites every time they took on the world. The pressure on the team would have remained at healthy levels. We would have a far more sober idea of their strengths and weaknesses.

If SA had not been isolated they might have won a World Cup by now and this discussion would be irrelevant. But for that to have happened apartheid would have to not have happened, and who knows what kind of wonderful world we would live in if that had been the case.

Instead, we live in a world that is wonderful despite its imperfections. One of them is that South Africans have expected too much of the teams they believe, in cahoots with that grand lie of international sport, represent them.

On the rugby field, expectation has been matched by achievement. On the football field, the gap between the two is absurdly large enough for expectation to be scaled down. On the cricket field, denial has been defeated - but the damage is done.

A generation of SA cricketers has been raised to think their best is not good enough unless it is also the best in the world. They were not allowed to be themselves. They could not be anything less than the best there was. Why? Because that’s what South Africans thought they were in 1970.

That thinking has, thankfully, faded with SA’s each passing failure to perform as unfairly required. But the unfairness itself has been passed on and could infect the way they play for years yet.

It is why the real Proteas so rarely stand up when the pressure is on in limited overs games. For too long, we refused to believe they were not a foot taller than they actually measured. They win despite that, and sometimes lose because of it.