Bad is the new good, or at least the new normal.
TELFORD VICE in Cape Town
REMEMBER happiness, cricketminded Mzansians? The feeling that, while things aren’t perfect, they’re fine. Maybe not forever. But for now.
It’s been a while since we were in that bubble of bliss. How long? Exactly 1 099 days ago.
Kyle Abbott delivered to Nathan Lyon, whose tepid drive blipped chest-high to Vernon Philander at mid-on. South Africa had won the second men’s Test, at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart, by an innings and 80 runs. And with it the series.
It was November 15, 2016.
South Afrcia have since played 110 games. They’ve won 63 of them, more than half in each format, and earned the spoils in 18 of their 30 series.
But it’s been three years, and three days, since they made their compatriots happy.
The numbing disappointments of the 2017 Champions Trophy, the Test series in England that year, losing a home Test rubber to an Asian team for the first time — against Sri Lanka, of all people — in February, the World Cup from May to July, and the Tests in India in October were bad enough.
But just as unsettling is the nastiness that has crept into South Africa’s successes. Ugly scenes tainted last year’s home Test series against India — remember that needlessly vicious Wanderers pitch — and, on the field and off, against Australia.
It’s as if the game itself has slipped into some kind of Trumpian dystopia where bad is the new good, or at least the new normal.
Last Sunday we were able to report the hopeful news that Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) first appointed director of cricket could be Graeme Smith.
Considering the current state of affairs that seemed too good to be true. Was this really a promise of better days ahead?
An empty promise. On Thursday Smith fetched his hat from the ring, saying he had “not developed the necessary confidence that I would be given the level of freedom and support to initiate the required changes”.
It’s one thing for the public to think CSA are run by a bunch of muppets, quite another for a respected figure who could have made a difference to admit — after “10 or so weeks of discussions”, mind — that he doubted the suits, who are desperately short of the credibility he would bring, would take him seriously. That hints at a hitherto unimagined level of muppetry.
Also this week, the “CSA Family” were informed, in a letter to staff from chief executive Thabang Moroe, that “all credit cards need to be handed in to HR [human resources] by midday” the next day.
“Those who are travelling must declare that they are travelling and hand the credit card in upon their return,” Moroe wrote. “All use of credit cards by CSA staff members to stop immediately.”
Will Moroe, who is known to have used his CSA card liberally in the past, set the example?
An unattended hospitality desk outside Newlands before Thursday’s Mzansi Super League (MSL) game between the Cape Town Blitz and the Jozi Stars told of another depressing development.
The CSA types who had been meeting and greeting VIPs at MSL games have been stood down. Turns out not too many among the great and the good — or even the merely prominent — were interested in attending. So why waste the money sending people to do the meeting and greeting?
If CSA were honestly interested in stopping the financial bleeding they would scrap the MSL. The tournament, it is understood, lost R80-million last year and is showing few signs of doing better this time.
Moroe’s letter also informed staff of “structure changes”: the HR manager would now report directly to the chief executive, who has thus assumed even more power in an organisation already dominated by his authority.
This rolling negativity is loadshedding of the soul. Might a series win over England in the Tests that start on December 26 turn the lights back on?
Beating them could hang on how these chronic over-thinkers and believers of their own bullshit fare in two Tests in New Zealand, the first of which starts on Thursday.
Should the Kiwis win, Joe Root’s team will arrive as riddled with inner doubt as a Durban floorboard is with wood borer.
Come on England. You can do it.
First published by the Sunday Times.
Bulletproof Truth 