Chasing cricket through deluges, dud digs and dim bars

The rain has not stopped falling here in Limpopo. From the window of the cottage on the guest farm we have called home this week, I have watched rain. There is more rain to come.

It’s good for the blueberries and avocados. The rain is bad for cellular signal, thinning it out, shutting up the iPhone and forcing you to let the head slip out of gear and into neutral ahead of a busy year ahead.

This week I also watched a dog — a large and highly-strung pointer — burying something in the garden outside the cottage. I went to have a look. It was one of the socks I had left inside my running shoes on the deck.

That’s one brave and considerate pointer. Those socks whiffed a little.

I bought those socks five years ago. They are cycling socks made by Specialized, the bicycle manufacturer that sponsored Burry Stander.

I was in a place that had no cellular signal on the day he died in early January 2013. I bought those socks as a small tribute to him. I dug them up and gave them a little wash.

I’ll hang on to them for a while longer.

We headed north for our holiday, past Polokwane to Magoebaskloof. My wife warned me there was no TV at the first place we were staying in, the superb Graceland Eco Estate. There was TV at the next place we wanted to stay in, but there seems to be an ambivalence to cricket on the telly in Limpopo.

Dale Steyn is from just up the road, man.

We walked into the Coach Hotel Inn and Spa. We walked out an hour later.

It was a five-star establishment 20 years ago when my wife last came here. It is the death star for hospitality now — from the confused receptionist who had lost his pen to the spa run by a security guard to a suite that was dank and run down by a staff that had lost their will to care.

The barman turning up the music as I tried to watch the first day of the New Year’s Test didn’t help.

We found Kings Walden, the Hilton-Barber estate, a few kilometres up the road. They welcomed us in and put the cricket on the telly. Cricket on the telly is the stuff of holidays.

The Boxing Day happy hour Test took away those long hours spent on the couch away from the heat of the day for a pink ball experiment that did not work.

SA against India at Newlands. What a joy. We were in transit again for the rainaffected day, heading to Haenertsburg. There was to be no telly at our guest farm. I had been warned.

I headed to the Iron Crown pub in Rissik Street, the centre of Haenertsburg. A man with fingers black from grease, much like my dad’s used to be, sat with a beer watching tennis. He seemed to be into it.

He complained bitterly about the barman refusing to switch on the air conditioning because it was expensive to run, and the doors to the great big outside were open.

When he went to the toilet, where it was a little cooler, I asked the barman if he could change the telly to the cricket. He had not known it was on. Good god, man.

The man with the black fingers had also forgotten it was on. He was no tennis fan. He knew a little about the cricket.

I drank Zwakala, the awardwinning beer brewed about 7km from where I was sitting, and spoke a little bit of cricket until I was left alone.

Outside, six locals were having a good old drinking session. None of them knew the cricket was on.

I watched a little more of the final day at the Pot ’n Plow, which apparently has the best pizzas and coldest beer in the region. The owner knew there was cricket on.

We sat for a while, watched Hurricane Vernon Philander blow away the Indians. Outside, thunder rumbled. There was rain coming, said the barmaid.

It came and it did not stop as we drove home.

A new year has begun. There is cricket to watch and there are stories to tell.