The foundation stone of a person’s character and belief system is the culmination of not just one moment, but most likely hundreds or even thousands of moments. Everything we do, and every experience we go through is comparable to an ever-changing ball of putty.
As a South African cricket fan, we have gone through some lean times: the tour to Australia in 2001/2002, this year’s T20 World Cup, the 2003 World Cup, and most recently the ICC Champions Trophy hosted in Johannesburg and Pretoria, that at last count, was still in progress at the time of writing.
Yes, there is also THAT game (the one where we couldn’t handle 213, let alone 438), which took place a decade ago: Allan Donald. Lance Klusener. 1 run. 3 balls. Man, I still have nightmares about it. Like 9/11, South Africa winning the bid to host the 2010 World Cup, and the 1995 plus 2007 Rugby World Cup finals, if you were alive at the time you will remember where you were. I was in my brother’s room watching on his TV because my dad was watching something else. He was the smart one …
Most of the unpleasant memories mentioned were in the past, or so I thought. Smith and co cunningly convinced us that series wins in Australia, England and what should’ve been a triumph in India (bar for a ridiculous pitch) were the turning point of this team. Alas, you will be hard pressed trying to find a better tragicomedy, in a very dark sense of humour sort of way (the Aussies probably brand it “reality comedy”) playing on Broadway or the West End. This South African team, as good a cricket team as we thought they were, sure fooled us.
Carte Blanche, the award-winning investigative journalism TV show, is excellent television (not sure if it is still on but you will find out why I don’t know). However, one of its very, very few drawbacks is that it is very depressing more often than not. This is because Derek Watts and the crew find some of the most dodgy and despicable human beings in South Africa and put them to the sword. If you are a small business owner and you see Watts accompanied by a camera walk into your shop, game over buddy, you are vekked.
Hence I don’t watch it any more. I would always enter the Sunday night movie thinking about animal abusers, scum-bag business owners and morally deficient restaurateurs. That is no way to spend your Sunday evening … or so we thought …
If you most likely saw Sunday’s match where England of all teams (who writes this stuff?) decided to post a massive score against admittedly some rather Zim-dollar-esque bowling. Graeme Smith fought as hard as always with an excellent balls-to-the-wall knock but the pressure was, again, too much. Talk about a bad cliché turning into a full blown fuck-out.
Who is to blame? God? Simba chips for making JP Duminy and Smith do that commercial for the World T20? Rustiness? Or an element within the ANC that hatched this evil conspiracy with the English?
All is not lost. This is still one of the best if not the best SA side produced since re-admission. I will, along with the rest of the country continue to back this team to the hilt, but man, they really need to stop doing this. I might have to turn to anti-depressants before too long, but I’d rather do that than miss the cricket …
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