Cricket will be global when lbw will be rendered in isiXhosa

● The press conference is wrapping up. The victim has done his bit, delivering the same old answers to the same old questions.

Then, if the unfortunate behind the microphones is Afrikaans, comes the request — usually from a broadcaster — for “a couple of” answers in that language. Note the unfairness that the request tends to come in English, as do the questions.

If the victim is Faf du Plessis the answers flow in suiwer Afrikaans. Not only is cricket’s best captain also its most engaging speaker, he is thoroughly bilingual; a fresh take on Ginger Rogers being able to do everything Fred Astaire could do — backwards in high heels.

But should any other Afrikaans speaker be up there, a particular reporter in the South African press pack knows what’s coming.

So he holds up a fist and counts on his fingers, flicking them upward with cruel glee, each English word that creeps into those allegedly Afrikaans sentences. Sometimes he runs out of fingers. One of these days he is going to delight in taking off his shoes and using his toes to help count.

What should be “blad” becomes pitch. What might have been a “wegbreek” becomes an offbreak. Instead of “skeidsregters” the talk is of umpires.

Afrikaners aren’t alone in all this. Even a figure as polished and self-aware as Virat Kohli can’t seem to help his otherwise smooth Hindi pronouncements being pocked with divots like “mid-on” and “target”.

Stumble into a cricket conversation between Jamaicans and all that is likely to make sense are words like “century”, “slips” and “lbw”, which isn’t a word. But at least you’ll understand it.

So what are we to make of cricket’s “laws” being translated into isiXhosa? That this is well and good, even noble, and more than 100 years overdue?

English is the language of global business, and cricket is far more a global business than a game

But the unhappy truth is that cricket speaks English and nothing else, not least because it has to in an age when players drawn from far-flung parts have to function as a team in even more far-flung T20 competitions.

English is the language of global business, and modern cricket is far more a global business than a game.

And cricketers, lest we forget, are paid to play cricket. Not to find ways to talk about the game in whatever language they might have grown up speaking.

But there is a wider significance to isiXhosa having its own set of cricket terms. Importantly, it helps teach those who have become used to thinking the game belongs to them only that it certainly does not. Even more importantly, it helps bring cricket closer to those who speak the language. Most importantly, it seals cricket into SA’s reality at a wholly different level; helping it prepare to make the leap from mere game to part of a shared culture.

That’s no small journey in a society that remains decades away, centuries even, from allowing all who live in it the freedom to be themselves. But cricket has done its bit, or part of its bit, to get us there.

Does it matter that English will continue to be cricket’s language of choice? No. The writers of the game’s newest lexicon would be living in an ivory tower as tall as Ponte to believe they could change that anytime soon. But they’ve given us a dream to dream.

Makhaya Ntini gave that dream a glimpse of reality a dozen years ago at Centurion, where he took five wickets in each innings to power SA to victory over New Zealand.

Having delivered the same old answers to the same old questions in English, albeit with a twist, Ntini was asked a question in isiXhosa.

His eyes bounced back at his questioner and he was — as an Australian horseracing commentator might say — off like a wedding dress.

Ntini’s answer lasted minutes and must have included all sorts of things he hadn’t said to those of us trapped in English.

For that long, shining moment, cricket spoke isiXhosa and nothing else. And it sounded so good.