Leading Edge: The greats are nothing without the good

Sunday Times

Leading Edge: The greats are nothing without the good

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

ALEX Ferguson - anyone who calls him “Sir” should be taken out and shot - is not the safest source of sanity on most matters. But even someone who harbours as many issues as he does cannot get all of it wrong all of the time, his slew of trophies excepted.

So, Ferguson was onto something when he said, “The work of a team should always embrace a great player ...”

And there we were expecting a profundity. Tell us something we don’t know.

“... but the great player must always work.”

Ah. Indeed. Big Al has it spot on. What good is greatness if it is not put to work for the greater good? Of course, greatness - the real thing, not the platitude dealt out to describe everything from chewing gum to cars to shades of nail varnish - is not often reached without much hard work.

Happily, then, SA will go to the World Cup bristling with more hard-working great players than you could kick a hairdryer at.

AB de Villiers, Hashim Amla and Dale Steyn will take their places in the pantheon of the game’s greats as surely as Ferguson’s arrogant gloating has ensured that Manchester United will be despised until they are as unsuccessful as, under Ferguson, they were successful.

De Villiers, Amla and Steyn are just the tip of an imposing iceberg of talent, skill and experience that will set sail for the Antipodes soon on a mission that has hitherto proved impossible for SA.

At all of their previous six World Cups they have been the Titanic; never the iceberg. And, mind, they have never been without greats - from Allan Donald to Jacques Kallis to plenty of near-greats.

What good is greatness if it fails to do great things? Or are World Cup triumphs built not with bricks but on the mortar that holds the bricks in place?

Might the strength of the rest of the SA’s squad be a better indicator of their chances than the fact that they have three of the world’s top 10 ranked batsmen - De Villiers, Amla and Quinton de Kock - and two of the best bowlers - Steyn and Morne Morkel - in their ranks?

Javed Miandad, Rameez Raja and Aamer Sohail were three of the leading 10 runscorers at the 1992 World Cup. And Pakistan won the tournament. But a fat lot of good having Martin Crowe, Andrew Jones and Mark Greatbatch in the top 10 did for New Zealand, who lost just one of their eight group games but crashed out to the Pakistanis in the semi-finals.

In that match, Crowe scored 91 and Miandad made an unbeaten 57. However, the key innings was the 60 drilled off 37 balls by a hulking, lumbering 22-year-old named Inzamam-ul-Haq. He would go on to greatness, but then he was no-one’s idea of the player he would become.

As good as De Villiers, Amla and Steyn are, they cannot win a World Cup on their own. They will need their Inzamam, and more.

De Kock, Faf du Plessis, JP Duminy, David Miller, Vernon Philander and Kyle Abbott all have that look about them. They are greats-in-waiting, which means nothing until they achieve it.

This, then, is their chance. Claim the World Cup and live forever as the men who went where no other South Africans have. That done, nothing else will matter.

Because, say what you like about Ferguson, the damn fool is a winner.