What to get for SA team who have everything? Zimbabwe's humanity

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TELFORD VICE, Harare

South Africa is from Mars, Zimbabwe is from Venus. That would not count for much on a geography exam, but it frames the chasm of contrast in those countries’ cricket fortunes.

For South Africa, winning Test matches comes if not naturally then fueled at least partly by the assumption that success is possible every time they step onto the field, irrespective of the opposition and often of the match situation.

They are the top ranked team in the game because they make themselves difficult to beat. Often they do so by batting or bowling the other side out of the game with an approach that leaves no room for subtlety. But sometimes they do so illegally - ball-tampering in Dubai and Galle, anyone? - and at still other times they resort to dour cricket - hello the second Test at Sinhalese Sports Club last month.

For Zimbabwe, who play far fewer Tests and win a much smaller percentage of them - 11.83 versus South Africa’s 36.53 - victory is a feeling so rare that their captain, Brendan Taylor, has felt it only 44 times in his 10 years as an international player.

And that’s all told. Zimbabwe have won 36 of the 150 one-day internationals Taylor has played and five of his 26 T20s. In Tests, Taylor has felt victory’s sweet slap just three times. Some of that will have to do with the fact that he has played only 19 Tests in those 10 years because no-one wants to play against Zimbabwe. The rest is tied up with the plain truth that Zimbabwe are a poor Test team. But they are not going to get better if their test matches continue to be rationed, and they will be.

Dean Elgar has been playing for South Africa for not quite two years. Already he owns 11 Test caps and five of the one-day variety. South Africa have lost just three of those games.

To play Test cricket for South Africa for a significant time is to be part of an elite band of notables among whom which failure is rare and fame, fabulousness and financial freedom come standard. To play Test cricket for Zimbabwe is to put up with not being paid for months by a dysfunctional board, losing the better players to other countries or even other career options - Graeme Cremer is now trying to cut it as a professional golfer - and, of course, being haunted by the hollowness of defeat far more often than feeling the fizz of victory.

But there is a price to be paid by South Africa’s players, and those of every Test team besides Zimbabwe. Layers of corporatised gumph separate them from the public who support them. But anyone in the pub that faces onto Harare Sports Club’s (HSC) northern boundary who wants a chat with Zimbabwe’s captain need only the good manners to wait until he is done batting in the nets. As he walks past the pub, call out, “Howzit, BT” and he’s all yours.

On Saturday, Zimbabwe and South Africa will play only their eighth Test against each other; a ridiculousness considering both have been part of the game’s top format for 22 years. The match will be staged at HSC, which is about as down-to-earth as Test grounds get. It has none of Newlands’ snootiness, Lord’s snobbishness, Melbourne’s yobbishness or the Kotla’s awfullness. Instead, it is a place where some people come to play cricket and others to watch them. And what other ground has a real live dictator living across the road? Hello Robert Mugabe, tell us how you’re doing.

For years, the numbers displayed in a particular window near the bottom left-hand corner of the manual scoreboard at HSC denoted nothing that had happened on the field. Instead, they informed the crowd how many beers had been sunk by the scoreboard operator that day. He was a certain Mr Strang, a close relation to Bryan and Paul.

Ray Price, meanwhile, would always look to bowl from the end owned by umpire Kevin Barbour. The reason? Price is married to Barbour’s daughter, Julie - who would often be up in the scorer’s box dotting and dashing her husband’s and her father’s every move.

South African cricket has so much more than the game in Zimbabwe. What it does not have is the juicy humanity that puts Zimbabwe on a different planet.