“We want to win because the people of Pretoria are winners.” - Wayne Parnell on captaining Pretoria’s franchise.
Telford Vice / Cape Town
WAYNE Parnell stands 1.88 metres tall and wears a moustache and beard: useful attributes for someone trying to pass themselves off as a citizen of Pretoria. How’s his Afrikaans?
“Not great,” Parnell told Cricbuzz. That might seem a significant admission for someone who will captain the Pretoria Capitals in the SA20, which starts on Tuesday. Tall, hirsute men are over-represented in the city. So are Afrikaans speakers at 47.67%, according to the 2011 census. The national figure is 13.5%.
But Parnell’s lack of the language won’t stick out in the team environment. Of the Capitals’ 18-member squad, the foreign contingent of Phil Salt, Josh Little, Adil Rashid, Will Jacks, Jimmy Neesham and Kusal Mendis are likely to have not a word of Afrikaans between them. Not even the swearwords.
Cameron Delport, Daryn Dupavillon, Senuran Muthusamy and coach Graham Ford are from KwaZulu-Natal, where only 1.6% of people speak the language. One of Ford’s assistants, Dale Benkenstein, was born in Zimbabwe, where there is even less Afrikaans than in KZN, where he was raised. Jacques Kallis, the other assistant coach, confirmed on Thursday that he does speak Afrikaans. Regardless, all of them are likely to know Afrikaans swearwords, which are far more expressive and thus more satisfying to use than their English equivalents.
Even so, as many as 12 of the Capitals’ playing and coaching staff of 21 probably wouldn’t be able to gesels met moedertaal sprekers om jou uitspraak te verbeter in Afrikaans. That’s to chat with mother-tongue speakers in the language to improve their pronunciation.
Will that matter? No. South Africa has 11 official languages. Even cricketers who grew up speaking one of the 10 that are not English talk about cricket in English. To them, a cover drive is a cover drive and not the Afrikaans term for the stroke, a dryfhou deur die dekveld. Ask them if they field at punt effe tru and they might struggle to understand that you mean backward point.
What doesn’t need translating is how much will be expected of the Capitals. The Titans, Pretoria’s domestic cricket franchise, have won six first-class titles outright and shared another. They have been one-day champions six times and T20 kings seven times, and are widely regarded as the best-run cricket organisation in the country.
An even bigger edifice of excellence looms at Loftus Versfeld, the Pretoria rugby stadium that is home to the Blue Bulls, formerly Northern Transvaal. The Bulls are the only South African franchise to win the Super Rugby southern hemisphere championship, having prevailed in all three finals they reached. They have triumphed in the domestic Currie Cup outright 25 times, second only to Western Province’s 34 titles.
Parnell is from the sleepy Eastern Cape and he now calls cosmopolitan Cape Town home. He is as far from conservative Pretoria as it is possible to be, geographically as well as culturally. But he has a good grip on the challenge ahead of him: “In Pretoria, there’s a rich sporting history. It’s a very successful region. Being part of that team, there’s no two ways about it — we want to win because the people of Pretoria are winners.
“But I’ll also come with my mindset and ideas about how we’re going to play, along with Graham Ford and the rest of the coaching staff and the players. It’s important to get input from the rest of the team because we all see the game differently and we all play it differently.”
Roelof van der Merwe has made the opposite journey to Parnell’s. Born in Johannesburg, he played 222 matches across the formats for the Titans and Northerns — and 26 white-ball internationals for South Africa — before moving to the Netherlands, who he has represented 42 times since 2015. He will play for Sunrisers Eastern Cape. Did he feel at home?
“I loved coming here in the past because it’s always been spin-friendly,” Van der Merwe told a press conference on Thursday in a nod to the character of the pitch at his new home ground of St George’s Park. “But whether you’re playing in Joburg or Pretoria or wherever it might be, you get so used to adapting to different grounds and different areas. It’s part of the game these days. You’ve just got to give your best for whatever team you play for and the guys you play with.”
Do realities like language and geography apply in any significant sense in something as unreal as the SA20? Along with the slew of others of its ilk, the tournament is a product made for television and sponsorship designed to pit concocted teams against each other for a prize that, not long ago, didn’t exist. And for no reason than to create revenue. It’s about as authentic as Benoni-born Charlize Theron’s American accent.
Certainly, a television commercial produced to promote the tournament isn’t short on fantasy. Once you’ve seen David Miller bare-chested except for pink plasters stuck across his nipples, there’s no unseeing it. Or Quinton de Kock in an admiral’s cap, brocade coat and illuminated feathery angel wings. Or Aiden Markram in steampunk welding goggles. Or Lungi Ngidi got up as a Roman soldier. Or Tabraiz Shamsi talking into his shoe telephone: “AB? Phone me back — I’m busy filming.” Or Parnell snorkelling in a bathtub, complete with rubber duck.
None of which will, of course, be seen on the field in the SA20, save perhaps for Shamsi pretending to make a call using his shoe. But it suggests a lot more fun than the gloom being beamed back to South Africa from Sydney, where Australia have continued their domination of the Test series despite the weather limiting play on the first two days of the third match to 131 overs in which they have reached 475/4. Eight members of the visitors’ XI will play in the SA20, and you fancy they wouldn’t mind a plane landing on the SCG’s outfield anytime during the next three days to whisk them away from all that and to less relevant, happier matters.
Like counting how many of them can speak Afrikaans. Van der Merwe was born an Afrikaner. Did that remain the case now that he’s become European? “I’ve still got a bit of Afrikaans in me; a lot less but I can still wangle it.” And doubtless still swear properly.
Cricbuzz
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