Psst. Did you know Gibson loves a glass of red wine?
Ottis Gibson has had many conversations with Faf du Plessis. The last of them, on Monday, was about the important things in life.
“Last night [we talked] about rib-eye steak and red wine. He was with his family having dinner,” said Gibson. They’ve been speaking a lot. They had little choice during SA’s tour of England. The announcement of Gibson as the coach of SA was an open secret.
Gibson had hardly been shy about it, telling some of his old Gauteng teammates he had been given the job. The bush telegraph meant that they, in turn, told someone else, who told another person, who may have let that slip at the pub.
As secrets go, it was shouted from the ramparts. But, perhaps that is the way it should have been. Why the silence? Why the wait to confirm it, as was done at the launch of the Joburg Giant T20 Global Franchise a while back?
The slow drip of information may have taken the sting out of any controversy over the appointment of a foreign coach, the first since Bob Woolmer. Except that Woolmer wasn’t really foreign, though born in England. He was as South African as you could wish for.
He was the most innovative of coaches, a believer in the power of the reverse sweep, the use of the bottom hand, the coach behind Jonty Rhodes and the reverse-slog and Gary Kirsten becoming a model of dependency. He stood against the wind of conformity.
Good god, the man brought a laptop to the dressing room. A laptop, with computery things on it, a machine that went ping to tell him why players were going pong. It had pictures and notes and information. This was the ’90s, man.
Laptops were only used by desperate men after hours in the sort of establishments visited by Paul Collingwood. It was 10 years ago this week, during the 2007 T20 World Cup, that Collingwood was fined £1,000 for going to a lapdancing club in Cape Town. England had just been beaten by Australia, if that is an excuse.
But I digress. Gibson. Foreign coach. Except that he’s not really foreign. He came to SA in the ’90s, when Woolmer was laptopping and innovating. He played for Border from 1992-95, Griqualand West (1998-2000) and Gauteng (2000-01).
Yesterday marks 10 years since he last played first-class cricket for Durham at the age of 38. He had a fine final season, reports espncricinfo: “In 2007, he became the 79th player to take all 10 wickets in an innings when he skittled Hampshire for 115 to take 10/47 in 17.3 overs.
“He finished the season with a record number of wickets in any season for Durham and was instrumental in their two trophies and unsurprisingly named Most Valuable Player and Player of the Year at the PCA Awards that September.”
After those 10 wickets against Hampshire, he said: “Unbelievable. But we’ve got four games left and if I’m going to get through them, I’m going to have to cut down on the celebrations a little bit.”
On Tuesday in a boardroom at Sandton Convention Centre, Gibson spoke of the Springboks and the ICC World Cup, perhaps the two things that dare not speak their name for South Africans right now.
He said the right things, though, and without making any promises, embraced the great South African dream so harshly denied them since that rain-damaged semifinal against England in Australia in 1992.
What did we learn about Gibson on Tuesday? He takes players back to why they play the game, reminds them about their love of cricket. He wants to take players to a “place they have never been before”, as he did with Stuart Broad.
He gets grumpy when his team lose. Well, duh. He loves golf. “Please don’t call me in the middle of a round of golf.”
He has a wife and child. He has kept in touch with good friends in East London since the ’90s. He will be making his base in Joburg. Oh, and wine.
“I love red wine,” he said. Red wine, cricket and rib eye. Gibson should fit right in.