“We’ve played some nice cricket but by no means our best cricket. That’s the exciting part.” – Rob Walter
Telford Vice / Cape Town
REVOLUTION rocked and rolled in the Wanderers Long Room on Sunday in the dark hours after South Africa’s international season ended with the men’s team thumping the Netherlands in an ODI. The dizzy dancing was fuelled by Sister Bettina, a rough and raunchy rap delivered in the kwaito style.
The lyrics veer from beer to condoms to sex workers, and the message is that women will sleep with men who flash cash. It was first sung by Nkosinathi Mfeka, better known as Mgarimbe — hustler in English — impromptu over a premixed beat in a Joburg club late one night in 2005. The next day an embarrassed Mfeka, who has admitted he was “wasted” when he came up with the words on the spot, asked Jabu Mngeni, the producer and DJ who had created the music, and who was also in the club, to delete his recording of the track. Mngeni said he would. He didn’t.
The brassy, bassy boom, which marches alongside Mfeka’s hoarse, halting voice, has since become something of a national anthem of the street. The song went viral not on radio but on the sound systems of the approximately 250,000 minibus taxis that serve as South Africa’s public transport, ferrying mostly black passengers. In the same way that male birds employ plumage to compete with their peers for female attention, taxis deploy music — loudly — as a marketing tool. Sister Bettina was a perfect fit.
It’s a long way from the street to cathedrals of the middle class establishment like the Wanderers, and further still from there to altars of acceptability like the Long Room. And yet there Sister Bettina was on Sunday, loud and lusty in a place that, in daylight hours, particularly during a Test, can feel like a museum of how things used to be in South Africa and in cricket. As in moored to and marooned in oldness and conservatism and, more often than not, a starchy kind of whiteness.
There is nothing old, conservative of white about Sister Bettina. Just as there wasn’t about many of the gathered guests who felt their inner rhythm rise as the song’s first strains — a sample of Aaliyah’s 2000 hit Try Again — squeezed through the burble. Soon two young women, one black, the other white, were dancing with each other in a way that would have had them brusquely escorted out of this, for so long, strange and unwelcoming place not many years ago.
Onlookers offered cheers and encouragement, but not everyone was amused. “We’ve created a monster,” an administrator murmured under his breath as he ran a wary eye over the scene. He was not what you might think: only a few years older than the current generation of suits. And black. Oldness and conservatism, unlike whiteness, are transferrable.
Happily so is the appeal of venues like the Wanderers. All you need to gain access to its stands and grass banks is a ticket, but first you need the money to buy it and the desire to do so. While more black and brown South Africans have more money than in the country’s apartheid past, they’re not going to spend it in a place where they feel othered or unwanted.
Not many seasons ago the Wanderers was just such a place. So were most of South Africa’s other major grounds. That this is changing is no accident. Like almost every other business in South Africa, the cricket industry knows that if it is to have a future that future will be almost entirely black and largely young. A clear sign that that truth has hit home is the increased number of younger black and brown people in locales like the Long Room, where entrance is strictly by invitation.
Perhaps by pure good luck most of South Africa’s heavyweight provincial unions are in the hands of insightful and energetic chief executives who are driving that change. What isn’t happenstance is that they know what needs to be done to make cricket sustainable and they are getting on with doing it — no mean feat in a society built on centuries of denial. Their efforts are being noticed.
“It’s been great to see the unity on the grass banks,” Rob Walter, South Africa’s white-ball coach since February 1, told a press conference after Sunday’s match. “We’ve spoken about how as a team we’re in a privileged position to be able to inspire and unite our country through sport, and to never take that for granted. But to see that happening on the banks has been awesome. For someone who has been out of the country for seven years [coaching in New Zealand], to see the difference in the people who are watching the game has been awesome as well. It’s been really heartwarming.”
Those spectators, whatever their race, wouldn’t have been in the same mood had the team they were cheering for not made a dramatic u-turn. As recently as January, when South Africa limped home in defeat from a Test series in Australia having lost 10 of their last 15 matches across the formats, a rickety run that included defeat by the Netherlands, cricket was in a deeply dark place. They have since won eight of 12.
Part of the reason for the change of fortunes is that of those first 15 matches, 13 were against serious opposition including England, India and Pakistan. Of the dozen that have followed, nine were against the middling West Indies and the Dutch minnows. But there’s more to South Africa’s improvement than that, and an important chunk of the credit, Walter said, belonged to the ray of sunshine that was beamed into the game from outside the international arena — and which was a factor in an upset victory over England in a home World Cup Super League series in January and February.
“We can’t under-estimate the impact of the SA20 on cricket in South Africa. The general interest and the crowds were significant, and the quality of the cricket was high. Some momentum definitely came out of that and we were able to jump on that against England and play well against them, and that continued.”
The tournament transported cricketminded South Africans to a better place from January 10 to February 12. It exceeded expectations in every respect, far overcoming concerns about its viability in a country where keeping the lights on for as long as it takes to play even a T20 is a daily challenge. Crucially, as it turned out, the three ODIs against England were played during a six-day lull in SA20 action.
Shukri Conrad, the Test coach, stood in for Walter in that rubber. Against the Windies, Walter presided over a 1-1 scoreline in the ODIs and 2-1 loss in the T20Is, and was duly reminded by a reporter at a press conference that he had yet to guide South Africa to success in a rubber. So when Walter arrived for Sunday’s presser, after his team had wrapped up a 2-0 win over the Dutch, he came prepared with a smile and a retort as the reporter positioned his recording device: “Got that series now; I was waiting for you.”
But Walter didn’t need the reality check required by those who have heralded South Africa’s performances against the Netherlands as the brightest of new dawns: “We’ve played some nice cricket but by no means our best cricket. That’s the exciting part.”
Also exciting is who has done the winning. Left out for the series in Australia after failing to reach 50 in 15 innings, Aiden Markram was the leading runscorer and had the highest average in the Tests against the Windies and made 175 in Sunday’s ODI. Sisanda Magala, who has struggled with conditioning challenges, was the leading ODI bowler in terms of wickets and average. He took a career-best 5/43 on Sunday.
And then there’s Temba Bavuma, who stepped down as captain in the wake of his team’s catastrophic exit from the T20 World Cup in November and was rightly left out of the squad for the T20Is against the Windies. He is currently not a viable option in the format because he scores too slowly and should never have been made captain, and therefore undroppable. He is much more valuable in Tests and ODIs, which he has proven again by scoring three centuries and a half-century in his last 10 innings in those formats.
For Walter, Bavuma’s ability to rise above the abuse that comes his way, much of it blatantly or latently racist, was worth more than mere runs: “Temba is a wonderful human being and a great advert for our country. It’s wonderful to share a changeroom with him. The fact that he can play the cricket that he’s played, which has been exceptional, is just the cherry on top for a guy who deserves that and is not given enough cricket for what he has gone through and still play the cricket he has.”
None of which was the most important achievement in South African cricket this season. That accolade belongs to the women’s team, who went where no side from the country have been since 2014 — when their men’s under-19 side won the World Cup — and where no senior team had ever been by reaching the World Cup final. They lost, to Australia, but they made their mark.
“We’re almost seeing it as them setting the standard,” Markram told a press conference days after the final. “It’s something for us to chase, which is a great thing to have for cricket in our country. We saw the power they had to gather so much support in such a short space of time by doing well in a tournament. They’ve inspired us to try and get there as well.”
In more than one sense, then, it feels as if cricket in South Africa has reinvented itself in a matter of weeks. It hasn’t, of course. But it is in far better shape than it was when the year started.
These have been neither the best of times nor the worst of times. Instead, they have been times that have generated a precious feeling that has been gone from the game for too long. Call it the revolution of hope.
Cricbuzz
Bulletproof Truth 
I said I looked forward to the read and even with the expectation of “vintage Vice” it was throughly absorbing in its entirety.
Thanks Bob.
One of TV’s many top-quality articles on all aspects of cricket throughout the 2022/23 season. Where the SA20 League has been the catalyst for reconnecting fans, players and CSA’s administrators to this wonderful game in all its guises. There is still much to do on all fronts but we are making progress both off and on the pitch and that is the important thing we need to focus on for the future! Jeremy Evans UCT:
Thanks Jeremy.