isiXhosa – Bulletproof Truth

Walter prays for progress, spirits agree

“The journey between good to great is short, but it’s the hardest part of the journey to make.” – Rob Walter

Telford Vice / Johannesburg

MINUTES before the scheduled release of South Africa’s white-ball squads for their series against West Indies on Monday, the sky spat fire and lashed down rain as a thunderstorm growled grimly over the Wanderers. Then a scheduled power blackout in the area coincided with the announcement.

And then there was this, from Rob Walter in his first press conference as South Africa’s new coach in the shorter formats when he was asked which English football club he supported: “The side that won 7-0 last night.”

If you take omens seriously those are difficult to ignore. Whether they are good or bad will be seen in the ODIs, in East London and Potchefstroom on March 16, 18 and 21, and the T20Is, in Centurion and Johannesburg on March 25, 26 and 28.

The football team Walter referred to are Liverpool, who handed Manchester United a hiding for the ages in a Premier League match at Anfield on Sunday. What might he say to a similarly successful South Africa cricket team?

“The reality is you’ve got to trust in a process,” Walter said. “It was just last season that a side like Liverpool were pushing for winning the ‘quad’, which never happened. But they were highly successful. They’ve been through a bit of a ropey start to their season, but showed what they were capable of last evening.”

Liverpool achieved half the quadruple in 2021/22. They won the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup, beating Chelsea on penalties in both finals, finished a point behind Manchester City in the Premier League, and went down 1-0 to Real Madrid in the Champions League final. Walter hoped some of that sustained success would rub off on his charges.

“I’m buoyed by the quality of cricketers I see around,” he said. “The SA20 bears testament to that — a lot of different cricketers playing good cricket. The best analogy I can use is that South Africa have always been a very good cricket side. We want to turn them into a great cricket team.

“The journey between good to great is short, but it’s the hardest part of the journey to make. And that’s where we’re stuck right now. That’s what we’ll be focusing on. But it’s not as if the cricketers are not quality players. They are. We’ve seen that time and time again.”

Walter saw it during South Africa’s three home ODIs against England in January and February. The English were favoured, but the home side won 2-1.

“Mindset is everything,” he said. “In the England series we demonstrated to ourselves what it might look like in practice. The rest of the time it’s theoretical. You’re talking about what it might look and feel like. There we had a real, physical taste of what it might look like in its execution. When we find ourselves under pressure, it’s about taking the most aggressive approach that we can with the skill set that we have. With that comes making errors. As long as we can put them into context and keep edging forward, I’m happy.”

Walter’s way to unstick his team and achieve greatness involves making Aiden Markram the T20I captain, dropping his predecessor, Temba Bavuma, from that squad, and leaving the dressing room door open for the return of Faf du Plessis.

“Aiden has shown himself to be a leader over a period of time, and his most recent success with the Sunrisers stands out,” Walter said. “It seemed like a logical progression into the leadership of the national side. He has been there before but I think he’s matured a lot as a player and a leader since then.”

Markram captained Eastern Cape Sunrisers to triumph in the inaugural SA20 last month. He also led South Africa to the 2014 under-19 World Cup title — the only global trophy they have yet won — but looked out of his depth when he was put in charge for a home ODI series against India in February 2018, which the visitors won 4-1. Markram’s 115 against West Indies in Centurion last week, his first Test century in 17 innings, would have helped convince Walter that he was back on track.

“As for Temba missing out, that’s purely a T20 performance-based decision,” Walter said. “My job now is to work with him to get him back into the side. That will be one of our focuses.”

Bavuma relinquished the T20I leadership last month — when he retained the ODI reins and was appointed Test captain — in the aftermath of South Africa crashing out of the running for the T20 World Cup semifinals by losing to minnows the Netherlands in Adelaide. Bavuma has a T20I strike rate of 116.08. Until he is striking at around 140 he can’t expect to be considered for a place in the team as a top order batter.

Du Plessis last played for South Africa in February 2021. He has retired from Test cricket but not from the other formats. Even so, he has not been contracted by CSA and discussions with him about his availability for South Africa’s teams amid his commitments to T20 franchises so far haven’t yielded concrete results.

“He is very interested to resume those conversations and see how best we can work together,” Enoch Nkwe, CSA’s director of cricket, said at the same presser. “From a CSA point of view we’re happy to engage to find the best way forward.” A stumbling block has been the lack of contracts tailored for Test or white-ball players, but that could change when the new contracts are announced in the coming days. “What we foresee in the next 12 months is that we might become even more specific into [contracts for] T20, ODIs and Tests,” Nkwe said.

Johannesburg-born Walter was South Africa’s strength and conditioning expert and later their fielding coach from 2009 to 2013. As Titans head coach he shared the franchise one-day title with the Cobras in 2013/14 and won it outright the next season. In 2015/16 the Titans won the first-class and T20 trophies under Walter — who moved to New Zealand to become Otago’s head coach from September 2016.

The Volts promptly shambled to last place in all three formats in Walter’s first season in charge. A summer later they finished second from bottom in the Plunket Shield and second-last in the white-ball competitions. He didn’t win any titles with Otago but built them into a more competitive side, and moved to Hamilton before the 2020/21 season to take over the Central Stags. Walter’s team reached the T20 preliminary final that season and the one-day final in 2021/22.

Thus he has returned from New Zealand with no trophies. But, he said, the lessons of that experience were worth their weight in silverware: “We’d need a lot longer than this press conference to talk about what I’ve learnt in New Zealand. Personally, it was a journey of discovery around coaching. The short summary is I left a very successful Titans side to go to a side that came last in every format for two years. If you want to learn about your real values around coaching, you just need to lose a lot, which I did.” He said he had found in himself “a genuine love for art and the job of coaching, which ultimately is to help people reach and maximise their potential”.

Many South Africans leave their ailing, flailing, failing country in search of more functional, less depressing places to live and work. Not many return. What made Walter come back?

“When you get an opportunity to coach your country of birth and a place whose cricket structures you’ve been part of pretty much your whole life in some way, it’s a no-brainer. To coach internationally is every coach’s dream when they set out. I’m no different. When I left for New Zealand it was to grow myself as a coach and develop my skills; grow as a person, which certainly has happened over the seven-year period.”

It was a double-edged moment. The power was out, and would be for the next two hours. That would tangle the traffic on Johannesburg’s crumbling, crowded roads even more than usual. Later on Monday, the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was due to announce a cabinet reshuffle to help resolve the power crisis, among many others afflicting South Africa. Few held out hope that that would work.

But, as Walter spoke, the rain hammered onto the roof. When that happens at a time of import, isiXhosa speakers say icamagu livumile: the spirits have agreed. It’s less an omen, more a prayer. The cricket spirits, too, Walter would pray.

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Changing the language of SA’s cricket culture

“Hard conversations are happening in the team and management in which we are challenging each other.” – Temba Bavuma

Telford Vice | Cape Town

PROOF of change in the culture of South African cricket could be seen — or rather heard — during Temba Bavuma’s online press conference on Wednesday. And as much from the questions he was asked as his answers.

In an interaction with reporters of almost 27 minutes on the eve of South Africa’s ODI series against Sri Lanka in Colombo, Bavuma fielded 15 questions. Four of them were delivered in isiXhosa, his first language. Bavuma’s English is thoughtful, measured and articulate. So those present who had little or no isiXhosa — easily the majority — could only wonder at the even deeper insights he was surely expressing in his mother tongue. Helpfully, the lesser linguists were provided with a translation. One of these years, maybe we will learn isiXhosa as well as speakers of isiXhosa have, of necessity in our colonised society, acquired English.

As those four isiXhosa questions and answers showed, cricket is not English. And language should be part of the conversation on culture that has gripped the game in this country. Testimony at the Social Justice and Nation-Building hearings has exposed racism in South Africa’s dressing room in the 1990s and first half of the 2000s. Mark Boucher, who played in that era, has apologised for his role and is actively working for positive change as the team’s coach. Even so, CSA said Enoch Nkwe had “raised concerns about the functioning and culture of the team environment”, in resigning as assistant coach last month. As captain, Bavuma is as central to establishing and nurturing a sound culture as the other senior players and Boucher. Did that mean Bavuma’s approach was part of what prompted Nkwe to leave?

“Probably when I get back to South Africa, I’d like to sit down with him and maybe unpack it a bit,” Bavuma said. “If there is merit [in what Nkwe says] it’s something I will take on board and we will have a discussion in the team. In saying that, among some of the senior players in the team, conversations have been had. We’ve looked at ourselves and seen how best we can do things. That’s not to say the culture is unhealthy. Every team has areas which they can improve on and you have to have those conversations to identify those areas.”

Certainly, Bavuma would miss Nkwe’s input: “It’s quite a big loss to the team from a tactical, strategic point of view. For me, personally, he was a good sounding board; a person I used to test my ideas against. I guess it helped that I had working experience with him from domestic level [at the Lions and the Jozi Stars]. He advised me on how best I would be able to build a relationship with the players that play under me now that I am captain.”

Just as mastering cricket’s core disciplines is key to any team’s success, so is players’ unified belief in their side’s culture. And just as batters and bowlers change over time, so do cultures. But new versions don’t take root overnight, and they need to be deep and solid enough to take a team to their next level of development.

“When I came into the team 2014/15 there was a certain type of culture, displayed in public through ‘Protea Fire’,” Bavuma said of Graeme Smith’s idea of building the side’s philosophy on the fact that the protea is among the first plants that regrow in the wake of a bush fire. “That had a certain purpose and meaning behind it and the main custodians, the guys who had that responsibility of building that culture, unfortunately are not here — guys like Faf [du Plessis], JP [Duminy], Dale [Steyn], AB [de Villiers]. Now we have a different set of senior players who have that responsibility of building a new culture.

“That is still within its early stages. For us, it’s about the younger guys instilling the right values and cultivating that culture. Whether it’s a bad culture, I don’t think it’s at that point. But I will say it is something that we are still cultivating. It’s definitely not anywhere near the end product.

“Hard conversations are happening among the team, among management; conversations [in which we] are challenging each other, all with the view of cultivating an environment that allows guys to play at their best but most importantly have that proper sense of belonging.”

It could complicate that process that South Africa’s Test captain, Dean Elgar, is an old-school figure and that Bavuma is also part of the Test XI. “[It’s important that] Dean and I give ourselves an opportunity to share ideas as to how we would like to take the team [forward],” Bavuma said. “He has his philosophy of doing things, I have my philosophy. So getting us to meet at some type of a halfway is a balancing act.”

Both Elgar and Bavuma will be judged by what happens not in the dressing room but on the field, as Bavuma made plain: “My job is to make sure the players are in a good space and that they are able to play their best game possible and to make sure that we win as a team. The things that happen outside our space — things like the politics of the game, the fights and challenges that happen outside the team space — they have nothing to do with us as a team. In fact, they don’t have anything to do with me. I don’t get involved in those situations. My powers as a captain do not reach that level of things. What I concentrate on doing is making sure that we win. Everything else needs to be taken care of by the people who have been put in charge to do so.”

That’s true, but Bavuma’s knows better than to leave the dressing room door open to malignant influences. And to close the door on cancers within. We know what happens when that type of culture is allowed to grow.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Temba Bavuma: silos, steel traps and selflessness

“One of the most important things for us as a squad was to ensure that we do away with selfishness.” – Temba Bavuma on captaining the Lions.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

OF the nine answers Temba Bavuma gave to questions during the online press conference on Thursday that marked his unveiling as South Africa’s white-ball captain, two were exponentially more valuable and important than anything else he said. And not because of their content.

In English, Bavuma is rigorous, thoughtful and perspicacious, sometimes even lyrical. He pauses, comfortable in silence, to consider before he delivers his verdicts in softly spoken seriousness. He is worth listening to, unlike too many who have been media trained to within a word or two of unintelligibility. But English is his second language. What level of insight might Bavuma reach if he spoke in isiXhosa, his mother tongue?

We found out on Thursday. At least, some of us did. Many of the 40-odd participants on the Zoom call would have been in the dark, linguistically, when Bavuma, asked two questions in isiXhosa, answered accordingly. Our darkness was our own fault. Opportunities abound, formal and less so, to learn some of South Africa’s other 10 official languages. Or those that are not English. We do not use those chances because there is no need: our society, like the rest of the previously colonised world, runs on the language of our erstwhile oppressors. But a funny thing happens on the way to being subjugated — the oppressed end up knowing far more about their oppressors and the way they live than the oppressors know about those they oppress and how they live.

So everyone who plays for South Africa, whatever their race, culture or background, has more than enough English to get through a press conference or a team meeting. Indeed, that is expected of them. But few beyond those who were raised in, for instance, Xhosa or Zulu households are able to hold their own in those languages. Unlike the case with English, they are not expected to. Notable exceptions are Adrian Birrell, South Africa’s former assistant coach, who readily accepts any invitation to launch into isiXhosa, and Lance Klusener, who does the same in isiZulu. That both are from rural backgrounds says plenty. Fewer walls and roads between fewer people tends to remove obstacles to communication.

To hear Bavuma sally forth in isiXhosa was to hear the future of cricket in South Africa. We can expect more where that came from, and more interest in knowing the language from those who currently do not. Once that toothpaste is out of the tube, good luck getting it back in. More importantly, Bavuma speaking in isiXhosa in the media regularly will make cricket so much more real to so many more South Africans than now. We know this because it’s happened before.

Once the game in this country was considered almost entirely the preserve of English speakers. That all sorts of other South Africans also played cricket was an inconvenient truth that wasn’t raised in polite (English) company. English dominated the game to the extent that questions at press conferences put to Afrikaans-speaking players in Afrikaans — the only first language, besides English, spoken by white South Africans — would be met with awkward gaping while the players tried to remember what, say, forward short leg was in the tongue they thought they knew. The answer is slagyster posisie, which translates as slaughter iron or steel trap position — as in the device deployed by poachers that slams its toothy double jaws shut around parts of animals unfortunate enough to trip its trigger. If you know that, why would you want to call the position something as banal as forward short leg?

Afrikaans questions have become routine but most of the conversation at press conferences is still in English. That is unlikely to change for a long time. But it will, as it must. Those who resist that happening will be dumped on the wrong side of history. Because this reaches beyond language into perception and reality. The perception — fostered among whites with the help of the facts that almost all of South Africa’s players have attended formerly all-white schools and that only one of the country’s international grounds is not in a previously all-white area — is that cricket remains largely a white game. The reality is that significantly more black and brown South Africans play and follow cricket than whites.

That is as true now as it has been for decades, and as it was at Centurion in April 2006 when Makhaya Ntini took 10 wickets to win the first Test against New Zealand. The last question at his presser flowed forth, from the back of the room, in isiXhosa. Ntini’s eyes shone as he boomed an answer that seemed to endure for as long as one of the indefatigable fast bowler’s spells. The questioner was the irrepressible Zolani Bongco, a man in whose company it is impossible not to believe the world is a wonderful place. The looks on the arrested faces of foreign reporters in the pressbox when Bongco would launch into his radio reports, which he did with the gusto of a horse racing commentator, and at many times the volume, gave at least some of the South Africans present a jolt of joy. The Indians or the English or the Australians, and most of the rest of us, hadn’t a clue what the man was saying. But, bloody hell, he knew what he was on about.

So Bavuma is not the first to debunk myths about what cricket in South Africa looks, sounds and is like. He won’t be the last. But he is the country’s first black captain. At least, he is in the real world. Here on the sharp tip of Africa, where we prefer to distort the truth until we are able to look it in the eye, even that is impeachable. Some demand that Bavuma be referred to as South Africa’s first black African captain — not simply black, because in this country brown people are claimed as black since apartheid subjected all who were not white to lesser lives and its effects linger still. But black people were always last, even in that queue, and so now there are efforts to put them first. That is unnerving many brown people, some of whom object to not being called black presumably because that casts them in an unbearable shade of pale. This conversation does not include the people who caused all the trouble in the first place: whites.

Consequently some will find ways to attack Bavuma, however well he does. Others will defend him to the death, however poorly he does. Precious few will be able to see past their prejudice and accept things as they really are, including those who say they will. South Africans are born into separating silos, and not nearly enough of us have the guts to venture out. We bake our own fake news, we quote our own QAnon quackery, we fall over our own fables. So, as tempting as it is to allow Bavuma’s isiXhosa answers on Thursday to hang in the air like accusations against those who refuse to share cricket with all South Africans, it may do some good to reduce them to English.

First a reporter teased him by saying they should find time for the journalist to beat Bavuma at golf, and asked how his news had been received. “I don’t know about beating me at golf; I don’t know how to respond to that, but there’s people around us so I’m going to leave it at that for now,” Bavuma said, with a suitably sly smile, according to a translation provided by CSA team management. “I feel really good about this. I feel really proud about the appointment and the trust that CSA have put in me. I’ll try and take it in my full stride. I told my dad. He wasn’t home when I went to visit my family but I did tell him and he was incredibly proud. I look forward to the journey that I’m about to take.”

Another reporter angled for an invitation to that round of golf, and asked what Bavuma would bring into South Africa’s dressingroom from that of the Lions, who he has led to three trophies in as many seasons. “When I look back at the Lions’ campaign, particularly this season [when they won the T20 competition], the thing that stood out for me the most was that everything that was done by the team — every decision that was made, every performance — was for the good of the team. It was aimed at ensuring that everything happens for the team.

“One of the most important things for us as a squad was to ensure that we do away with selfishness, and that each individual works towards making sure that the best interests of the team are put above and beyond; in first place, over everything else.

“I hope that as time progresses I’ll be able to get an opportunity to sit down and think deeply about some of the particulars of what we did correctly at the Lions to ensure that we had a good campaign this season.

“But for now I want to take a moment to absorb everything that’s taken place, and to reflect on the last few days that have gone by. And then I’ll begin the work of thinking about what I want to accomplish within the team as well as putting together a solid strategy about the limited overs squad going forward.”

That is as close to the perfect answer to that kind of question that could possibly be given, much less at a moment’s notice. Even so, some will find ways to poke it full of holes. Is Bavuma stepping into a steel trap of a job? The term for forward short leg in isiXhosa, in a lexicon developed by Peter Bacela, the warmest of warm uncles and a masterful broadcaster, translates to “hold the buttocks of the one who hits”. Cover your backside, young man. Cover your backside.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Du Plessis demoralises decimated Sri Lanka

Did Dean Elgar cry when Faf du Plessis got out for 199? Don’t be silly. People as tough as Elgar do not have tear ducts.

Telford Vice | Centurion

THE voice from above was emphatic: “It’s too hot! Don’t fall over!” Makhaya Ntini, now 43, a touch more ballast on his frame than in his playing days, his burgeoning afro silvering at the edges, still has his boom. So when he stood in his commentator’s get-up in Centurion’s open air pressbox on Monday and yelled his advice in voluble, voluptuous isiXhosa at a veteran member of the dressingroom staff making his way across the outfield many metres below, no-one in the ground could fail to hear his warning.

That was an hour before the start of the third day of the first Test between South Africa and Sri Lanka. After lunch, Ntini was proved not only correct but also prophetic. It was 31 degrees Celsius and three Sri Lankans had fallen over. Three more, that is. They could argue that they didn’t heed Ntini’s words because they don’t understand isiXhosa.

Lahiru Kumara, bowling the sixth over of the second session and his eighth of the day, left the field with his hand hovering over his groin after one delivery. Then Niroshan Dickwella went down as if he had been shot. Turns out he had been: by a bee that had stung him on the back of his neck. A buggy parked beyond the cover boundary, the same one that had ferried Dhananjaya de Silva to the dressingroom on his way out of the series with a torn thigh muscle on Friday, nudged closer in readiness. But, after treatment on the field, Dickwella returned to the fray.

That drama had barely subsided when Wanindu Hasaranga, in trying to stop Faf du Plessis’ smear for four off Dasun Shanaka, crashed to earth on the extra cover boundary and struggled to regain his footing because of an ankle or a knee issue. This time the buggy was required. The same dressingroom attendant Ntini had addressed from on high in the morning hurried to Hasaranga to hand him a requisite face mask for the journey. If you wanted to be cruel, you could have said those Lankans who weren’t going down like flies were being zapped by bees.

An hour later Hasaranga appeared at the top of the stairs that lead from the dressingroom to the field, and made his way, gingerly, down all 48 of them. Two overs after that the debutant leg spinner was bowling.

Mickey Arthur looked increasingly ill with each passing calamity. He had suffered the withdrawal of Angelo Matthews before the tour and Suranga Lakmal before the match, both with a dodgy hamstrings. Then came de Silva and, on Saturday, the removal of Kasun Rajitha with a groin injury. And then Kumara, Dickwella and Hasaranga were stricken. Who could blame Sri Lanka’s coach if all he could do was stare apoplectically at the field while keeping his mouth covered by the crook of his elbow like someone trying to keep his lunch where it belonged?

How Arthur must have envied his compatriots, who welcomed Kagiso Rabada back from a groin niggle in time for him to be picked for the second Test at the Wanderers on January 3. The sight of Rabada loping languidly around the outfield during lunch must have been a punch in the visitors’ guts.

And all that before Faf du Plessis fell a solitary run short of completing his first double century, ending a stay of almost seven hours in his 113th innings. He batted at least as well as he did in his first, in November 2012, when he made an undefeated 110 to save the Adelaide Test. This time, he has given South Africa a fine chance of claiming their first Test win in four attempts this year and only their second in their last 10. He did so the way he has always played: with discipline and intelligence, and not a little style. He did not agree: “I’ve made a lot better hundreds — when attacks are at their hottest, when conditions are at their toughest. I wouldn’t put this close to any of those.”

This was Du Plessis’ first century in 18 completed Test innings. He shared record stands for South Africa against Sri Lanka with teammates who are among those who might replace him as captain when Quinton de Kock’s part-time appointment expires at the end of the summer. With Temba Bavuma he put on 179 for the fifth, and he added 133 for the seventh with Keshav Maharaj. Going by the way they batted, Bavuma would make a solid if risk averse leader while the bullish Maharaj might have to be talked out of taking too many risks. Bavuma made 71 off 125 balls, and Maharaj an unbeaten 74 — his highest score — off 105.

Bavuma’s innings ended bizarrely when he flashed at Shanaka, turned on his heel, tucked his bat under his arm, and walked. Except that Marais Erasmus hadn’t given him out and technology showed he hadn’t hit the ball. Why? He thought he had heard a sound, came word from the dressingroom. After 14 half-centuries in 68 innings, the agonising wait for Bavuma’s second century continues.

When Du Plessis heaved Hasaranga to mid-on, failing to clear Dimuth Karunaratne, who held the catch high, he threw his head back in disappointment. Up in the dressingroom, Mark Boucher did likewise. Dean Elgar, who knows this pain having been dismissed for 199 against Bangladesh in Potchefstroom in September 2017, buried his head in his hands. Was he crying? Don’t be silly. People as tough as Elgar do not have tear ducts.

Morné Morkel, meanwhile, must have been searching for an eraser. Four hours before Du Plessis got out, the fast bowler tweeted: “I’m penciling [Du Plessis] in for a double … perfect day for it.” Whatever the state of the day, it’s rare for South Africans’ praises to be sung by Australian citizens.

Du Plessis’ dismissal prompted the unravelling of an innings in which the last four wickets fell for a dozen runs in 10 deliveries. Two of them went to Hasaranga, whose fortitude for bowling in what must have been pain was rewarded with 4/171 from 45 overs.

South Africa’s 621 was the highest total made by any team in the 25 Tests played at Centurion, and their biggest since January 2016 — 78 Test innings ago. Only six times in their previous 439 Tests have they compiled a higher score.

Lungi Ngidi had removed Karunaratne and Kusal Mendis by the end of the fifth over of Sri Lanka’s second innings, when still another visiting player lay prone and in need of medical attention. But it seemed all Dinesh Chandimal required was a bandage applied to his achilles, which his pad strap appeared to be pinching.

Mendis and Chandimal ensured the Lankans endured no further hurt, in any sense. Or so it seemed until the close, when the dreaded buggy collected Chandimal at the boundary at the close, perhaps only to spare him a painful walk to the team bus. But, with only five wickets in hand, possibly, and 160 needed to make South Africa bat again, the damage has been done.

The day ended as it began, with Ntini booming from the press box, this time at a cameraperson stationed close to the fence: “You’d better come here! If you stay in the sun for much longer you’ll turn purple!” Many present laughed, but not the Sri Lankans. And not only because they don’t understand isiXhosa.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Anrich Nortjé’s hymn to hope

“I take it as a compliment in the sense of trying to go out there and fight.” – Anrich Nortjé on being called a Dutchman.

TELFORD VICE at St George’s Park

DOM Bess hadn’t yet completed the over that had been interrupted by rain for almost four hours when the St George’s Park band brightly lurched into a chorus from one of its hardiest, hoariest standards. “Zizojika Izinto” is a hymn written in isiXhosa, one of South Africa’s 11 official languages. Its melody climbs high as a steeple and then swoops off on a wing of hope, taking all who can hear with it. For long minutes and multiple renditions, and whether you speak the language or not, you are transported to a better place.

It’s about a lot more than music: a song to sustain the spirit during the country’s long struggle for freedom, and an anthem since adopted by more than one political party in the democratic era. It tells us about ourselves and who and what we aspire to be, not least because its title translates into “turn things around”. South Africans like to believe, with not as much justification as we think we have, that nobody does that better.

And, the gods know, South Africa needed turning around in the third Test. They still do. Nelson Mandela took 27 years to get out of jail. Faf du Plessis’ team require another couple of days, but it won’t be easy. Anrich Nortjé knows that better than anyone.

He took guard at 5.45pm on Friday. At 4.52pm on Saturday, he sparred at a wide one from Ben Stokes and Joe Root snared a sharp, low, dipping catch at first slip. Much happened in the 23 hours and seven minutes between those two poles, but Nortjé wasn’t mulling the philosophical niceties as he countenanced his dismissal. He crumpled to a grounded knee at the crease, poked a gloved thumb through the grille of his helmet into his mouth, and stared for many seconds into the middle distance towards the dressingroom from which he had come, it seemed, a thousand years earlier. If only, he might have been thinking, he could exchange the years for balls faced. He shouldn’t be so hard on himself.

Nortjé was at the crease for more than three hours and faced 136 balls — and scored runs off only nine of them. His strike rate, 13.2, is the lowest in any first-class innings of 110 or more deliveries. “It’s not really about scoring runs for me,” Nortjé said after stumps on Saturday. “It’s about facing a few balls … as many as possible.” He dealt with the three deliveries Bess bowled before bad light and then rain ended Friday’s play. Job done? Not by a long chalk. On Saturday, Nortjé got into line with impressive willingness to blunt England’s fast bowlers, notably Mark Wood, who never strayed from the upper 140 kilometres-per-hour and touched 150. “I haven’t really had to deal with that,” he said of facing Wood’s high octane. “It gives confidence that I can do it. It’s nice to be able to do that. But it’s not the nicest thing to have to do, I’m not going to lie.” Nortjé is in Wood’s league of pace. Did being on the other end of the equation engender sympathy for the batters he bowls to? “No.”

Nortjé saw the allegedly better equipped Dean Elgar, Du Plessis and Rassie van der Dussen come and go. And if he wasn’t so polite he would say he could also see that he looked the best of them. “There’s a bigger battle between [frontline batters] and the bowler compared to with me,” Nortjé said. “When I get a half-volley sometimes, I still block it. You can’t really compare. I’m not in the batting meeting, I can tell you that.” Nortjé faced exactly 100 deliveries fewer than the player who holds the record for the longest innings by a nightwatch for South Africa. But that guy came with a reputation as a batter: Mark Boucher, for it was he, can only have been proud of Nortjé as he watched from the dressingroom.

Uitenhage, too, will be proud of Nortjé. Some 40 kilometres from Port Elizabeth, it’s a tough town filled with tough people who build cars for a living. But they will have a soft spot for Nortjé, their homeboy, who definitely started their engines. On Friday, Charl Langeveldt, South Africa’s bowling consultant, described Nortjé in a television interview as “a proper Dutchman”. It’s a mild pejorative slung at first-language Afrikaans speakers, and its use in towns like Uitenhage will earn a beer bottle to the temple.

But this is different. “I’ve been called that for quite a long time; it was the first time it was on air,” Nortjé said. “I take it as a compliment in the sense of trying to go out there and fight, and come hard and be aggressive, with a lot of heart. It’s something I do try and pride myself on. When conditions get tough, when its 40 degrees, I try and be the guy to run in and come hard. I try and make things happen with the ball, not really with the bat. But if I get an opportunity, if I have to take a few blows, I’m willing to do that.”

Uitenhage has given South Africa other promontory people, among them the bloodless Balthazar Johannes Vorster, the apartheid state’s third-last leader and among its most brutal monsters. More happily, Enoch Sontonga also hails from Uitenhage, and he also composed an isiXhosa hymn that is special to South Africans. Outside of St George’s Park, you will hear it more often than “Zizojika Izinto”. It’s called “Nkosi Sikele’ iAfrika”, or “God Bless Africa”, and it’s the first half of the national anthem.

Should Nortjé’s effort inspire South Africa to turn things around in this match, they will be blessed indeed.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Leading Edge: Cricket speaks English, but that can change

isiXhosa having its own set of cricket terms seals the game into South Africa’s reality at a wholly different level.

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

THE press conference is wrapping up. The victim has done their bit, delivering the same old answers to the same old questions.

Then, if the unfortunate behind the microphones is Afrikaans, comes the request — usually from a broadcaster — for “a couple of” answers in that language. Note the unfairness that the request tends to come in English, as do the questions.

If the victim is Faf du Plessis the answers flow in suiwer Afrikaans. Not only is cricket’s best captain also its most engaging speaker, he is thoroughly bilingual; a fresh take on Ginger Rogers being able to do everything Fred Astaire could do — backwards in high heels.

But should any other Afrikaans speaker be up there, a particular reporter in the South African press pack knows what’s coming.

So he holds up a fist and counts on his fingers, flicking them upward with cruel glee, each English word that creeps into those allegedly Afrikaans sentences. Sometimes he runs out of fingers. One of these days he is going to delight in taking off his shoes and using his toes to help count.

What should be “blad” becomes pitch. What might have been a “wegbreek” becomes an off-break. Instead of “skeidsregters” the talk is of umpires.

Afrikaners aren’t alone in all this. Even a figure as polished and self-aware as Virat Kohli can’t seem to help his otherwise smooth Hindi pronouncements being pocked with divots like “mid-on” and “target”.

Stumble into a cricket conversation between Jamaicans and all that is likely to make sense are words like “century”, “slips” and “lbw”, which isn’t a word. But at least you’ll understand it.

So what are we to make of cricket’s “laws” being translated into isiXhosa? That this is well and good, even noble, and more than a hundred years overdue.

But the unhappy truth is that cricket speaks English and nothing else, not least because it has to in an age when players drawn from far-flung parts have to function as a team in even more far-flung T20 competitions.

English is the language of global business, and modern cricket is far more a business than a game.

And cricketers, lest we forget, are paid to play cricket. Not to find ways to talk about the game in whatever language they might have grown up speaking.

But there is a wider significance to isiXhosa having its own set of cricket terms. Importantly, it helps teach those who have become used to thinking the game belongs to them only that it certainly does not. Even more importantly, it helps bring cricket closer to those who speak the language. Most importantly, it seals cricket into South Africa’s reality at a wholly different level; helping it prepare to make the leap from mere game to part of a shared culture.

That’s no small journey in a society that remains decades away, centuries even, from allowing all who live in it the freedom to be themselves. But cricket has done its bit, or part of its bit, to get us there.

Does it matter that English will continue to be cricket’s language of choice? No. The writers of the game’s newest lexicon would be living in an ivory tower as tall as Ponte to believe they could change that anytime soon. But they’ve given us a dream to dream.

Makhaya Ntini gave that dream a glimpse of reality a dozen years ago at Centurion, where he took five wickets in each innings to power South Africa to victory over New Zealand.

Having delivered the same old answers to the same old questions in English, albeit with a twist, Ntini was asked a question in isiXhosa.

His eyes bounced back at his questioner and he was — as an Australian horse-racing commentator might say — off like a wedding dress.

Ntini’s answer lasted minutes and must have included all sorts of things he hadn’t said to those of us trapped in English.

For that long, shining moment, cricket spoke isiXhosa and nothing else. And it sounded so good.