Covid claims ringmaster Rajah

“Get up in the morning and read a book; have lunch and read another book; have supper and read another book.” – Goolam Rajah on how he would spend his retirement. 

Telford Vice | Cape Town

MAYBE it was his sharp eyes. Or the knowing tug at the corner of his mouth. Or his voice, which was never without urgency. Or the hustle and bustle he seemed to bring to everything he did.

Whatever it was, when you saw him you knew you were looking at someone in control. He knew exactly what he was doing now and what he would do next for days and weeks on end, and exactly when on those days he would do it.

No more. On Tuesday, Goolam Rajah, the South African men’s team’s manager and then their logistics manager for almost 20 years, died of Covid-19. He had spent most of last two months neither hustling nor bustling, but on a ventilator. He was 74.

When he retired he was asked what he would do now that he didn’t have to remind players to pack their toothbrushes. “Get up in the morning and read a book; have lunch and read another book; have supper and read another book,” he said. “I’m leaving my adopted family and going back to my real family. For 20 years, I’ve been walking into hotel rooms and throwing everything everywhere. I’m going to have to get used to whose toothbrush goes where.”

And to stop himself from telling people what to do and when to do it: “It’s going to take me about six months to remember that I don’t have to check the players into hotels, or make sure the bus is there, or make sure they have their laundry and their passports. There’s relief in the sense that I can have breakfast without thinking about all the things I have to do.”

But he also spoke of sadness: “I’d be lying if I told you otherwise. That’s what happens when you’ve done something for 20 years and suddenly you stop. I’ve built relationships with players over the years, and they went beyond just cricket. The friendships I built weren’t manager-player relationships. They were built on a person to person basis. If Mark Boucher becomes a professional golfer tomorrow, he will still be Mark Boucher to me.”

Rajah brought the same approach to his dealings with the press. He was protective of his players, but he didn’t treat reporters as if they were interlopers. They were another part of South Africa’s travelling cricket circus, of which he was indisputably the ringmaster.

Rajah’s tenure started with India’s inaugural tour to South Africa, which began in November 1992. It ended with Australia’s visit in October and November 2011. He was where the buck stopped for 107 players in South Africa’s dressingroom for 179 Tests, 444 ODIs and 40 T20Is all over the cricket world. “And not once,” he was proud of being able to say, with a pointed index finger and a pause for dramatic effect, “did a single piece of luggage go missing. Not once.”

There are too many memoirs, but Rajah’s would be worth reading. He was in the dressingroom at Headingley in June 1999, when South Africa shambled to a tie in their World Cup semi-final against Australia, at the MCG in December 2008, when they won a Test series in Australia for the first time, and in Dhaka in March 2011, when they found a way to lose a World Cup quarter-final against New Zealand.

His hard work was central to the smooth functioning of the team machine, but he spoke of being in the dressingroom as a privilege: “It’s an area where the players are away from it all. They can take out their frustrations there and enjoy their good moments. As a manager, you are part of that. But sometimes Jacques Kallis is on 96 and you want to see him get a hundred. Then somebody calls you for something and you’ve just got to drop everything and go.”

In an era when squads didn’t travel with the vast retinues that now accompany them, Rajah — a pharmacist by training — was a lot more than an ace baggage master. “Goolam allowed the cricketers to do what they were there to do — play the game,” Jonty Rhodes said when Rajah retired. “With him around, all you as a player had to worry about was hitting the ball, bowling the ball, or fielding or catching the ball.”

The ringmaster cracked the whip, gently but urgently, with sharp eyes and a knowing tug of his mouth — usually into a smile — over everything else.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Don’t lie back and think of India

If you come away from India not overwhelmed, you’re doing it wrong. Or, like Christopher Columbus, you got lost and ended up somewhere else.  

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

AFTER everything conjured about India by outsiders, from EM Forster to Elizabeth Gilbert to Steven Spielberg to Danny Boyle, in millions of words and images slung around the world in the course of hundreds of years, it took Donald Trump only a few syllables to stoop to a hitherto unplumbed low. How difficult can it be for anyone to pronounce the names of Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli something like properly? Surely not as hard as calling them “Soochin Tendulkerrr and Virot Kohleee”, as Trump did at Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad last month. Civilians might be forgiven, but not the orangutang who has access to the nuclear codes. And to the best dialogue coaching money can buy. 

Name-mangling is far from an exclusively American sport. While Trump would no doubt argue to the contrary like a two-year-old, he is not the greatest world champion name-mangler of them all ever. Here in Africa, for instance, white tongues distort black names and black tongues distort white names with equal impunity. As South Africans, we understand that we don’t understand each other at all well at cultural and human levels. And that anyone who says they do is a liar trying to be elected to political office.  

So why do we, along with all other non-Indians, keep trying to understand India and Indians? We’ve been attempting to make sense of the place and its people since Megasthenes, a Greek serving as an ambassador in the court of Syria’s Seleucus Nikator, popped over to the subcontinent to visit emperor Chandragupta Maurya more than 2,300 years ago. Of course, Megasthenes wrote a book about his visit: Indica. And so an obsession was born that has begat A Passage to India, Eat, Pray, Love, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Slumdog Millionaire, among many others of lesser and greater merit. Find a cricketminded non-Asian who says they like Bollywood movies and they probably mean they’ve seen Lagaan. They enjoyed it, but what’s with all those songs? You would be shocked, gentle Indian reader, to learn how many people not of your kin do not know yoga emerged in the Indus-Sarasvati civilisation in northern India some 5,000 years ago. What? You mean it’s not from California? Or Cape Town?   

India is too big, too complex and too established on its own special journey to make sense to those of us not from there. It is not too other: that’s the easy, flawed way out taken by Western anthropology through the ages. There is much about India that anyone from anywhere will recognise as part of the global human experience — good food is good food, regardless of where it comes from. But India is too much. Of everything. If you come away from the country not overwhelmed, every time you visit, you’re doing it wrong. Or, like Christopher Columbus, you got lost and ended up somewhere else instead.  

“Welcome to pittsville.” – Jacques Kallis at the end of his first tour to India.

Whether Mark Boucher and Jacques Kallis have seen Lagaan doesn’t matter. We can be sure we won’t find them in a yoga studio anytime soon and that, like the rest of us, they don’t understand India. But, unlike most of us, they do understand how to win there. Both were part of the side that claimed South Africa’s first series victory of any kind in India, in February and March 2000 when Hansie Cronjé’s team won in Mumbai and Bengaluru. Those were Tendulkar’s last Tests as India’s captain, and the exposure of Cronjé’s dramatic fall from grace into the hell of matchfixing began not long afterwards. But Boucher still lists his 27 not out at Wankhede Stadium, where he took guard on a turning pitch with South Africa six down needing 35 to win and the great Anil Kumble having already claimed four, as his most memorable performance in 467 matches as an international. Boucher’s method was, surely, madness: he bristled with attacking intent and reeled off six boundaries, four of them pulled or swept off the debuting Murali Kartik. The bloke at the other end took a different approach: he batted for more than three hours and faced 129 balls — easily the weightiest stay of the innings in both terms — for his unbeaten 36. He was Kallis. Beaten in three days, India had little hope of unscrambling their minds before the second Test started five days later. This time they lost by an innings with Kallis’ 95 among South Africa’s five half-centuries and Nicky Bojé taking match figures of 7/93. India saved some face by winning three of the first four games of the subsequent ODI series, which they claimed with a match to spare.

The country left its mark on its visitors, as was apparent from the comments attributed to them in a parting shot billed as a “postcard from India” and that can still be found online. Cronjé: “Different!” Bojé: “Unbelievable, smashing, lovely, beautiful, tremendous, an experience to behold.” Shaun Pollock: “Thank you India! Alanis Morissette was right!” Pieter Strydom: “I never thought people could be so fanatical about cricket.” Gary Kirsten: “I’m looking forward to getting home. The travel has been over-the-top. No Delhi belly and not a single club sandwich. I did not get on the golf course but the fact that we had such a brilliant manager [Goolam Rajah] made the tour. And winning the Test series was a major achievement.” Neil McKenzie: “It’s hot, put the A/C on!” Henry Williams: “My first [tour of India] and hopefully not my last.” Thanks to his involvement in the Cronjé scandal it was his last tour anywhere. Mornantau Hayward: “It was a pleasure.” Steve Elworthy: “I’m glad it’s taken me 35 years to get here; definitely my top holiday destination!” Dale Benkenstein: “It’s great to be back in the fold.” Boucher: “Hurricane Hindu.” Lance Klusener: “’n toe bek is ’n heel bek [A shut mouth is an unbroken mouth]. I thank you for your conscientiality [sic], baby.” Kallis: “Welcome to pittsville.” Herschelle Gibbs: “If ever there was a need to experiment.” Derek Crookes: “I have not got sick on this tour. Believe me, this is quite an achievement!” Rajah: “This is my swansong!” Not quite: Rajah served as South Africa’s manager until November 2011. Graham Ford: “A great learning experience. You’ve got to pick the right team at the right time — horses for courses.” Corrie Van Zyl: “I’m definitely sending my wife here for a holiday.” Craig Smith, the physiotherapist: “A good walk spoiled by such exuberant hospitality.”

Clearly, at least some of those opinions have been revised or at least muted. Who among us knew, in 2000, that India would soon be the epicentre of world cricket, and with it the world’s players’ prime paymaster? Any cricketminded non-Asian who claims they saw the IPL coming the early 2000s has a future in politics. Boucher and Kallis played 120 IPL and Champions League T20 games in India, along with 41 more matches for South Africa on subsequent tours there. And there they are again, now as South Africa’s coach and batting consultant. At least, Boucher is there. Kallis became a father on Wednesday and, consequently, has stayed home.

How hard will Boucher lean on the legend of his 27 not out to try and extract the best from his team as they look to add success in the three ODIs they are scheduled to play over the next six days to their 3-0 triumph over Australia? Ordinarily, beating even the Aussies in an arbitrary ODI rubber wouldn’t count for much. But, in the wake of South Africa losing eight of their first dozen completed matches at home this summer, their supporters are hoping hard that they have reached a turning point.

Much has changed about the cricketing relationship between South Africa and India in the 20 years since Kallis and Boucher forged an understanding about how to win in that country. Of the 16 players in Boucher’s current squad only Janneman Malan has not played at a significant level in India before. In 2000, exactly half of the 18 South Africans who featured in the Test and ODI series had not been part of previous tours to India. Then the IPL remained unthought. Now this series is a warm-up for the 2020 edition, if it happens. Ah yes: in 2000 there was no Coronavirus. Twenty years ago India wasn’t yet the global travel and communications leader it has since become, facts that no doubt influenced the more unkind views the players expressed then. That’s not to excuse them. We didn’t understand India then and we don’t now. And it’s not to say that because the South Africans of 2000 worked out how to win there that the knowledge has been retained by succeeding teams: the two white-ball series of 2015 are their only other successful rubbers there. For this series to go their way will need a script like Lagaan. Without the songs.

First published by Cricbuzz.

The good, the bad and the ugly about SA’s World Cup chances in England

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

THE bad news is South Africa have won less than half of the one-day internationals they have played in England, where next year’s World Cup will be staged.

The good news is that equation is flipped for their World Cup matches in England.

And that South Africa have first-hand knowledge of all but one of the six grounds they will play at next year.

The odd ground out is the Riverside in Chester-le-Street, where they will tangle with Sri Lanka on June 28 in the penultimate of their nine group games.

All told South Africa have contested 32 ODIs in England and won only 13 — their second-worst away record in the format after Sri Lanka, where they have won just 11 of 29 games.

But of the eight games South Africa played at the 1999 World Cup, also in England, they lost only two and won five.

No, the semi-final against Australia at Edgbaston, where South Africa have won half their eight ODIs, wasn’t one of those defeats. It was a lot worse than that.

“I saw some big men cry in the dressingroom that day, it was very sad,” Goolam Rajah, the manager of that South Africa team and a host of others in his 20 years in the job, would say years later.

“If ever we came close to a winning a World Cup that was it; that was the best overall team.

“Getting to the semi-final, tying the match and still being knocked out was terrible.”

That’s right: it was tied after the most consequential runout in South Africa’s history and perhaps in that of the game itself. 

Lance Klusener and Allan Donald at the same end of the pitch and looking like strangers at a bus-stop, and 11 whooping Aussies, will stain cricketminded South Africans’ memories forever. 

Faf du Plessis’ team will return to the scene of that crime against proper running between the wickets on June 19 next year to play New Zealand in their sixth game.

A week before the 1999 semi-final the Saffers also played the Kiwis at Edgbaston — and won by 74 runs.

Just as happily, for South Africa, their match against Australia next year will not be at Edgbaston but at Old Trafford, where they have played only three ODIs — all against England — and won two of them.

The South Africans have the same record at the Rose Bowl in Southampton, where they will take on India on June 5 and West Indies five days later.

They’re less successful at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff, where they have beaten Zimbabwe, lost to India, suffered two washouts and another tie that cost plenty.

This time the opposition were the Windies, and the deadlock after a day/night of drama and deluges earned South Africa a place in the in the 2013 Champions Trophy semi-finals.

But that showdown was at the Oval, where England dismissed them for 175 and won by seven wickets in what Gary Kirsten — in his last match as South Africa’s coach — promptly branded a choke.

So skeletons might be rattling when England and South Africa meet in the opening match of the World Cup at the Oval on May 30.

The South Africans have been successful in just three of their nine ODIs at London’s more welcoming international venue.

At the other place, sniffy old Lord’s, they have had even fewer reasons to be cheerful with one victory and three losses: their worst record in ODIs in England.

And Lord’s is where the 2019 World Cup final will be played on July 14.