Here’s hoping cricket retirement was our AB’s fake act too
One of the biggest stories this week was that a Russian journalist with the initials AB had faked his own death to stop others from killing him first. One of the other not-so-big stories in SA this week was the faint hope that a man with the initials AB had faked his own retirement just to stop the game he loved from killing that love first.
In the conference room at the Cricket SA headquarters in Melrose on Monday, Ottis Gibson was careful when asked about AB de Villiers and whether he would welcome him back to the ODI squad should he decide he would like to play in the 2019 World Cup after all. There was a lot of “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it” in his answer. It’s not really his choice, ultimately.
There are selectors and administrators and others around him who have some say, but it would be a hard heart and foolish soul that would turn down the chance of having the genius of AB back. That bridge would not just be crossed. It would be built of iron, lined with red carpet and wired with the sound of singing angels.
Retirement comes in a rush for athletes at the highest level. One day, something small about the game you love starts to niggle at you. It could be a small thing. Like packing your coffin, which Arkady Babchenko, the Russian AB, pretended to do.
It becomes a chore. Then disliked, then hated. That leads to another thing — from the coffin to fielding practice, then the travelling. The things that used to make you love playing the sport become less fun.
The adrenaline runs out and that post-rush high becomes tiredness. Before you know it, you’re looking forward to the day you can sit down with your friends and family and watch the game, your child on your lap, a beer in your hand and not a care in the world.
Is it better to burn out than fade away? Do we want to see superstars play until they begin to wane? Until the eyes begin to flicker, muscles lose their super-highway connection to the brain and the feet shuffle rather than dance?
Until us lot sitting in press boxes and you lot sitting in stadiums, bars and at home begin to criticise and bitch?
Do we want to have to tell the likes of AB when it is time to go? Is that fair on him? Is it selfish of us?
Morné Morkel’s retirement was magnificently timed. He got his big send-off at Newlands and at Wanderers.
Jacques Kallis, too, left the sport with a bang, a century in a Test match and series victory over India in Durban in 2013, the ground where his career had begun 18 years before.
Makhaya Ntini bowed out after a T20 in Durban, Shaun Pollock bade farewell at a packed Wanderers and Graeme Smith retired after a Test against Australia at Newlands.
They had what Gibson called on Monday the fitting send-off they deserved. Gibson said it would have been nice for De Villiers to have been given the sort of send-off Morkel enjoyed.
Perhaps De Villiers had already made his decision to retire at the end of the Australian series and put off the announcement so that his moment would not overshadow that of his friend and teammate.
From my experiences with De Villiers, that is the sort of man he is. I wouldn’t put it past him.
Life, like cricket, is funny. A Russian journalist faking his own death in Kiev isn’t funny. It certainly wasn’t for Russian AB’s wife, who wasn’t in on the act and thought her husband really was dead. That’s going to be one interesting conversation.
Kiev has seen many fake deaths these past few days. Sergio Ramos died at least twice in the Champions League final, once having his eye ripped out of its socket by the dastardly Sadio Mane.
I would say Ramos’s soul died, but I suspect he does not have one.
Saturday night was a hard time to be a Liverpool fan. I’m not bitter, just sad and twisted.
The only thing that could make this better would be if the AB of South African dreams came back for one more hurrah. Now, that would be the stuff of dreams.