Your time at the crease, Mr Nkwe, has come again

● It’s trapped in the amber of another time, perhaps another world. At least, it seems that way.

It’s an artefact and a cautionary tale, and a reminder that, after everything, we’re dealing with human beings. It’s a scorecard from a game played almost 17 years ago at the Wanderers.

Through a gap in the stands to the left at the Golf Course End you could see a glimpse of grass even greener and plusher than one of the most green, plush outfields anywhere in the game. Much further to the right the bluegums swayed and spoke in the breeze high above some of the most sun- and storm-struck bleachers in all of sport.

A gaggle of reporters were gathered in the always-refreshingly open-air press box above the Corlett Drive End.

It was absolutely unbelievable that, five months to the day after that game, much of the stand below them would be decked out as temporary accommodation for the hordes of journalists who would turn up to cover the 2003 men’s World Cup final.

All of which is the same today, even though so much has changed. Not least that the punters have long since got their seats back from the press.

Ian Howell and Craig Schoof were the umpires for that four-day match, and thereby hangs its own history. Howell was the kind of left-arm slow bowler you just don’t see anymore, and a damn fine one. Schoof was the son of Dudley and the nephew of Ossie, famous men in white coats both.

Stephen Cook, Adam Bacher, Grant Elliott and Daryll Cullinan were one team’s top four. They had David Terbrugge and Clive Eksteen in their attack.

Derek Crookes, Andrew Hall, Pierre de

He spent more than six hours at the crease, faced 297 balls and scored 106

Bruyn, Albie Morkel, Dylan Jennings and André Nel were in the other dressing room.

All were products of the unbearable whiteness of too much about the game in SA.

Not that everybody involved was white. Johnson Mafa shared the new ball. In the first innings anyway: he didn’t bowl in the second dig. Geoff Toyana and Mpho Sekhoto — frontline batters both — took guard at Nos 9 and 10 in their only innings and didn’t bowl a ball between them. Ah, weren’t those the days?

None of which has turned out to be as topical as what happened in the 11th over after lunch on the first day, when a gangly kid of 19 armed with, it seemed, nothing more than soft eyes and a big smile — and, it turned out, an excellent technique — took the long walk down those ridiculously elongated stairs and onward to the middle to make his first-class debut.

He was from Soweto. Or the other side of the world compared to the Wanderers. He had, by then, played for Gauteng’s under-19 and B sides and in a pre-season friendly — all with limited batting success. Indeed, he had made a better impression with his medium pace.

But that was to change over the course of that day and the next, when he spent more than six hours at the crease, faced 297 balls, hit 20 fours, shared a century stand with Cullinan, and scored 106.

His name was, and is, Enoch Nkwe.

Or is it? Some sources list him as

Enoch Thabiso Nkwe, others as Thabiso Enoch Nkwe.

Was SA cricket uncivilised enough not even 17 years ago that it couldn’t be bothered to get the names of first-class players the right way round?

Cricket was to afford Nkwe only 41 more first-class matches, in which he scored two more centuries. Life took him to the Netherlands and brought him home, but injury meant he never had the playing career he should have.

He deserved better then and he deserves better now. He represents so much but also nothing besides himself, and he deserves a fair chance at doing both to the best of his ability.

It’s time to escape the amber and to look past the towering bluegums and the impossibly green golf course and to see the truth as it is.

The moment is yours, Mr Nkwe.