Hasta la vista, baby

It’s been a hell of a ride coming up with a decent enough pitch for a piece to be filed on Friday

This column first appeared seven years and a month ago. Twenty-seven men’s SA Test players, among them wonders of world cricket like Kagiso Rabada and Quinton de Kock, have been minted in that time.

Others — not least Faf du Plessis, Dean Elgar and Temba Bavuma — have carved places in the memory and indeed the heart.

Twenty-two have, in the past seven years and a month, gone quietly into that good night of Test retirement.

Along with the triumphant triumvirate of Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis and

Mark Boucher, their number includes AB de Villiers, Morné Morkel, Dale Steyn and Hashim Amla.

That’s a bloody good squad of 12, a dazzling dozen, even if it is lopsided with three wicketkeepers and nary a spinner. So much for the heroes.

This column has outlived the tenures of two Cricket SA CEOs, but not its current president. Originally elected more than six years ago, he has found a way to cling on despite having served both his allotted terms. As for the incumbent CEO, may the cricketing gods watch over him. Closely.

The incumbent CSA board? Not worth feeding. For them to countenance the desperation that cricket in SA has sunk into and not be seen to do a damn thing about it makes them, at best, uncaring and, at worst, complicit.

Consider yourselves named and shamed Chris Nenzani, Beresford Williams, Zola Thamae, Tebogo Siko, Donovan May, Jack Madiseng, Angelo Carolissen, Mohamed Iqbal Khan, Dawn Mokhobo, Shirley Zinn, Steve Cornelius and Marius Schoeman.

So much for the suits.

South African cricket needs a strong press now more than ever. Happily, we are stronger now than ever. Note: press.

Not media. The electronic section of the industry is either compromised by the need to hang onto rights, or hamstrung by the subjects of their brief interviews having too much control of what is broadcast. In cricket, as in so much else, journalism is written. Not broadcast.

It’s been a hell of a ride coming up, before the 10am diary meeting on Tuesday, with a decent enough pitch for a piece to be filed on Friday — near as can be to a prescribed length, which this week is 670 words, if you want to know — and published — still relevant, come what may — on Sunday.

By this columnist’s reckoning, that’s happened around 300 times.

But now it’s over. Almost. One more time. With feeling.

It has been a singular privilege and, mostly, a pleasure to sit down once a week and try to compose something about this richly writable game that might make you smile, care or think a little more. Sometimes it’s pissed you off properly? Thank you.

Be assured that your attention has never been taken for granted, and that the most important factor in this finely balanced equation is not the players, the suits, the editor, the publisher, the paper itself nor even the game. It certainly isn’t me. It’s you.

“Why should anyone bother reading this?” That’s me quoting myself, and it’s the question I ask before I begin every story I write. It isn’t always answered as well as I would like, but that’s part of the challenge: to try to keep doing it better.

“You must love cricket,” I’m often told. I don’t — do crime reporters love crime? But I do love writing about cricket.

On Thursday I had occasion to be in the same room where the King commission hearings were conducted in 2000, and for the first time since then. I looked at the same doorway we all stared at waiting for Hansie Cronjé to arrive, and shivered. The feeling was the same 19 years on. It was, still, like waiting for JFK to get shot.

Columnists come and columnists go, but cricket remains. It is the most cherished constant for those of a particular disposition.

Where is this columnist going? Not far. And he remains committed to finding out why the lying bastards are lying.

That’s 669 words. Close enough.