But I Digress ...

by Darrel Bristow-Bovey

  An important advantage of being at the stadium is that you did not have Robert Marawa’s witless voice-over. “Welcome to untamed Africa!” gurgled Robert Marawa. Untamed Africa? Since when has Newlands been untamed? Have they banned lawnmowers below Main Road since last I visited? Have the bears escaped from Tygerberg Zoo?

  Still, at least Robert Marawa didn’t have to be Marc Lottering. Hasn’t that poor man suffered enough? For some reason, Lottering had to pretend to be a safari guide taking a gormless posse of tourists around the field. (Yes! Tourists! With foreign currency! Hint, hint!) Every so often we cut back to Lottering’s gang of mugs, lined up and dancing for the camera like extras in a Boney M video. At first I was puzzled. What on earth were they doing? Ah, then it became clear – that mechanical dancing, the laughable clothing, those clenched jaws and rictal grins … they were a subliminal sales pitch. Yes, you prospective tourists, in addition to all its other attractions, Cape Town has a ready supply of recreational drugs!

  It was surreal, especially after I discovered that SABC3’s coverage lagged five minutes behind Supersport’s. If you really liked those crêpe-paper meerkats, you could duck over to the SABC and feast your eyes a second time. If the SABC maintain this time-lag policy for the games, we can make a fortune calling friends without DStv and betting big money on what is about to happen.

  There was a maritime sequence. I watched agog as a giant octopus and a whale squared up belligerently. “The octopus and the whale battle for control of the seas,” explained Robert helpfully. At last! Some action! But who do we root for? Who is the good guy? In balletic slow-mo the whale poked the octopus in the belly with its nose. Then they drifted off again on their own currents, papier-mâché beasts passing in the night. Now I’ll never know who has control of the seas.

  The low point was the tournament anthem. It was so nondescript, so utterly without hook, that by the time it was over I could scarcely remember hearing it. It was as though I had overheard it being played at a low volume on the neighbours’ television while asleep.

  Like the anthem, the ceremony wound to an end without any highlights. It just did not work on television. There was no rhythm to the evening, no heart. There was no drama, no Madiba, no magic. A lot of work went into the occasion, but not much imagination. I do not say this to dull a joyous mood. I am proudly South African. I am as proud as I was before the ceremony. But the ceremony did not make me any more proud than I already was, and that is a shame.

  Cricket World Cup 2003: A toast to the minnows

  BUSINESS DAY, 20 FEBRUARY 2003

  I WAS SHATTERED WHEN we lost to the West Indies in the first match, but even had we won, I could not have been more genuinely delighted than I was watching Kenya beat Sri Lanka this week. What happened in that match was a triumph for sport, and for the dream of what sport used to mean.

  Amid all the fluster and hullabaloo of the World Cup so far, I have been finding solace in the smaller teams. I watched in raptures as the Canadians beat the Bangladeshis in their first match, this team of part-timers, this hodge-podge gaggle of plumbers and builders and high-school teachers from a frozen land, tubby, elderly and not uniformly fleet of foot, expecting nothing of this tournament and with nothing but the joy of the game in their hearts. I was just as delighted with the Netherlands slugging it out with the Indians, the Namibians hanging tough with Pakistan.

  There is something reassuringly pure in watching the small teams pitting themselves against insuperable odds merely to stand tall with giants. With the exception of Bangladesh, the most undeserving test nation under this or any conceivable heaven, they all deserve to stand tall. It is soothing to watch them. There are no cross-currents or clouds to obscure your pleasure. There are no doping scandals or salary wrangles; there are no power plays or petty politics; there are no niggling rumours that so-and-so is about to quit to play county cricket, or that such-and-such has lost his passion for the game. It is just 11 men doing their best to play well a game they still love, a game that has not become just another way of earning a living.

  And how they are performing. John Davison of Canada, in an innings out of Roy of the Rovers, scored the fastest century in World Cup history. John-Berry Burger of Namibia cracked an even-time 80-odd against England. And then the Kenyans smacked Sri Lanka. Of course Collins Obuya’s 5-24 was the highlight, but it was not Obuya who won that match. The Sri Lankans were simply blown away by the most passionate team performance of the tournament so far.

  The Kenyans fielded like South Africa used to field. They threw themselves around; they sprinted after balls from which no runs were likely to accrue; they encouraged and congratulated and consoled and urged each other on. Two images will live with me from that game: the Kenyans gathering after each wicket, their arms around each others’ shoulders and jumping up and down at the joy of being together and fighting together; and Collins Obuya, having dismissed Chaminda Vaas, sprinting from sheer exuberance towards the boundary ropes like an English football player.

  For me, the biggest game of the World Cup will be Kenya against Bangladesh. It is a clash that represents for me the fundamental tension in world sport: commerce versus the game itself. Bangladesh should not have test status ahead of Kenya. Compared with the fire and heart and passion of the Kenyans, the Bangladeshis are like a mini-Pakistan. They were only given test status because the bean-counters at the ICC calculated they could make more money from the larger Bangladeshi market. For a few extra bucks they turned their backs on the Kenyans and left them to flail about on their own.

  When Kenya beat Bangladesh and move into the Super Sixes they will have made a firm point on behalf of the so-called minnows that have given me so much pleasure these past weeks. I have, I realise now, been feeling my own passion for the game dwindle as I watch the jaded self-absorption of some of the big teams, treating each match like just another day at the office, their minds on their endorsement contracts or the golf course, all romance and wonder drained out of their games. It has taken the minnows to remind me of how it used to be.

  “We play every game as though it’s the World Cup final,” said the Netherlands captain this week. The Canadians will not only not be paid for their time here, but they have had to take annual leave from their day jobs back home, and they did it willingly, for the simple love of cricket. Along with the bravehearts of Namibia and the heroes of Kenya, they remind me of what is glorious about the game, and how much we have lost since becoming professional. On behalf of sport lovers everywhere, I want to thank them all. The World Cup would not be the same without them.

  Cricket World Cup 2003: Saluting the winners

  BUSINESS DAY, 27 MARCH 2003

  I WANTED INDIA TO WIN the World Cup final. I wanted them to win for a number of reasons, but mostly because of Mershen and his son. I met Mershen as we shuffled along with the crush of people trying to enter the ground on Sunday morning. He and his son were both wearing the powder-blue Indian replica kit, and they had driven down from Zimbabwe for the final. Mershen’s son was 10, and he hopped from one foot to the other, tugging at his father’s shirt, fair bursting with excitement. As we edged closer to the security check, a roar from the stadium told us that the game had started. Mershen’s son was beside himself with dread that India might be batting first, and that he might miss Sachin Tendulkar.

  “He hasn’t been able to sleep properly for three days,” Mershen whispered to me. “He can’t believe he is going to see Sachin bat. All he can talk about is Sachin this and Sachin that and how many runs do I think Sachin will make and will Sachin hit a six?”

  A man with a transistor radio turned and said that Australia were batting first. Mershen’s son looked up with shining eyes. “Daddy!” he said. “We’re going to see Sachin bat!” Mershen ruffled his son’s hair and put one hand on his shoulder. Behind my sunglasses my eyes suddenly blurred and I felt deeply happy for this man and his son. That small boy will remember for all his life the day he came to Johannesburg and queued with his fathe
r at the Wanderers under clear blue skies to watch the World Cup final. I hoped against hope that Sachin would score a century for them.

  I was not alone. As I sat in the Mondi Paper suite later that day, looking down on the impressionistic watercolour of the great green oval surrounded by swirls of clustered yellow and powder-blue shirts, I felt profoundly thankful that I was not Sachin Tendulkar, walking out to bat, bearing the dreams of a billion people. My heart leapt as he pulled the fourth ball of the innings to the boundary. The very earth shuddered, as though every Indian in the world had jumped at exactly the same time.

  Then he skied the next ball and there was a low, breathless gasp from the stadium. It felt like some enormous punch to the crowd’s collective gut. There are many stories of the unearthly sums of money that Sachin Tendulkar makes from endorsements, but as he walked slowly back to the pavilion, shoulders slumped, a man irredeemably alone and accompanied by the unheard howls of a continent, it occurred to me that he works hard for every cent.

  And so Australia won, as they were always going to win. I have always loathed the Australians – from principled bad sportsmanship as much as anything else – but on that Sunday afternoon I finally surrendered. After a certain point, you simply cannot begrudge them victory. They win because they deserve to win. They win – over and above their talent – because they do everything right. They have the right back-up staff, the right philosophy, the right minds working behind the scenes. And they win because they have the right attitude. I have made much of how refreshing it has been to watch the enthusiasm and the passion of the Kenyans in this year’s tournament, but it finally dawned on me, watching the Australians celebrating their wickets, watching them rush around Ricky Ponting at the end of the match in a spontaneous overflow of joy, that Australia is at least their match.

  Where every other major team in the world seems to be stricken with in-fighting or personality clashes or the flatness of its jaded senior players, the Australians are a model of unity and mateship and enthusiasm. Cynics will say that it is easier to stay fresh and enthusiastic when you are winning. Perhaps, but after seeing the inexorable rise of the Aussies these past four years, it rather seems the other way round. I never thought I would hear myself say this, but my congratulations to Australia. We all have a lot to learn from you.

  Henry Olonga and courage

  BUSINESS DAY, 3 APRIL 2003

  IT IS EASY to forget, sometimes, that sport stars are people. They inhabit a realm that is, for most of us, a realm of dreams, a theatre of the imagination. They are just the figures – tiny on the pitch or somewhat larger but equally distant on our televisions – that act out the roiling dramas that seem to spring whole from our own hearts. Sport, for most of us, fills a need that goes beyond support for this team or that team. It is more than just a way to pass a couple of hours on a Saturday. The attachment to sport is an attachment to a world within a world, a world of dramas and myths and archetypes that speaks to deeper parts of us than simply the parts that calculate who has won. Sport is as necessary to the soul as dreams or stories are, which is why we sometimes forget that sportsmen are not figures in dreams or characters from fiction.

  That is why the public reacts with shock when their sport stars reveal themselves to be human beings – when they fix matches or refuse autographs or when you see them in a mall and they are like everyone else and do not much feel like discussing last weekend’s match. It is an enormous burden that sport stars assume. When they step away from the sport arena and say or do something that has nothing to do with sport, the result is almost inevitably disappointment and disillusion, as though someone has turned on the house lights while the magician is doing his show, and suddenly you can see the hidden wires and trapdoors and false bottoms.

  But every so often a sportsman does something to assert that he is a human being as well as a sportsman, and the result is relief and gratitude and admiration. That is how I felt as I watched Henry Olonga being interviewed on Carte Blanche this weekend. The world has been scandalously silent about the courage of Henry Olonga and Andy Flower. What they did – at the beginning of the World Cup – with their black armbands and their dignified statement about the death of Zimbabwean democracy encourages me as a human being.

  Unbelievably, there are still the crabbed and inward voices of those who complain, with that desperately tired old argument, that Olonga and Flower were wrong to “bring politics into sport”. What Olonga and Flower did was to remind us all that we are human beings first, before we are sportsmen or sports fans, and that human beings have a responsibility to their own conscience and their sense of what is right.

  It has become clear in the past month how much courage Henry Olonga’s action demanded. Unlike Andy Flower, he was not poised to jet off to play county cricket in England and then state cricket in Australia. His principled stand saw him stripped of his place in Zimbabwean cricket, and then stripped of his home. Now he hides in Johannesburg, afraid to return to the place where a madman tramples on a nation.

  While the English cricket team disregarded issues of morality and made their decision not to play in Zimbabwe simply a matter of safety, Henry Olonga explicitly disregarded his safety, and made his stand as a moral imperative. Against the unedifying backdrop of administrators and the media complaining that the situation in Zimbabwe might erode World Cup profits or tarnish the lustre of the tournament, men such as Henry Olonga and Andy Flower and Errol Stewart (who refused to tour with the A-team on the grounds of moral conscience) have given me faith that human beings still can cling to beliefs and values that surpass profit and revenue and the narrow description of their jobs.

  I am used to being inspired by sportsmen on the field. I am used to being transported by sport into a place of heroes and villains, of courage and determination and action such as you only find in movies or old books. Flower and Olonga and Stewart remind us that these qualities can exist inside all of us. They deserve our gratitude.

  Potchefstroom Olympic bid

  BUSINESS DAY, 17 APRIL 2003

  TODAY IS A mighty day, my friends. Today we stand on the threshold of a bright new beginning for world sport, and the good readers of this column are the first to know about it. This very evening Cape Town sees the launch of “Potch 2012” – the official Potchefstroom Olympic Bid. No, I am not joking. I know whereof I speak, because I am one of the directors of Potch 2012, and already an army marches behind us.

  The bid is to be launched tonight with the support of the mayor and people of Potchefstroom and with a glittering cast of sport and entertainment celebrities. Should we win the South African nomination and then the actual bid itself, we promise a new beginning in the sordid history of world sport.

  The Potch games are being dubbed the “Back to Basics Games”. The idea arose from a thoroughgoing disgruntlement with the commercialised, professionalised, degraded nature of sport today. For years we have watched in sorrow as the Olympics pay lip service to the noble ideals of sport while painting it with the harlot’s colours of branding and sponsorship. The Cricket World Cup in our own country was nearly unseated by wrangles with sponsors; the cricket itself belonged not to the players or to the crowds or even the people watching at home, but to the companies that offered most money.

  For decades the ideals of sportsmanship have tarnished under the pressure of money. Sport has always been a business, but increasingly it is only a business, and that is draining away our enthusiasm and the simple pleasure of play. If we are successful with our bid, we will use the Games as a moral renaissance. Potchefstroom will be the first sporting event in two thousand years at which absolutely no one will make, lose or misplace money.

  There will be no prize money at Potch 2012, and the Games will not be sponsored. We will ask television companies to defray the basic costs of broadcasting facilities, but thereafter we shall ask not one cent for rights. Everyone is welcome to screen the Potch Olympics, from the richest to the poorest, from NBC to e.tv. This expanded media coverag
e should off-set any disappointment about the availability of stadium seating. There will not be much stadium seating, as the stadium is not very big. There will be no admission fees and attendance is on a first-come, first-seated basis.

  The Games will be marshalled by the same volunteers who did yeomen service at the Cricket World Cup. For this reason, purple is the official colour of Potch 2012. There will be no athletes’ village at the Games. As a gesture of old-fashioned South African hospitality we are calling upon the people of Potchefstroom to open their homes to the world’s athletes and make a room available for a visiting sportsperson for the duration of the Games. If you do not have a room, a sofa in the lounge will do. If you do not have a sofa, then God bless you.

  Residents will obviously not be asked to house sports administrators or Australians. Sports administrators will not in fact be invited to Potch 2012. No one has ever, in the history of sport, said: “That was a nice event, but it would have been so much better if there had been more administrators.” Anyway they eat too much. While the Australians will probably be allowed to attend the Games, it would not be fair to the people of Potchefstroom to expect them to welcome an Aussie in their own home, where their family sleeps.