PROTEAS’ JOURNEY HAS BEEN A ROCKY 25 YEARS
South Africa’s post-apartheid cricket team is 25 years old but their development, into the Test side which has just humbled Australia in their own back yard, has been far from straightforward. For one thing, incredible achievements like winning in Australia, twice, in India, and beating England at home in 2008 and 2012, have been interspersed with humiliating lows like match-fixing and the unseemly habit of exiting global tournaments just as the pressure starts to squeeze.
A country with untold sporting talent, across all races and religions, South Africa’s cricket team came hurtling out of the sporting wilderness late in 1991, following Nelson Mandela’s release from Victor Verster prison in Paarl a year earlier. Their first taste of international cricket for 20 years was to play India away, over three one-day matches, a series they lost 2-1.
That team, led by Clive Rice, was all white, and reflected the apartheid regime which produced it. For the next few years a few ‘token’ players of colour were taken on tour, but none really deserved a place on merit until Makhaya Ntini was picked in the late 1990s.
Ntini possessed incredible stamina and became a fine and dependable fast bowler. If he got his chance, initially, due to the controversial transformation policies – which insisted on a quota system of non-white players being imposed on South Africa’s cricket teams from the juniors up – then it wasn’t long before he was worth his place on merit.
The trouble with racial quotas is often the politics which surrounds them and South African cricket has seen the numbers rise and rise to the point where six of the current team have to be players of colour, a number that has now to include two ‘Black Africans’.
Such social engineering can create problems for selectors looking to create a team based on meritocracy, as their counterparts in other countries do. Remember, Kevin Pietersen only came to play in England after claiming he was a victim of transformation while a member of the Kwa-Zula Natal squad. Yet despite various South African captains complaining about how it has tied their hands, it has broadly worked and the current team can boast Hashim Amla,Vernon Philander, Kagiso Rabada, Tenda Bavuma, JP Duminy and Keshav Maharaj, without a hint of compromise.
If that has been a major achievement, South Africa’s other one has been their robustness playing away from home. Since their first Test series back in 1992, following their 20-year hiatus in the wilderness, they have played 39 series abroad (a series being comprised of two or more Tests, not one-offs).
Of those, they have won 19, lost 12 and drawn eight. Only Australia, who have won 23 from 40 series over the same period, are better on foreign soil and they, for 15 of those years, had one of the greatest sides there has ever been.
Incredibly, they managed it without ever having a great spinner. Instead, they have produced and utilised superb fast bowlers like Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, ably backed-up by the likes of Ntini, Philander, Kyle Abbott and Craig Mathews.
Aggressive, fast bowling has been their style, going some way to proving the contention that nothing quite succeeds at Test level like a great pair of fast bowlers.
South Africa have also been fortunate to have one of the great all-rounders of the game in Jacques Kallis. Over an 18-year career that saw him play 166 Tests and 328 one-day internationals, Kallis made 13,289 Test runs at an
Aggressive bowling has been South Africa’s style, going some way to proving the contention that nothing succeeds at Test level like a pair of quicks
average of 55.7 and took 292 wickets at 32.6, an incredible feat of stamina and consistency.
If he and Graeme Smith were the ‘Mr Reliables’ in the batting order, Herschelle Gibbs was ‘Mr Mercurial’ and arguably the greater natural talent. Combined, with their fine phalanxes of fast bowlers, it enabled South Africa to put teams under pressure in most conditions, and then to drive home any advantage which had accrued.
They did so with a swagger, though one that deserted them at vital times in the one-day arena. Although South Africa’s fans will claim they were robbed of a place in the 1992 World Cup final when untimely rain in the semi-final against England saw them set the impossible target of 22 runs off one ball, they only had themselves to blame after a cynical go-slow tactic during England’s innings saw them bowl only 45 of the allotted 50 overs.
It wasn’t until the 1999 World Cup in England that they began to garner a reputation for spectacular failures after twice squandering gold-plated chances to knock Australia, the favourites, out of the tournament.
The first time occurred when Gibbs dropped Steve Waugh as he tried to throw the ball up in celebration. Waugh went on to play a match-winning innings that allowed an unusually shaky Australia to advance to the knockout stage, where the two teams met again, this time in the semi-final at Edgbaston.
In a close-run game, where Australia’s 213 never quite seemed enough, South Africa’s last man, Donald, was run out with two balls remaining and the scores tied. Australia qualified for the final because they finished higher than South Africa in the group stage. But it was the sheer panic that brought defeat which saw South Africa handed the ‘chokers’ tag they have never quite shaken off in the white-ball game.
As a shortcoming, though, that pales against the match-fixing scandal orchestrated by Hansie Cronje, a man still hero-worshipped by many in South Africa.
Cronje, a born-again Christian after he killed a young child in an accident while he was driving the team kit van, exploited Gibbs and another vulnerable team mate by getting them to underperform in oneday matches in India.
On another occasion he set England a generous target in the final Test of a dead rubber, the bookies being long on the draw after two days of the match at Centurion were washed out. For the price of a smart leather jacket, so we are led to believe, Cronje ensured the draw was avoided after England chased the total.
Cronje eventually confessed to his nefarious deeds, but lost his life in a plane crash in 2002 after cadging a lift on a cargo plane from Johannesburg to George.
South Africa cricket owes him a debt, for he was undoubtedly one of the architects in making it great.Yet, he sold that greatness for bookie dollars and a leather jacket – and that is a stain that cannot be airbrushed from history despite South Africa’s many attempts to do so.