A bitter-sweet day for Test cricket in South Africa
Centurion delivers both kinds of shiver down the spine
There were moments during the first day’s play at Centurion when it felt like we’d gone back in time.
It was the nineties again. South Africa was back in international cricket, and people cared about the Proteas beating all who dared venture to our fortress and toss up on any of our hallowed squares. Allan Donald was jagging it impossibly, producing balls that would make it into all-time highlights reels. The geed-up crowd would murmur louder and louder as he ran in with the fresh ball, bashing their palms on sponsor hoardings as some poor sub-continental cowered at the crease. Anticipation hung in the air like a Highveld thundercloud. And then, when edges were taken or stumps crashed down, that crowd would make a deafening, passionate din about it. There were enough people there, caring, to do that.
It wasn’t really the nineties, obviously. But today, Kagiso Rabada did an outstanding impression of Donald in his pomp. And though the reluctant-travelling, sloppy-fielding Indian teams of yore are long gone, there were moments when you were forced to cast your mind back to a time when you had to feel for them as tourists. To think, say, of Sachin Tendulkar, Kingsmead, 1996. Rabada’s delivery to nick off Virat Kohli was in that sort of league.
There have been other balls of such class delivered on South African soil in the intervening three decades. But they haven’t all been accompanied by such weighty roars from the banks and stands. Roars that tell you that this crumpled heap of stumps actually means something to ordinary South Africans. Commentators can shout down their microphones all they like and PR machines can whirr away all the day long, but only a real crowd making a real noise can add genuine legitimacy to a sporting event.
That the noise came back this Boxing Day was the most vivid piece of today’s time travel puzzle. It was sorely, achingly needed after those pandemic contests in empty stadiums. And after the West Indies Tests back in February and March, which weren’t pandemic matches but might as well have been for all the punters that turned up to those depressing, downgraded midweek encounters.
Today, at the very same Centurion where next to nobody witnessed the Proteas winning the series opener against the Windies, was a heartwarming reminder that decent opposition and non-working days can still combine to bring real crowds to Tests in South Africa. The sellout makes me optimistic that Cape Town will still come out in numbers to the New Year Test, despite that ‘tradition’ having been broken (for spectators at least) since England’s visit in early 2020.
So much for the sweet.
Dean Elgar’s honest interview with Pommie Mbangwa, broadcast on SuperSport during the lunch interval, provided the bitter. The reminder that we’d do well to savour days like these. Because each one could be the last.
Too dramatic? Consider Elgar’s candid admission that the reason he has retired from Test cricket is that South Africa doesn’t play enough of it.
There’s nothing surprising about what he said, of course. And you can’t fault his thinking. Having a job that only requires you to turn up five or six weeks of the year - which means you’re increasingly rusty every time you do - does not deliver much satisfaction. It’s just momentously sad to hear him say it out loud.
We know all red-ball specialists in countries outside the Big Three are facing the same issue Elgar does. It’s not news. But if you were hoping there’d be some dramatic turnaround in the trends, as a part of me naively wanted to, having a former Test captain and front-line player come out and say he can’t justify spending his best years sitting around watching television feels like a point of no return.
There can be no kid in South Africa who walked away from watching that interview thinking “I want to captain my country in Tests one day”. Even if they did, their parents would be begging them to consider something less dead-end. (T20, perhaps. Or maybe even an Arts degree…) Whatever hope there still was for a red-ball production line takes another knock right there.
Call me a prophet of doom, but it’s not hard to see how the red-ball system collapses entirely when reaching the very pinnacle is no longer a carrot players consider worth chasing.
As always, I hope I am completely wrong on this. Only administrators, working at international level for the good of the game (still got a straight face?) can reverse what looks like an inevitable narrative. Who can give them a push to do so? I’ll say it again: nothing legitimises an event like a real crowd making a real noise.
So well done to the people of Gauteng for buying those tickets and risking it with the weather today. Consider your performance as meaningful as any belligerent Dean Elgar rearguard. Test cricket in South Africa is nine wickets down, after all, but you treated us to a few feel-good boundaries. And maybe, if you just keep on turning up and showing you want to be there, there’s still a chance of saving the game.
Rugby extra: A quick change of codes to finish. I’ve just seen the Springboks’ home schedule for 2024. The great news? Ireland are visiting for a Test series. Should be a cracker. The bad news, apart from this being just about the end of inbound tours as we know them? The curse that has hit cricket has now landed on rugby union: there are only two Tests in that Ireland series. You may be excused to retch violently. But here, for your reference, are those South Africa home rugby fixtures for 2024 (I’ll add the away Rugby Championship and year-end fixtures as soon as they come to light):
6 July: v Ireland, Loftus Versfeld
13 July: v Ireland, Kings Park
20 July: v Portugal, TBC
31 August: v New Zealand, Ellis Park (Rugby Championship)
7 September: v New Zealand, Cape Town Stadium (Rugby Championship)
28 September: v Argentina, Mbombela Stadium (Rugby Championship)