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Reverse Sweep: A Story of South African Cricket since Apartheid
De Ashwin Desai
Actions du livre
Commencer à lireLongueur: 346 pages5 heures
- Éditeur:
- Jacana Media
- Sortie:
- Jan 1, 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781928232353
- Format:
- Livre
Description
In this searing and revealing account of cricket in post-apartheid South Africa, Ashwin Desai deftly tells a story of promise and despair, the story of a new pitch; a quick start full of hope, followed by a steady erosion of the commitments needed to fulfil the promise of a level-playing field. Economic and political compromises contributed to holding back the pulling aside of the covers of race and class privilege. Alongside this, the hurried hollowing out of the politics of cricket', aided by black administrators assuming the accoutrements of office, saw very little internal challenge to the lack of transformation. In a book where the love of cricket shines through, Ashwin Desai makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the farce that was post-apartheid cricket administration and the characters that played such a role in the charade.
Informations sur le livre
Reverse Sweep: A Story of South African Cricket since Apartheid
De Ashwin Desai
Longueur: 346 pages5 heures
Description
In this searing and revealing account of cricket in post-apartheid South Africa, Ashwin Desai deftly tells a story of promise and despair, the story of a new pitch; a quick start full of hope, followed by a steady erosion of the commitments needed to fulfil the promise of a level-playing field. Economic and political compromises contributed to holding back the pulling aside of the covers of race and class privilege. Alongside this, the hurried hollowing out of the politics of cricket', aided by black administrators assuming the accoutrements of office, saw very little internal challenge to the lack of transformation. In a book where the love of cricket shines through, Ashwin Desai makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the farce that was post-apartheid cricket administration and the characters that played such a role in the charade.
- Éditeur:
- Jacana Media
- Sortie:
- Jan 1, 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781928232353
- Format:
- Livre
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En rapport avec Reverse Sweep
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Reverse Sweep - Ashwin Desai
Reverse Sweep
Reverse Sweep
A Story of South African Cricket Since Apartheid
Ashwin Desai
First published by Fanele, an imprint of
Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd, in 2016
10 Orange Street
Sunnyside
Auckland Park 2092
South Africa
+2711 628 3200
www.jacana.co.za
© Ashwin Desai, 2016
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Shawn Paikin
Job no. 002895
Also available as an e-book:
d-PDF ISBN 978-1-928232-34-6
ePUB ISBN 978-1-928232-35-3
mobi file ISBN 978-1-928232-36-0
See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za
Contents
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
1 The remains of yesterday
2 Of white knights and apartheid ideologues
3 Sports journalism and the padding of history
4 Bacher’s backward glance
5 Doing the Samba
6 New whites for a new South Africa
7 The pace and spin of transformation
8 Black skin, white helmets
9 What lies between: The Hansie Cronje saga
10 Gerald Majola at the crease
11 The ‘bonus’ of the IPL
12 Batting in uncertain times
Notes
Bibliography
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
IN WRITING A BOOK of this sort one incurs many debts to many people. They include André Odendaal, Heinrich Böhmke and Jo Rushby. The book was considerably enhanced by the comments of Bridget Impey, Russell Martin and Christopher Merrett. Also thanks to the Jacana team, especially Nadia Goetham, Lara Jacob and Sibongile Machika.
Preface
Now in Maytime to the wicket
Out I march with bat and pad:
See the son of grief at cricket
Trying to be glad.
– A.E. HOUSMAN, A SHROPSHIRE LAD
IN THE EARLY 1970S, almost every summer weekend I made the journey from the centre of Durban to the Springfield grounds. Springfield is now home to massive business complexes and highways hemmed around by city sprawl, but in the early 1970s it was very much on the outskirts. Six or seven games of cricket were played, simultaneously, on ancient matting wickets according to rules first written in the eighteenth century. There were no sightscreens. Irregular boundaries were marked by misshapen whitewashed stones. Clumps of grass and molehills hid crevices that tested the most flexible of ankles. In a script that veered between comedy and tragedy I could not wait to get the call to don my whites and be drawn into the drama of Springfield.
On a Saturday afternoon you would arrive and drag a mat from a wood-and-iron shed. The mats were crusty and mouldy and came in all sorts of grotesque shapes. We would lay a mat on the pitch. The holes were huge. If you tried for a quick single, more often than not you would get stuck so you had to run alongside the pitch. This meant running in the direction of cover and then veering back to the pitch. We were playing cricket, but running like baseball players.
It was impossible to play cover drives that stuck to the turf. The ground was too spotted with holes and mounds. To score, you had to loft the ball. This created its own problems. Once a big-hitter was in, the fielders on the adjacent ground needed eyes in the backs of their heads. The fields were on top of each other with no sightscreens, so as the sun descended one sometimes saw two bowlers approaching. What did a score of 50 mean under these conditions? What did five wickets mean when you managed to hit the hole in the mat and turn the ball sharper than Shane Warne?
Occasionally, my father and I would go to Kingsmead, the cathedral of white cricket. Here was a completely different world of wonder: turf wickets, picket fences, sightscreens, a scoreboard that flashed lights while invisible hands moved the score. Everything was so beautifully white, pristine and ordered. My father carved out a space under the clock for us to sit, a small blanket, two paper cups and a bottle of Coo-ee forming our own boundary within the tiny ‘non-white’ section.
I watched the Springboks (as the national team was then still called) crush the Australians here in 1970. It was my joy also to witness many a provincial innings by the majestic Barry Richards. During one provincial game against Transvaal, my father, who was light of hue, snuck into the white area in search of a cup of tea. On his way back he was manhandled and unceremoniously pushed over the fence, all the while trying to hold onto the cup of tea. People on both sides of the divide clapped and laughed. He took his place on the blanket, this most gentle of men, and without saying a word picked up the binoculars to follow Mike Procter’s run-up that started near the sightscreen. In one of my father’s greatest gifts to me, C.L.R. James’s Beyond a Boundary, I marked these words: ‘The British tradition soaked deep into me was that when you entered the sporting arena you left behind the sordid compromises of everyday life. Yet for us to do that we would have to divest ourselves of our skins.’¹ We stayed away. The incident sparked a sense that in order to understand the game one required more than a pair of binoculars. Yet it never killed my passion for the game. How could it, given that its first seeds were planted in a son’s fond memories of trips to the ground with his father and nourished by a whole boyhood’s excitement and play?
In 1990, as Nelson Mandela strode out of prison, Springfield and Kingsmead edged closer.² In 1991, the two worlds of cricket united, at the top at least. After years of sports boycotts against South Africa, international recognition beckoned. When India toured in 1992–93 we went to Kingsmead, my father and I. He was like a child, taking in everything as we perched high up at the Umgeni end. As was his way, avoiding trouble, he insisted on bringing his own flask of tea. These personal stories played themselves out everywhere in South Africa, lost against the dramatic backdrop of apartheid coming to an end, Mandela meeting FW de Klerk and cricket supremo Ali Bacher meeting the African National Congress (ANC) sports commissar, Steve Tshwete. The game ended. My dad spied other men on the stands with whom he had batted through the 1960s and 1970s. They clasped hands. They spent a long time looking down at the empty pitch and then said goodbye; men who played the game with such dignity, under conditions that mocked them. As I helped him into the car, little did we know that my father would never see Kingsmead again, as Parkinson’s enveloped his body and eventually ended his life.
In post-apartheid South Africa, I avidly followed the Proteas as they made their way to the World Cup in Australia and wherever else in the world pitches were laid, boundaries marked out and willow swung. Expectations at home were high that the deep creases of inequality in the game would be steadily ironed out by the rollers of development and transformation, buzzwords that were all the rage at cricket headquarters in Johannesburg.
This book is an account of cricket in post-apartheid South Africa from the tumultuous Gatting tour in which, ironically, the seeds of cricket unity were sown, to the Hansie Cronje saga and the change of leadership from Ali Bacher to Gerald Majola and more recently to Haroon Lorgat. It is a story of a new pitch, a quick start full of hope followed by a steady erosion of the commitments needed to fulfil the promise of a level playing field. Economic and political compromises contributed to hold back the piercing of the covers of race and class privilege. Alongside this, the hurried hollowing out of the politics of cricket, aided by black administrators assuming the accoutrements of office, saw very little internal challenge to a lack of transformation.³
Meanwhile, global realignments in cricket initially gave South Africa some respite. But soon the big three of Australia, England and India were collaborating to claim the lion’s share of global funding, limiting even further the resources necessary for development in the domestic game. In a sense, we are back to the Springfield–Kingsmead divide. But there will be no posthumous honours, however grudgingly given, to lovers of the game who are keeping it alive in townships or side streets. Those whose innings are defined by lumpy mats and broken gear garner far less sympathy or note. For is cricket not now open to all, just like the Ritz Hotel; a game of money, dazzle, dancing girls and quick results?
Introduction
Cricket is not a game. It is the truth of life.
– J.M. COETZEE, BOYHOOD
THIS IS A RECENT HISTORY of South African cricket, a story of subterfuge, scandal and broken promises. It is also about trying to plot a path through a corridor of uncertainty as the white picket fences of apartheid fell and new structures of governance and commitments to change were negotiated. It was a time when events happening off the field became more important than those on it.
The story of cricket during apartheid is one in which black cricket suffered enormously: denied sponsorship, its playing facilities bulldozed by local authorities, its leaders harassed and banned. While in competitive terms black cricket barely survived, it did produce a powerful cultural milieu in which white cricket was boycotted and clubs became places of enduring camaraderie. Even if sometimes prone to the delusion that every player in the ramshackle clubhouse was a thwarted Basil D’Oliveira, black cricket produced substantial heroes, none less so than the coloured South African who went on to play for England, celebrated not only for his cricketing exploits but for the fact that he was selected for the MCC team to tour South Africa in 1968–69. However, Prime Minister John Vorster refused to accept D’Oliveira as a member of the team, turning him into the catalyst for a global boycott movement.⁴
White cricket on the other hand, despite international isolation, was well looked after during this period. Facilities were of the highest quality and this was reinforced by richly endowed private schools, long the incubator of world-class cricketing skills. It possessed a thriving domestic league, attracting big crowds and television audiences. A professional administrative infrastructure existed with boardrooms, traditions, gentle rivalries and budgets to spend. Many white players participated in rogue tours and played the English county circuit, earning top-class salaries and travelling the world.
It was white cricket, then, that was in a position to take advantage of the ANC’s support for a quick return to the international field. Overnight, black cricket was dragged out of the local dustpans and into competition with clubs that were, in terms of resources and skills, far superior. Some black clubs merged with each other to try to compete, but this offered little in the way of success or development. Others joined with white clubs but were soon absorbed into them. Leading black cricketers drifted out of the game, disillusioned and unable to countenance playing in the third division. Unity brought very few resources to this end of the game. The great unification of the two streams of cricket did not result in a steady trickle of resources to those black clubs with long-standing traditions.
Meanwhile, negotiations for the new South Africa had a lot to do with numbers. In the cricketing world it was no different. For a while, unity talks stalled because the white body had ten executive members and the black body seven. The latter was allowed to summarily increase its number to ten. White and black would have the same number of representatives and enjoy the same privileges, even if the structures represented by the latter were decimated through the long apartheid innings. In 1991, the black South African Cricket Board (SACB)⁵ and white South African Cricket Union (SACU) joined to form the United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCBSA), later to become Cricket South Africa (CSA). Tasked with redressing the inequalities of the past and facilitating a unity process at all levels of cricket, it also oversaw South Africa’s return to the international playing field.
Fuelled by the release of Nelson Mandela and the endorsement of the Freedom Charter as the basis for future government policy, expectations of speedy and fundamental change in the South African political economy took hold across the land. The declared overarching goals of progressive organisations and individuals were the building of non-racialism and overcoming the apartheid legacy. However, the radical rhetoric was not met with radical economic decisions. Mandela beat a quick retreat from ‘the Freedom Charter’s promise to nationalise banks, mines and monopolies’,⁶ returning from Davos, Switzerland, in 1992 to announce to his closest aides: ‘Chaps, we have to choose. We either keep nationalisation and get no investment, or we modify our own attitude and get investment.’⁷ In 1994, in a speech to a joint session of Congress in Washington, Mandela spoke of the free market as a ‘magic elixir’.⁸ It was a magical turnaround both for its speed and the way it transformed the ANC.
These retreats did little to trump the deep optimism that spread across the land. With Mandela at the helm, it was a time of embracing, of grand gestures, of style and the possibility of everyday freedom, whatever the structural and historical constraints. Mandela saw sport as a powerful weapon, not only to heal racial divisions but also to smooth the way for South Africa’s entry into the comity of nations. So even while negotiations were on-going and the apartheid National Party held power, Mandela sanctioned South Africa’s participation in the Cricket World Cup and the 1992 Olympics. The 1995 victory at the Rugby World Cup, with Mandela resplendent in a Springbok jersey, was received with global acclaim. This was followed by the winning of football’s Africa Cup of Nations.
It was at this time that the idea of Madiba Magic caught the public imagination and we came to believe that something exceptional was being born in South Africa.⁹ From sport to international visits and welcoming guests such as the Spice Girls at the Union Buildings, these were giddy times. In an age where leaders seemed to be photocopies of each other, our president was a rock star. Madiba shirts became a fashion statement. Hollywood came begging for autographs.¹⁰ It signalled a time when those who suffered under apartheid would take their place as full citizens under a new flag and national anthem, guided by a new constitution in a new South Africa. Mandela marked the closure of one long terrible episode of African history, defined by colonial dispossession and racial oppression. At the same time, he signalled the opening: of a time when all South Africans would be free from racial and economic exclusions, blessed to be living in the Rainbow Nation of God. The intensity of this symbolism was supposed to feed through to the economy. There was a deep sense that Madiba Magic would conjure an audacious spell, propelling the country into advantageous global trade relations while ensuring local levels of redress and redistribution.
Aron ‘Ali’ Bacher was central to unification of the cricket boards and smoothing the way into international cricket. After that, he proved to be brilliant in managing a myriad of challenges and expectations. He juggled an effectively all-white team, a media eager to decry the slightest hint of racial quotas and new national political bosses keen to see at least one black African in the national team. His experience of the rogue years, in which tours breaching the sports boycott of apartheid South Africa were put together, proved invaluable.
Bacher’s justification for his involvement in the rogue tours was that revenue at the gates and sponsorship money would fund development programmes in black African townships. After the coming of democracy, and with a great deal of style and seeming candour, the former captain of the outcast Springboks and pinch-hitter for apartheid cricket was rebranded as a fearless fighter for Africanisation. This ability to rebrand, while conceding little control or content, was to reach its zenith under Hansie Cronje’s captaincy (1994–2000). The national team was seen to embody the hopes of Mandela’s goodwill and reconciliation, even if it was a stubbornly white team. And, as if to exemplify this commitment, unlike rugby the Springbok emblem was jettisoned for the protea flower. But Cronje will be remembered primarily for a match-fixing scandal that rocked the international cricketing world and exposed a secretive underbelly of corruption that still affects the game today. The testimony of the darling of South African cricket at the King Commission of Inquiry in 2000 was one of the most widely watched and intriguing acts of cricketing drama ever played off the pitch.
This book returns to these distinct periods in South African cricket and revisits the literature that has shaped its telling. The initial inspiration for the book arose from a number of texts written by insiders of this heady period. As I compared the experiences of players and administrators, it became clear that a much more contradictory narrative could be discerned than the one presented by Bacher and the majority of sports journalists.
While Bacher was afforded an opportunity to have a fabulous send-off as CEO of the Cricket World Cup in 2003, his replacement at the UCBSA, Gerald Majola, a black African, was already in office. Majola had a reputable pedigree, coming from a legendary cricket-playing family in the Eastern Cape. Majola was seen as the perfect person to drive a transformation project that would emphasise grassroots cricket. He took over the reins when President Thabo Mbeki was slated to move from the Mandela period of reconciliation to a period of redress and delivery. And, as with Mbeki, so with Majola. As Majola put it on his assumption of office: ‘What President Mbeki is telling us is simple: good proposals and nice-sounding words are not enough. We need action. We need to deliver.’¹¹
While Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela as president of South Africa in 1999, was seen as more aggressive on the issue of racial transformation than his predecessor, the fundamentals of economic policy were still to be ‘geared to the service of the respective prerogatives of national and international capital’.¹² Mbeki, however, was much more assertive and greater emphasis was placed on nurturing a black bourgeoisie, holding that ‘As part of the realisation of the aim to eradicate racism in our country, we must strive to strengthen a black capitalist class … whose presence within our economy and society will be part of the process of the deracialisation of the economy and society.’¹³
Soon, though, the South African state’s actions in support of transformation and development were marked by accusations of crony capitalism and elite self-enrichment. This was because the beneficiaries inevitably came from the upper echelons of the ANC. The cover explanation was that these advancements fulfilled the goals of African nationalism and the ruling party needed to place people on whom it could rely to use their wealth ‘patriotically’. Government reacted to cricket in the same way. Every so often, it would demand more black African players in the national team, while paying little attention to its own sorry record in developing school sport. It seemed that the patriotic duty of those elevated to high office in the name of change was not to rock the boat too much.
Some in the cricketing fraternity heralded Majola’s assumption of office as signifying a new hegemony in South African cricket. However, Majola was soon enveloped in a scandal that would rank alongside the Hansie Cronje saga in South African cricket history and have a dramatic impact on the country’s cricketing structures. The events surrounding and subsequent to the scandal are covered in detail in this book. A steering committee was set up in the aftermath of the Nicholson Report, the product of a commission to consider possible financial misconduct at CSA.¹⁴ It recommended that the new CSA board should consist of five independent members and five selected from the 11 provincial presidents. To select the five independents, a nominations committee was set up. This led to further scandal when the board rejected former CSA president Norman Arendse’s nomination. After Arendse won an arbitration case on his eligibility for nomination, the CSA provincial presidents clawed back influence by upping the number from their ranks to serve on the new structure to seven, while independents were pegged at five. And, thus, the windows opened to let some fresh air into the boardroom were half closed again.
These developments were set against the backdrop of major changes in the game. When South Africa entered world cricket in 1990, test cricket was pre-eminent, the 50-over game had become an increasingly popular format, and the national team was still the pinnacle of achievement for every cricket player. But, as the Proteas entered the hitherto banned fields of the West Indies and the Indian subcontinent, the boundaries of the game were changing dramatically. The 20-over game, stimulated by the Indian Premier League (IPL), became the most watched and most lucrative form of cricket. While consolidating India’s power in world cricket, this new format also saw privately owned teams and the promise of huge pay packets for cricket players. Whatever the take on the 20-over game, it has fundamentally rewritten the rules and altered the direction of this ancient sport. South Africa appeared to be a beneficiary of these changes, having a stake in the T20 Champions Trophy with India and Australia and hosting a lucrative IPL tournament. But the balance in more recent times has begun to shift as Australia, England and India have united to dominate power relations and finances at the International Cricket Council (ICC).
These changes and their continuing impact on South African cricket form a sub-theme of this book. These pages show JM Coetzee to be right. Cricket is the truth of life because it poses the same questions as life does.
ONE
The remains of yesterday
Those individuals who deliberately create lapses and omissions from collective memory are the ones who dictate the prevailing myths.
– STEVEN DUBIN, MOUNTING QUEEN VICTORIA
AT THE END OF 2009, England toured South Africa. In the test matches the sides played for the Basil D’Oliveira Trophy. Two of the television commentators were Geoff Boycott and Robin Jackman. Both have a solid knowledge of the game and were not shy to put it on display during the tour. They regaled audiences about times gone by and the greats of the game. During the quieter moments, they lectured on the values and principles that cricket exudes, both on and off the field. It was difficult not to be in awe of their attention to the game’s history and their ability to recall, with unnerving accuracy, dramatic moments of times long past. They appeared as living Wisdens wizened over time. But if one listened closely, both displayed remarkable levels of amnesia. Their own history of playing apartheid cricket was forgotten. How ironic that they did not blanch or defer to other voices when the time came to speak of D’Oliveira, the name that became a movement to boycott apartheid South Africa. For it to be invoked by Jackman and Boycott, the duo who did so much to undermine this movement while polishing apartheid cricket’s balls, left the bitterest taste in my mouth.
The privileging of the voices of Jackman and Boycott, sans their own history, is part of the continuing erasure of both the struggle of black cricketers in this country and the courage and sacrifices of the global anti-apartheid sports movement. As journalist Telford Vice put it, ‘Black cricket didn’t so much unify with white cricket in 1991 as disappear into it without trace.’¹⁵ Boycott and Jackman recited names of past South African greats: Peter Heine, Neil Adcock, Barry Richards, Peter and Graeme Pollock, and, more quietly and grudgingly, D’Oliveira. As South African born, US-based academic Grant Farred points out, the singular remembering of D’Oliveira allows the obliteration of the entire history of black cricket:
The symbolic Basil d’Oliveira has been reclaimed in toto, transformed from metaphor and metonym of non-racial cricket into an icon of egalitarian post-apartheid sport. D’Oliveira has had to assume the burden of over-representation, the exceptional cricketer who stands in place of and replaces the entire disenfranchised community. Over-representation functions here like the Derridean concept of erasure – for everything said a great many things are left unspoken – in that the sign Dolly marks an attempt to prevent a series of pointed political inquiries. The elevation and celebration of the old St Augustine all-rounder represents a crucial instance of post-apartheid cricket’s effort to orchestrate amnesia about its own racist past.¹⁶
As the transition to democracy unfolded, so has the sanitisation of apartheid cricket. The biographies of white cricketers, even when they were overt supporters of apartheid, have been tidied up and given heroic status in the name of reconciliation. Alongside this, the resistance to apartheid sport is simply written out of these widely read texts.
Robin Jackman made headlines when he was banned from playing in Guyana in February 1981 because of his links with apartheid South Africa and a test match was abandoned. Jackman was a serial apartheid cricketer. In 1971–72 he played for Western Province and then in and for Rhodesia throughout the 1970s. During his time in Rhodesia, if the views of some leading cricketers are taken into account, he was a beneficiary of that country’s and South Africa’s racism. The story goes like this. The (black) West Indian all-rounder John Shepherd was playing for Rhodesia in 1975. He appeared against Transvaal and had a great game with Johnny Waite describing his batting as ‘explosive’
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