Go Cricket
My first piece for the Times of India’s new cricket site. Give it a click at http://cricketnext.indiatimes.com/Time-for-South-Africa-to-shut-up-and-play-properly/Telford%20Vice/columnshow/32399808.cms
TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg
It’s that time again. That time when cricketminded South Africans think mad thoughts about becoming citizens of some country where willow has yet to make sonorous contact with leather, a place where cricket is an insect and nothing else.
Vanuatu? Nope. They finished second in division seven of last year’s World Cricket League and were bronze medallists at the 2011 South Pacific Games. Ah, well. The search continues for a desert island in this sea of cricket ...
It’s that time when the heavyweights and light-heavyweights of the cricket world (sorry, Vanuatu, you do not tip those scales) gather to contest a trophy worth winning. This time, that trophy is the World T20 in Bangladesh. And South Africa suck at winning trophies.
Worse yet, they suck at contesting trophies. They won the 1998 ICC Knockout in Nairobi, but in six World Cups, five Champions Trophies and the four previous editions of the WT20, they haven’t so much as won a single sudden death match. When the pressure is on, they go fishing - usually outside the off-stump.
That depresses South Africans more than it would Vanuatuans: if your team does not play in the big league, you don’t need to get your hopes up quite so high.
But things are different this time. South Africans know their team can’t go all the way, that they would do well to fight their way out of the wet paper bag that is Group A, which comprises Sri Lanka, England, New Zealand and a qualifier. That means no danger of encountering Chris Gayle, India, Pakistan or Australia before the semi-finals. Yes, Chris Gayle - without him West Indies would struggle against Vanuatu.
Hang on. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. What isn’t in danger is the ridiculousness of the idea of South Africa reaching the semis. Can’t happen. Won’t happen. Not with this lot, who last week found a way to look like extras from a zombie movie in two T20s against Australia.
And if you believe South Africans believe that, you would also believe Sachin Tendulkar couldn’t bat for toffee. Of course South Africans think their team can win and will win. They’re just not saying. It is the hope that dare not breathe its name lest it gets stuck in certain famous throats. Again.
But, as Farhaan Behardien said this week, “We’re perceived as not playing the conditions well in the subcontinent, but we have the two best batsmen in the world - Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers - the best finishers - David Miller and Albie Morkel - and the two best bowlers - Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn. There’s no reason why we can’t lift the trophy. The talking is done.”
So shut up and play properly. South Africa have always had the jewels but never the crown. If they are to get it in this tournament, Faf du Plessis’ team will have to put themselves into positions good enough to put them in danger of choking. After what we saw against the Australians, that would be an improvement.
They batted without urgency - note to dugout: get De Villiers to the crease at the fall of the first wicket not the third, bloody hell - they bowled with too much urgency, and they needed urgency to regather their misfields.
South Africans consume their sport with lashings of fickleness. Subtlety is for those limp-spirited miseries, the Poms, and anyone else who doesn’t know the damn straight truth that the world comes in two shades only: black and white. Call it a keenly developed sense of socially competitive apartheid.
Our teams are either a bevies of winners or bunches of losers. The minister of sport, Fikile Mbalula, said so himself after our football team were smashed 5-0 the other week - “Bunch of losers,” Mbalula growled, and paused to imagine the votes rolling in at the general election in May. That South Africa had been beaten by Brazil mattered little: they lost, the bunch of losers. But should they win their next match they will be heroes. Until, that is, they lose ...
All that said, there is a distinct lack of anticipation in South Africa about the World T20. Gone is the frenzied focus we have seen on tournaments past - only one reporter from a South African newspaper group is on tour - and almost three weeks after Graeme Smith’s retirement shocked the world it remains the fat that is chewed most thoroughly in cricket discourse here.
This is not because South Africans do not care about 20-over cricket. They care about any cricket in which their team has the opportunity to break their trophy drought, and they care about that more than about being represented by the No. 1 Test team.
Instead, they have succumbed to their fear of failure and buried their hope deep. Too many wings have turned out to be wax, and the sun is uncomfortably close again. We’re all Vanuatuans now.
Enough said.