No logic, many food breaks in a week of bizarre decisions
Common sense and logic have always had a fraught relationship with cricket. It goes back centuries, probably starting when underarm bowling was replaced by “roundarm” bowling in the 1850s with the stipulation that the “hand should not be above shoulder height at the point of delivery”. Exactly.
The latest addition to a long and rich history of the banal and bizarre came with umpire Aleem Dar’s insistence that the teams left the field for lunch with India just two runs short of victory in the second ODI in Centurion on Sunday.
Virat Kohli even pleaded with the senior official to allow one more over, but he was adamant. Rules are rules.
Strangers to the game find it endlessly curious in the same way that watching animals drunk on fermented marula fruit is compelling. Both keep stumbling over themselves.
“So, the ball has to be hitting the wicket a lot for the video official to give it out, right? Hitting just the side of the wicket isn’t good enough?” My Canadian friend loves it. Oops, there goes another elephant.
There may have been an outbreak of illogic closer to home in recent days. The exclusion of the country’s most in-form batsman, Farhaan Behardien, from the squad was odd and the appointment of Aiden Markram as captain in place of the injured Faf du Plessis probably wasn’t as clearly thought through as it might have been.
Behardien blows hot and cold and hasn’t always looked comfortable at international level. But he was batting as well as ever when the squad was chosen and was omitted on the basis that the selectors “know what he is capable of and want to give others a chance”.
Presumably they also know what JP Duminy is capable of doing after 181 ODIs.
Markram’s appointment after playing just two onedayers is temporary, but the long-term message is clear. He has been earmarked as the future leader of a new generation of players once Du Plessis, AB de Villiers, Hashim Amla, Morné Morkel and Duminy have retired, probably in a year’s time.
It is quite a statement for three reasons: it presupposes that Markram will succeed as a player and become a fixture in the ODI XI, that he is the best man for the job, despite his age, and that another white captain (possibly for a long time) is acceptable to the people who make those decisions.
“We have identified Aiden as a future leader as far back as 2014, when he captained the Under-19 team to the World Cup title. Since then he has gone on to captain SA A and the Titans and we believe he has the necessary skills to captain the Proteas,” said selection convenor Linda Zondi.
He is a pure cricket man and has been robustly informed on a number of occasions by those with politics in their cricket blood that he is not doing enough for transformation.
Some will say the decision to publicly earmark Markram for the job so young and early is bold, positive and forwardthinking. Others will say it is premature, insensitive and quite possibly unfair to Markram.
There are 17 months to go before the end of the World Cup, when Du Plessis is likely to step down.
An awful lot can happen in that time. It’s longer than the average international career.
South Africans point to the success of Graeme Smith as evidence that young captains “work”. But at what cost?
Smith, assuredly, would not recommend the job full-time to a 23-year-old. Far more young captains fail than succeed. It may be more tactically astute to allow him to do the job for the rest of the series without adding the baggage of the future.
And finally, in case you missed it, there was an SMS (social media storm) over the weekend about De Villiers playing a round of golf with his injured finger at Pretoria Country Club the day before his teammates were hammered at Centurion without him.
The insinuations were grossly unfair. The impact of a cricket ball while batting or fielding could exacerbate the injury. Holding and swinging a golf club cannot. That’s not his opinion, it’s the opinion of Cricket SA’s finger surgeon.
Anyway, as my Canadian friend says: “So, you stop for two meals during the game and you want to be a global sport?”