Good old days of serious test cricket sad loss to dedicated fans
A SUNNY day at St George’s Park, a team like Australia in the field, a comfortable seat on the stand, a small refreshment in the hand, a knowledgeable crowd – many of whom in your immediate vicinity become firm friends by the end of the match – and the prospect of an intriguing day’s cricket ahead.
That is what I liked about watching test matches in Port Elizabeth in bygone years.
This love of cricket has continued all my life and even after I stopped playing and left Port Elizabeth to ply my trade elsewhere in South Africa, I always made time for a test match in my city by the Bay. So I am deeply saddened by the turmoil now prevalent in Eastern Province cricket and indeed in South African cricket in general.
It seems a cash-flush dictatorial India are calling the shots and look as though they might abort parts of a carefully planned itinerary of this country this coming summer. The bottom line, from what I can gather reading between the lines, is that Port Elizabeth may have to sacrifice a test match scheduled for the city later this year.
Cricket lovers in the Eastern Cape, and particularly in the Border area, are starved of first class live cricket and look forward with anticipation to the visit of touring sides to the area.
However, let’s look on the bright side and hope it never happens.
On a personal note and probably because the older one gets the less tolerant one becomes, I must say that international cricket at St George’s is not quite the same as say, when the likes of Geoff Dakin and the Pollock brothers were in full flow.
Cricket, of course, is there to be enjoyed by those who watch it as well as those who play it.
The difference between the St George’s Park of my younger days and the present, is that nowadays test matches can be a bit of a torment for the serious cricket follower who wants to savour and appreciate the cut and thrust and the subtleties of the game at the highest level.
Alas, these days he has to endure the incessant, mindless chanting of sections of the crowd who rock and roll to the accompaniment of a noisy brass band.
No one can object to this sort of thing at a one-day event as it adds a carnival atmosphere to the occasion where you invariably have a full-house crowd with very few pretensions as to the finer points of the game of cricket. For the most part, they come to see the ball being banged about.
Well and good, cricket needs the money and it keeps the turnstiles clicking.
But please, not when a test match is in progress. It’s a bit much to have the concentration wrecked and the senses numbed by ear-splitting “music”!
But then again, we are moving through a period of rapid social change and perhaps for some people life’s too short for what they believe is boring, anachronistic, five-day cricket.
Pardon the afterthought here, but is Indian cricket, once so helpful and considerate of South Africa, now being dictated to by bossy, wealthy, self-serving businessmen?