But I Digress ...
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But of course, in the usual fashion, when we South Africans are presented with a miracle, with a golden wonder-work, we start rapping it with our knuckles to find the weak spot, the feet of clay. I broached the subject of Graeme Smith with a friend after the first test. “Yes,” he said, “but it was a very flat pitch.” As though no one else in either team played on that same flat pitch without scoring a double century. As though no other South African test batsman in the history of South African cricket ever played upon a flat pitch without scoring 277. As though Michael Vaughan did not describe his century in the same match as the best of his career, citing both the South African bowling and the awkwardness of that very pitch.
If Graeme Smith were Australian, you would not be able to sleep at night for the stridency of the Antipodean trumpeting. They would know – and would be quick to let us know – that they had in their possession the brightest, most extraordinary new star in the cricketing firmament. Certainly, they have made more fuss over far less than what we have in Smith. Nor are they half so quick as we are to tear down what they have built up. We in South Africa are frequently wary of the greatness among us – we are more comfortable with mediocrity. Graeme Smith is not mediocre. He is something special.
It seems to me that this series, more than any I can remember, has all the elements of great and timeless drama. It is almost Shakespearean in its themes. Consider, a moment: In the build-up to the first clash, Nasser Hussain, the weathered warrior-king of an empire he has rebuilt by strength of will from the rubble and ruins he had inherited, lays down a personal challenge to Graeme Smith, the young king of a fractured invader tribe. In his public statements he turns the clash of nations into a clash of individuals – he invests the battle with the personal fortunes of the leaders.
It is a moment when destinies come into conflict. It is Smith’s destiny to rise like a young god, sweeping all before him, storming the very citadel. Hussain, on the other hand, has pre-empted his own destiny – throwing down the gauntlet, he has thrown down the kingship. Whatever future the fates had in store for him, he has short-circuited the course of his career with an act of hubris that may yet foreshadow his fall. First the leadership, now his very place in the empire is imperilled – all is smoke and fire, and when the confusion settles it is Smith who bestrides the battleground like a laughing young colossus. There are great themes here – individual will versus destiny; embattled age versus the surging force of youth; the mantle of greatness and how it lies on those shoulders upon which it is thrust.
As Nasser begins to fade, fighting on and winning battles here and there but caught up in history’s inexorable drift to stage-left, where he can only brood and look on as the empire he has built starts to crack and crumble beneath the hammer blows of the invaders, the destinies of Smith and Vaughan now range against each other. No matter what happens in the last three matches of the series, or the rest of his career, Smith has announced himself as one who is chosen by the sporting gods to perform great deeds and bear great burdens. “Those whom the gods would destroy,” an English fan misquoted to me recently, “they first make great.” Perhaps. We shall see.