Two Tests in ...

Lara was only

ITURNED 40 last week. That’s supposed to mean something, but I’m not smart enough to figure out what that ‘something’ is other than I’m old.

Old enough now that I can do those ‘remember when’ games and this year, for whatever reason, a couple of iconic sporting moments from my ... err ... youth, have had important anniversaries.

Earlier this month it was 30 years since Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvellous Marvin Hagler met in their ‘Superfight’ in Las Vegas. THIRTY YEARS. It’s scarcely believable and although I’m no longer a big boxing fan, that event lives in my memory. So much hype and then such a classic encounter with an outcome that still causes debate today. For the record, I felt Leonard won it at the time, but in the years since my opinion has changed and I reckon Hagler got a ‘roughy’ in Nevada.

This week there was another anniversary – 25 years since South Africa’s first Test following isolation.

April 18, 1992 was the first day of a one-off Test against the West Indies at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown in Barbados. It was a major occasion for South African cricket with the symbolism enhanced by the fact that it was the West Indies, whose iconic players of the 70s and 80s had been at the forefront of ensuring South African sport remained isolated.

There was a rich irony, too, that the event would be marked by protest, although not because South Africa fielded an all-white team, but rather that a local Barbadian player – Anderson Cummins – was overlooked for selection for what would have been his Test debut.

At the time, I thought it was ridiculous. How could anyone expect to shift Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Patrick Patterson or Kenny Benjamin from that starting team.

It was Benjamin – someone who made many friends here playing for Gauteng and then Easterns – who got the nod, much to the chagrin of Barbados, whose citizens promptly boycotted the historic occasion. Politics in West Indies cricket has forever been a complicated affair.

Besides Walsh and Ambrose, that West Indies team still had Desmond Haynes and was captained by Richie Richardson, while Brian Lara was playing just his second Test.

South Africa dominated for four days, but forgot there was a fifth – perhaps due to the premature popping of champagne. Ambrose – all arm pumping celebrations – and Walsh smashed them on that last day. It was stunning. South Africa losing was obviously disappointing for many, but I recall thinking how cool it was that the West Indies team that had so dominated the game, could still produce that sort of powerful and enthusiastic display to overwhelm a very good South African team. That was to be among the last great moments of that wonderful era for West Indies cricket. Twenty five years ago. Really? I must be getting old.