Whizz-bang T20 drags SA cricket into the light

 

Sometimes with cricket it seems like you’re waking up in a parallel universe where everything is upside down and out of place.

Almost everything we knew and cherished has been prodded and poked, shifted aside or recalibrated. It’s called progress and in roughly 10 years cricket has morphed from a staid, safe sport into a riot of action, gaudy sideshows and bags of cash.

Welcome to cricket, circa 2017, where the lights are lasers, the girls are pretty and contestants are master blasters (rather than cricketers) and soundbite merchants. Entertainment oozes out of every pore, moments are sponsored and milestones are, well, fast forgotten.

After this week’s shindig in London, where South Africa’s T20 Global League was launched, this extravagant new world is on our doorstep. SA has officially joined the party, albeit at twilight hour with the Indian Premier League and others long established.

“We must safeguard the future,” said Chris Nenzani, Cricket SA president, without evident irony.

Better late than never, eh.

Just as well that SA’s superstars and the usual suspects – Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo and Kevin Pietersen – are coming to the party. This is no B-list bash. There are sexy team owners, iconic players, swanky venues and shades of Bollywood. Don King would be proud.

With the cost of franchises believed to range from $3-million to $5-million, it’s little surprise that just two of the eight team owners are from South Africa, among them the exotically named Osman Osman. An impresario who made his name with comedy and Bollywood shows across Africa, he brings a suitably grandiose presence to the game. Osman is an entertainment and lifestyle man who has ambitions of turning his Pretoria franchise into another glamorous arm of his business.

The omens are good: AB de Villiers is his marquee man.

The other local owners are Brimstone Investments, a Cape-based investment consortium. The company has a long and successful record of excellence in the corporate world. They aren’t in this venture for the jolly. There’s money to be made. They will be cautious and careful in an environment they are unfamiliar with, but it’s a marvellous coup for T20. If Brimstone sees the possibilities, there must be a good thing brewing.

It signals new money moving into cricket and in a depressed economy like ours, this is no bad thing.

Quite how South Africans will respond is a mystery. The trouble with franchise sport is that teams typically have no history, no long-standing roots in the community, no tradition. The first trick is to generate a buzz and to reach out. Fans must be seduced by the promise of action and intrigue, as the IPL has demonstrated.

FFans must be seduced by the promise of action and intrigue

If Indians have shown an insatiable appetite for the IPL, the same probably won’t be true here. How could it? Cricket in SA has its firm base, but it’s not fanatical or outlandish. The marketers will have to work hard.

There will be interesting spinoffs, mostly positive. For one, there will be big money to be made for local cricketers. The Global League will thus help stem the tide of locals shipping overseas, no bad thing given how much talent we haemorrhage.

Far more grand is the possibility of top-level T20 instilling courage and audacity in our play. No-one doubts the well of talent that abounds across South Africa, but there is a soft underbelly to the way we play. Our failures at the top end are routine, probably because it’s more difficult to confront “soft” issues like tenacity and bloody-mindedness, or what the All Blacks call “mongrel”. For all our exceptional talent, we haven’t found a way to hang tough.

Fearlessness is a critical quality required to survive and thrive in T20. Perhaps it will subconsciously seep into our play, if not with the older cricketers then possibly with the youngsters. We shall see.

It will be curious to watch how SA’s established unions view the cocky new interloper. They can respond one of two ways: either embrace the new product and feed off its energy, or pretend it isn’t there and carry on with business as usual.

T20 may not be for everyone, but it’s the future. It will be blazing its way here in a few months, all shiny and pleasant.

A brave new world awaits. – © Sunday Tribune

 

Proteas’ Kafkaesque self-destruction has no end

 

 

For anyone with even an inkling of interest in golf, the Open of 1999 could never be forgotten.

It was the year Jean Van de Velde, leading by three on the final hole, melted on the tee.

The Frenchman’s drive went right. Then he took a shot at the green, only to see his ball ricochet off a grandstand and then bounce off a stone wall into deep rough. Fans were aghast.

It got worse. He then hit his ball into the Barry Burn, a water hazard. Van de Velde then famously removed his shoes and socks and strode through the shallow water pondering whether to try and hit the ball out.

He took a drop instead and hit his fifth shot into the bunker. He finally holed out for a triple-bogey seven.

He promptly lost the three-way playoff guaranteeing himself an unwanted place in history.

Calamité, as the French would say.

“It wasn’t something absolutely mad that I tried to do,” he said later. “It just came out to be a nightmare.”

The sad story is instructive on many levels, not least as an assurance that the Proteas aren’t the only ones who have taken choking to spectacular levels. History is shot through with examples in the sporting arena: Jana Novotna, Roberto Duran and Greg Norman to name a few.

What puts the Proteas in a league all their own is how the curse keeps afflicting them. They seem caught in a Kafkaesque spiral of self-destruction that has no end. Sunday’s blowout against India was another example of pathos that follows the team like a dark shadow.

A psychosis swamps the team before major ICC events, the weight of unwanted history resting heavily on weary shoulders. The horrors of the past are rekindled and the finest of South Africa’s cricketers get stricken by panic.

It’s a dreadful reality and we prepare ourselves for the inevitable. The old email jokes and memes are retreaded and we put the boot in. Over and over.

I heard mental coach Paddy Upton talk about our serial offenders this week and he made a compelling point. He said our players tend to wear “tough guy masks” with the majority pretending their insecurities don’t exist. “Hiding it takes more energy than facing it, being real,” he said. “Mental fragility is career threatening.”

DDeep down we all know that the team doesn’t have the bottle for the moments that truly count

We know it’s a “thing” in SA cricket because the Proteas routinely belt touring teams and tend to go well when playing away from home – just so long as there isn’t a trophy in sight. We ascend to the top of the ODI tree and produce freakish talents like Kagiso Rabada and AB de Villiers. They provide hope and highlights, but deep down we all know that the team doesn’t have the bottle for the moments that truly count.

Caution defined SA’s batting early on against India and then came the absurd run-outs. Like Allan Donald and Lance Klusener in 1999, the image of Faf du Plessis and David Miller racing to the same end while the ball was sailing towards the other last weekend will stick long in the memory. The moment was a wretched metaphor for what the team has become: confused, paralysed, maddening.

Even a casual fan can see that something radical needs to be done.

Winning is the cure, but getting there is the challenge. Ivan Lendl was labelled a choker for his failure to win Wimbledon. He made the semifinals six times and twice lost in finals.  Only when he fought back from a two-set deficit against John McEnroe to capture the French Open in 1984 was he allowed to shed that label.

Winning a tournament that matters will see the Proteas cast off the worst of labels. But getting to that point, finding a way through the tangled theories and lessons and hurt, will be devilishly hard. But our team and our players are far too good not to find a way to cauterise this open wound.

The players, indeed everyone formally involved in SA cricket, bristles at mention of the c-word.

But confront it they must. If not, they’ll be stuck in an eternal loop of anguish that only perpetuates their misery. – © Sunday Tribune

 

 

 

 

Touring? Old rugby buggers had it better

 

The story has been told countless times, but it never gets old.

The year was 1974 and the British and Irish Lions were laying waste to South Africa. They had just belted the Springboks in the second Test and were giving it a rip in their downtown Pretoria hotel.

Much beer had been imbibed. A couple of boxes had been set alight and the hotel manager drenched with a hose pipe.

Captain Willie John McBride was summoned when things threatened to boil over. He strode downstairs wearing just his pants and smoking his pipe.

The apoplectic manager threatened to call the police.

“Excuse me, but if you are going to get the police,” said the unflustered Irishman, “do you think there will be many of them?”

Far from being scandalous, the Lions were merely continuing a fine tradition of rugby tourists leaving their mark.

Six years before, a national newspaper accused the 1968 Lions of being the “worst behaved team ever to tour South Africa”, a distinction contested by legendary writer JBG Thomas who argued that they had never set fire to a train carriage (like one of their predecessors had).

Two years after the ’74 Lions, the All Blacks toured. Upon his arrival, fullback Kit Fawcett mentioned to a female reporter “we’re going to score more off the field than on it”. The front page lapped it up.

What of Blair Mayne, the university boxing champion, who toured SA with the Lions in 1938? He used to go down to the docks to pick fights with the stevedores just for fun.

One night he found himself propping up a bar with some South Africans for company. He was asked if he’d be interested in shooting a real springbok at one of their farms.

Still dressed in his white tie and tails, off he went. The next morning, Mayne staggered into breakfast with a springbok draped around his neck, blood everywhere.

Naturally, he took off upstairs and promptly shoved the carcass into the bed of teammate Jimmy Unwin.

I was reminded of these high-jinks this week because the refrain from the British press in New Zealand has been to whinge and complain about the demands of touring on the team.

It’s not helped that modern rugby trips have become antiseptic affairs that are managed to the nth degree. Amid the need for protein shakes, video deconstruction and official engagements there’s little time for characters to emerge. Even those with personalities find the lid put on them by media officers who trade in cliché and PR-speak.

The danger is the Lions becoming inward looking rather than embracing the joys of a tour. Indeed, it is they alone who still enjoy the privilege of touring, a concept that sadly failed to survive the move to professionalism in the 1990s.

More’s the pity because rugby surrendered some of its soul in the endeavour to reshape the game. Now, tours are smash-and-grab affairs where teams fly in and fly out, barely moving beyond hotels, airports and stadiums. People on the platteland never get to meet them. There’s little time for fun.

TTours are now smash-and-grab affairs where teams fly in and fly out

The all-seeing eye of the media has had much to do with it. Players might yearn for the adventures and fun of their forebears, many of whom heartily drank beers with the media, but things are much different now. The players seldom mix with the media, much less share a beer. The trust has gone.

Misbehaving used to be a badge of honour, a rite of passage even, but we live in the age of rage where political correctness holds sway. I wouldn’t countenance a player tearing up a hotel room for fun, but there is something to be said for team bonding and whether that manifests itself in a heavy booze session or a naked sprint down a hotel passageway shouldn’t matter a whole lot.

It’s difficult not to be nostalgic at times like these. The Lions are probably on the last real tour – thanks to the avaricious demands of clubs – and the very concept is an anachronism in the fast-food age. More’s the pity.

The game might be awash in money and the rest of it, but the old buggers doubtless had a grander time. – © Sunday Tribune

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t believe the rugby hype – the big, hairy French are no poodles

It’s been unnerving hearing the chatter around the Springboks’ impending series against France.

The prevailing view, from experts and ignoramuses alike, is that the Boks ought to have too much for the Europeans. This is a view based on, well, not very much.

The facts don’t support the optimism. The Boks are attempting to come out of a very deep, very dark hole. Super Rugby has been a hit-and-miss affair and the French are big, hairy buggers who will come hard.

Fortunately, complacency will constitute no part of the Springboks themselves. They have no reason to feel smug or superior. Ranked seventh, they’re at the bottom of a tall ladder. Small steps must be taken, new methods embraced.

The early signs are encouraging, not least the appointment of Warren Whiteley, a Durban old boy who is charismatic, shrewd, athletic and dignified. He’s the very antithesis of Adrian Strauss, his predecessor, who will forever be damned for the Boks’ miserable 2016.

He’s a classical eighthman in the mould of Gary Teichmann, applying a cerebral touch to the game. It’s a quality the Boks have needed in the recent past.

Along with Whiteley have come a whole lot of Lions players, an important addition given how they have lorded it over local opposition in recent seasons. The trouble with this, though, is that Lions rugby is not Springbok rugby.

Coach Allister Coetzee is a fundamentalist at heart. He might reach for new means and attempt to flex his muscle, but his default position is the old way. It’s what he feels most comfortable with.

There’s nothing wrong with embracing South Africa’s traditional strengths, but if the past few years have taught us anything it’s that the game has moved on. We need to stretch ourselves.

TThe Lions contingent will go into straitjackets and be discouraged from showing their full plumage

The likelihood is that the Lions contingent will go into straitjackets and be discouraged from showing their full plumage. This is most obviously the case with a player like Elton Jantjies. Given his freedom by the Lions, he plays flat and fast, directing the traffic as he sees fit.

For the Boks, he’ll be expected to stand in the pocket and play a different game, one he neither enjoys nor feels comfortable with. And then we’ll all go on about how ordinary Jantjies is for the Boks, refusing to recognise that he serves two masters with vastly different styles.

Perhaps I’m wrong. I hope so. Indeed, word from sessions run by Brendan Venter, the new assistant, is that some very unorthodox plays are being run. He’s a lateral rugby thinker so if any of that rubs off on Coetzee, it can’t be a bad thing.

Coetzee will also benefit from having had time to put his management team together and plan for the year, unlike last season when his late appointment seemed to affect every result. Rugby coaching on the run never works.

And so to the French. Coach Guy Noves is unusual in the sense that he doesn’t believe in the cliché of French flair. He says it is a romantic notion many years past its sell-by date. He’s right, too. The last touring team that ripped it up in the old Gallic way did so in New Zealand in 1994.

Noves is more pragmatic, a pragmatism that has earned him a staggering nine French championships with Stade Toulouse and four Heineken Cup triumphs. Even if he’s getting on a bit, he can coach.

France had an iffy Six Nations, but pushed a resurgent England hard. They’re big in the physical sense and play fast. The hard fields will thus suit them and in number eight Louis Picamoles they have one of the great modern-day players. He is a force of nature who will stamp his mark early in the series. If the Boks manage to keep him on a tight rein, their ambitions will be met. If not, he’ll wreak havoc.

Unlike other European nations, the French have regularly won in SA over the years, most recently in 2006 when they scored four tries against a seasoned Bok XV at Newlands.

Don’t expect the tourists to be meek. They will rumble hard and test a Springbok team desperate to rediscover its mojo.

Plus ça change, South Africa?

Let’s hope not. – © Sunday Tribune

John Smit heads up SuperSport team for thrilling NZ v Lions series

The British and Irish Lions begin their epic 10-match tour of New Zealand with a match against the New Zealand Provincial Barbarians on Saturday.

It will mark the start of a fiendish trip that includes three matches against the world champions and fixtures against all five Super Rugby franchises.

Every match will be broadcast live on SuperSport with extensive build-ups by an array of analysts, among them 1980’s Lion John Robbie and World Cup-winning captain John Smit, who led the 2-1 Springbok triumph over the Lions in 2009.

In addition to the live broadcasts, the matches will be streamed live on the DStv Now app with highlights on Catch Up.

BROADCAST DETAILS

June 3: NZ Provincial Barbarians v British & Irish Lions, Whangarei, SS1, 9.35am.
June 7: Blues v British & Irish Lions, Auckland, SS1, 9.35am.
June 10: Crusaders v British & Irish Lions, Christchurch, SS1, 9.35am.
June 13: Highlanders v British & Irish Lions, Dunedin, SS1, 9.35am.
June 17: Maori All Blacks v British & Irish Lions, Rotorua, SS1, 9.35am.
June 20: Chiefs v British & Irish Lions, Hamilton, SS1, 9.35am.
June 24: NZ v British & Irish Lions, Auckland, SS1, 9.35am.
June 27: Hurricanes v British & Irish Lions, Wellington, SS1, 9.35am.
July 1: NZ v British & Irish Lions, Wellington, SS1, 9.35am.
July 8: NZ v British & Irish Lions, Auckland, SS1, 9.35am.