Shai Hope – Bulletproof Truth

Zimbabwe can see clearly now the mist has gone

Could it be that cricket, in the absence of the suspended national football team, has filled the void to become the people’s game in Zimbabwe?

Telford Vice / Harare Sports Club

ARE we in San Francisco? The Namib Desert? Nuwara Eliya? Newfoundland? On top of Table Mountain? No, that really is Harare out there draped in wan, wintry mist early on Saturday morning. It is eight degrees Celsius, or not nearly warm enough to play cricket. Except maybe in the northern reaches of Yorkshire.

But in two hours the first ball will be bowled in the day’s men’s World Cup qualifying matches: between Nepal and the Netherlands at Takashinga, and Zimbabwe and West Indies at Harare Sports Club. Happily by the time that happens the funereal sky clears to reveal the familiar vast cornflower blue dome that hovers upturned over this country for much of the winter, replete with temperatures in the mid-20s.

With matches starting at 9am because of the lack of daylight and floodlights at all four grounds in use in Harare and Bulawayo, batting is best avoided until the sun is well up and has dealt with the morning’s moisture. The numbers back that up: the team batting second had won only four of the dozen games in the tournament before Saturday, and two of those trend-bucking wins were achieved in mismatches. In eight games, teams have lost from two to four wickets with nine to 25 runs scored inside the first 10 overs. What would Saturday’s airborne veil of additional dampness do to that theory? Not enhance it, as it turned out.

At Takashinga, Nepal stumbled to 7/1 in the third over when Aasif Sheikh dragged Logan van Beek onto his stumps. But Kushal Bhurtel and Bhim Sharki stabilised the innings with a stand of 39 off 75, only for the last nine wickets to fall for 121 and leave the Netherlands a measly target of 168. They mowed it down in 27.1 overs with seven wickets standing to clinch their place in the Super Six.

All of which passed without the nation’s eyes blinking. They were fixed on HSC, where at a still chilly 8am the stands were already starting to swell with spectators. Shai Hope won the toss and chose to field — like every captain has done in all 14 matches in the tournament. But the building crowd had something to warm them in the shape of a patient, careful opening partnership by Joylord Gumbie and Craig Ervine that yielded 63 runs and endured into the 16th over. So much for the condensation considerations.

The throb of president Emmerson Mnangagwa’s helicopter overhead — he holds meetings across the road at Zimbabwe House — flooded the scene after three overs, but Gumbie took back ownership in the sixth with a slashed six off Alzarri Joseph.

Thus emboldened, the denizens of Castle Corner, many of them wearing white hard hats and red overalls, took to booing Keemo Paul when he dared to run past their stand. The beef goes back to the 2016 under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh, when Paul, in his delivery stride, ran out non-striker Richard Ngarava to end the match.

Zimbabwe had been nine-down in search of three off six to win that match. The result put the Windies in the quarterfinals — they won the title that year — and the Zimbos on a plane home. The Castle Corner faithful will never forgive Paul for adhering to the rules, just as they will never berate Ngarava for costing his team the game by stealing ground.

With that came a flashback to Tuesday’s game between Zimbabwe and the Dutch at HSC, where Max O’Dowd was serenaded by the crowd with the same Shona song he had learnt to sing during an earlier visit to the country. Something has shifted in the culture of cricket in this country if the same all-black section of the crowd that feels the freedom to hail a white opponent can also heap scorn on a black player in a team who have championed black excellence for so long, and all in the space of three days. Could it be that cricket, in the absence of the suspended national football team, has filled the void to become the people’s game in Zimbabwe?

The jeers had barely subsided when Rovman Powell dropped Ervine at mid-on off Kyle Mayers. It was the first of four spilled chances, three of them off Joseph’s bowling. Another flashback, this time to Thursday at HSC, where the faces of Hope and Nicholas Pooran dimmed with disbelief when they were asked, during their press conferences, about their readiness for Saturday’s big match.

For them, they didn’t say out loud, the match wasn’t that big. For Zimbabwe, and Zimbabweans, it was huge. And it showed from both sides of that equation, not least in the good vibrations coming from a ground now packed to capacity; perhaps beyond.

With Paul taking three wickets and Joseph and Akeal Hosein sharing four, the West Indians were able to limit Zimbabwe to 268. Sikandar Raza and Ryan Burl scored 68 and 50 and shared 87 in a stand that started at 112/4 in the 25th. But its end, when Hosein trapped Burl in front in the 41st, started a slide of 6/69. Zimbabwe’s total was their lowest in their three matches in the qualifiers and the first time they have been dismissed in four ODIs.

But the Windies’ listlessness in the field followed them to the crease. Brandon King and Mayers began the reply solidly enough with a joint effort of 43, and Mayers did his bit with a sturdy 56. It was the latter’s dismissal in the 21st, when he failed in the not insignificant task of clearing the 2.03-metre Blessing Muzarabani at long-off, that gave the narrative the beginning of its decisive turn.

Hope and Pooran, both century-makers on Thursday, were cleared away for 30 and 34 by Raza and Ngarava. When Tendai Chatara, who went for 46 in his first seven overs, reduced West Indies to nine-down by bowling Roston Chase off the edge in the 43rd with 44 required, the game was up and the crowd knew it. Their roar was louder than any helicopter.

Chatara ended it, and the collapse of 6/58, a dozen deliveries later when Joseph bunted a simple catch to Raza at short midwicket. Hosein, the non-striker, took the defeat, by 35 runs, especially hard: teammates and opponents alike couldn’t prise him from his haunches for more than a minute. This time the noise from the crowd was less raucous, more satisfied — the expression of a collective mind comfortable in their new knowledge. It was a clear day in Harare and they could see forever.

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Busy, busy, busy at World Cup qualifiers

“Most of our boys have watched the West Indies only on television.” – Monty Desai, Nepal head coach

Telford Vice / Harare

WINTER’S dusk descends hard and fast in Zimbabwe, banishing the day’s warmth and flooding the sudden gloom with an invasive chill in an instant. Even so, the West Indian and Nepalese players took the opportunity to linger in each other’s company on a rapidly darkening outfield after their match in the men’s World Cup qualifiers at Harare Sports Club on Thursday.

Alzarri Joseph, sitting on the turf languidly, held court in one gaggle. In another Jason Holder stood all of his 2.01 metres tall, chatting and smiling and clearly enjoying the moment. Most of the talking was done by the West Indians, most of the listening by the rapt Nepalese.

One of the topics discussed might have been their workload. Including warm-up matches, Thursday’s game was the Windies’ fourth in nine days. They will have played two more by Monday evening. Nepal have been on the park five times in the same nine days, with another match to come on Saturday. Stand by for the Super Sixes, the place play-offs and the final.

The finalists, who will meet at HSC on July 9, will have played 10 matches in 27 days. This year’s IPL champions, Chennai Super Kings, played 16 times in 59 days. If all of those games in both tournaments went down to the last ball, the finalists at the qualifiers would have been on the field for 1,000 overs and CSK for 640. The internationals would have worked 36% harder than the IPL sides in 45.76% of the time it took to complete the latter. Fifteen of the players who featured in the IPL, which ended 21 days before the qualifiers started, are among the 151 in the squads in Zimbabwe.

The 10 teams will play all 34 games in the tournament proper — minus the warm-ups — in the space of 22 days. The same programme was followed in the previous edition of the qualifiers, also in Zimbabwe, in March 2018.

Shai Hope has never played in the IPL, but he’s here. As West Indies’ captain and first-choice wicketkeeper-batter, he has been on the field for 269.5 of the 381.4 overs — more than 70% — his team have spent batting and fielding in the qualifiers. How was he holding up?

“I’m not sure at the moment, I’ll be able to answer that question in the morning,” Hope said after Thursday’s game, in which he batted for 43.3 overs for his 132 and was behind the stumps for Nepal’s innings of 49.4 overs.

“We got some time off after the first game, which was good. But these games are going to come at a much faster turnover, so we’ve got to make sure our recovery is on point and we focus a lot more on how we do things off the field.”

That time off was three days between a game against the United States on Sunday and Thursday’s match. Happily for the Windies, all four of their games have been in Harare — Bulawayo is a 35-minute flight away — as is their showdown with Zimbabwe on Saturday.

Nicholas Pooran hasn’t been as busy as Hope — 237.4 on-field overs, or more than 60% of the total. “This is what we signed up for,” Pooran said after scoring 115 on Thursday. “Unfortunately we have to qualify for the World Cup. It’s a tough road. We need to get some rest tonight, recover tomorrow, and turn up on Saturday.”

Nepal, Oman, Scotland and Ireland will have only one day off between each of their four group games. “I would have preferred one more day of rest inbetween but it is what it is, we just have to get on with it,” Monty Desai, Nepal’s head coach, said on Thursday.

Desai’s team face the Netherlands at Takashinga, also in Harare, on Saturday in what looms as a shootout for third place in group A — and thus for a spot in the Super Sixes. “It’s straightforward: Netherlands or us,” Desai said. “It’s all a mental game now. We’ll get ready mentally and trust our skills.”

Nepal played the first of their 111 white-ball internationals in March 2014. Only eight of them have involved countries that were full members at the time. They have had three games each against Zimbabwe and Ireland and one against Bangladesh. And, on Thursday, West Indies — who followed the stand of 216 Hope and Pooran shared by bouncing out the Nepalese to nail down victory by 101 runs.

Not that you would have thought they had been roughly dealt with as they mingled willingly with the winners on the outfield. Nepal looked like winners themselves, and they were. To get to the qualifiers they had to finish among the top three teams in World Cup League 2, a competition that ran from August 2019 to March this year in which each of the seven teams played 36 matches. Nepal won 19 games to finish behind Scotland and Oman.

“Most of our boys have watched the West Indies only on television,” Desai said. “For them it was a proud moment to play against a Test nation. Maybe the batsmen got distracted by the occasion and the barrage of short balls. But it’s OK. For us it’s a pure learning experience.”

Even in the aftermath of defeat, in the sniping cold and gathering dark of an outfield far from home. Maybe they were tired, but they were also happy.

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West Indies offer lessons for South Africa

“We are generally more aggressive types of players; the white-ball formats suit our style of play.” – Shai Hope

Telford Vice / Cape Town

ON the road in bilateral series against tougher opposition, the real West Indies men’s team stand up more often in T20Is than in Tests or ODIs. That’s not an opinion.

West Indies haven’t won a Test series in Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan — or the United Arab Emirates — South Africa or Sri Lanka since they beat the Kiwis in February 1995. That’s more than 28 years in which they have played 37 series in those countries comprising 115 Tests, of which they have won only nine while losing 87.

The Windies’ drought in bilateral ODI rubbers in the backyard of decent teams isn’t as long. But it still goes back to July 2007, when they won in England. Since then they have played 77 matches, won 10 and lost 61.

Their T20I record sticks out like a robust thumb on a weak hand. West Indies have played 23 series in the countries above and won five of them, and all since they last claimed an away rubber against those teams in the other two formats. That adds up to 60 games, of which they have won 16 and lost 39.

The Windies’ winning percentage in T20Is in these terms — 26.67% — is exponentially better than in ODIs — 12.99% — or Tests — 7.83%. Essentially, they have been almost three-and-a-half times as successful in away T20Is against quality sides compared to Tests since that 1995 series in New Zealand, and more than twice as much in T20Is than ODIs since they won in England in 2007.

Overall, home and away and regardless of the strength of their opponents, and since they played their first T20I in February 2006, West Indies have won 22.76% of their Tests, 36.56% of their ODIs, and 40.78% of their T20Is. It’s safe to say their premier format is T20I. Or at least that they have become white-ball specialists.

Alzarri Joseph was unconvinced: “I would not think so. I think we still prioritise the longer format. These days a lot more white-ball cricket is being played than Test cricket, so that’s maybe why you would see it that way.”

That’s a difficult argument to make. Joseph spoke at a press conference at the Wanderers on Tuesday after his team had beaten South Africa by seven runs to clinch the T20I series 2-1. The ODI rubber, in which the first match was lost to rain, was drawn 1-1 and South Africa won both Tests. It is true that the Windies play fewer Tests in the modern game, but just as valid that they are a better team in the other formats, T20I in particular.

West Indies have never topped the Test rankings since they were introduced in June 2003. If the formula is applied retroactively, the last time they would have been the No. 1 team was in August 1995. They won the first two World Cups, in 1975 and 1979, but haven’t earned that title since. Their T20I World Cup triumphs have been more recent — in 2012 and 2016.

“I can’t hundred percent put my finger on it, but I do think we are generally more aggressive types of players; the white-ball formats suit our style of play,” Shai Hope, the ODI captain, said after that series. “But we need to find ways to adapt regardless of the format or the situation of the game. We need to create winning habits, and the only way we can do so is by winning games.”

Rovman Powell, the T20I captain, thought he saw that kind of change coming: “As the years go by and the guys start playing more and get familiar with their role for West Indies, hopefully we’ll get better performances. The guys are working hard to change the perception that West Indies aren’t the best international team at the moment. Hopefully this [T20I] series can be the start of people realising that West Indies cricket is slowly but surely getting back to where it truly belongs.”

By that he was probably talking about the 10 years that began with the Windies’ Test series in England in 1976. By April 1986, they had lost only six, and won 38, of the 78 Tests they had played in that period. But the deep maroon of the caps worn then has faded to an insipid marshmallow pink, the T20I version excepted.

The South Africans would do well to consider the experience of the most recent visitors a cautionary tale. They don’t want to wake up one day to find the bold green of their caps looking like thoroughly chewed and discarded spearmint gum.

As South Africa’s new white-ball coach, Rob Walter is tasked with stopping that from happening. Although South Africa have won only two of the five games with him in their dugout, a fresh positivity has been apparent in their approach. In Centurion on Sunday they chased down a world record target of 259 to win the second T20I, and they had the misfortune of being up against a team almost impervious to pressure at the Wanderers two days later — where the visitors piled up 222/8 in the series decider.

“We’re certainly making progress in how we want to play the game,” Walter told a press conference on Tuesday. “It’s good to see the guys playing with freedom and expressing their skills, and there’s more in the tank I believe.”

Was that his doing? “I would be very arrogant to say I’ve had a significant impact in this short space of time. It’s about being consistent with the language I use with the team, and that is consistently telling them to find ways to express themselves, to take aggressive options — when they feel under pressure to think what is the aggressive option they have in their strengths — and then back that. If they do that and it doesn’t work we can deal with it, but more often than not it does.”

Walter’s and his team’s looming challenge is to beat the Netherlands in their World Cup Super League fixtures in Benoni on Friday and at the Wanderers on Sunday. The Dutch are bona fide minnows but they got up to beat South Africa, and eliminate them from the race for the T20 World Cup semifinals, in Adelaide in November. Victory in the coming games is vital for South Africa’s hopes of qualifying directly for the ODI World Cup in India in October and November.

What could Walter’s players take from the way they had performed against the West Indians? “Confidence is transferrable. It’s the only thing you take into the [next] game. The batter’s on nought and the bowler’s got the ball in their hand for the first time again. It will be no different on Friday.”

That, too, is not an opinion.

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The truth behind Klaasen’s ton

“We fixed a little technical thing in the nets yesterday after about 50 balls of inside-and-outside edging.” – Heinrich Klaasen

Telford Vice / Cape Town

HOW many at JB Marks Oval in Potchefstroom on Tuesday knew John “Beaver” Marks attended the rousingly named Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow? Or that he lost one of the provincial presidencies of the African National Congress to a noisy young lawyer called Nelson Mandela? Or that he died — of natural causes, no mean feat all things considered — in the Russian capital in August 1972 after devoting most of his 69 years to the struggles of the working class?

Few, it’s safe to say. Even fewer would have cared to know such things. South Africans of all racial, class and political stripes are in chronic denial about the facts of their past, present and future. How many at the third ODI between South Africa and West Indies would have known that the public holiday, which enabled a 10am start, was called Human Rights Day?

Or that for some this will always be Sharpeville Day? On March 21, 1960 in Sharpeville, 85 kilometres from Potch, police opened fire on a peaceful protest against apartheid’s pass laws, killing 69 and injuring 180. Many were shot in the back. Incredibly, alarmingly, disgustingly, world cricket needed 10 more years to do the decent thing and ban South Africa’s teams from the international stage.

And that despite those teams never including anything but white players, and who would not play against opponents who weren’t entirely white. In those diabolical terms only seven of the 22 players who took the field on Tuesday would have been eligible.

What would the denizens of those dark days have made of the fact that the first player to help Lungi Ngidi celebrate his spectacular diving semi-snowcone catch in the deep to remove Kyle Mayers was Aiden Markram? Or that when Rob Walter walked onto the field after South Africa had won by four wickets with all of 20.3 overs to spare to square the series, the figure he engaged in conversation was Temba Bavuma — the man who will soon lead South Africa against the Netherlands and at the World Cup? Or that when Markram, who stood in as captain because Bavuma had tweaked a hamstring, was asked to pose for a photograph with Shai Hope and the trophy, he immediately beckoned Bavuma to come and share the picture? Or that the black, brown and white members of South Africa’s squad wore black armbands to pay Walter their respects on the occasion of the death of his father?

These matters might seem peripheral or even irrelevant to Heinrich Klaasen taking guard at 73/3 in the 11th with 188 still required, and cracking cover drives and pulverising pulls with gusto in an unbeaten 119. Klaasen hit 90 of his runs — more than 75% — in fours and sixes, and reached three figures off 54 balls. Only AB de Villiers, twice, and Mark Boucher have scored faster ODI centuries for South Africa. On top of that, it will do Marco Jansen’s progress to fully-fledged allrounderhood no harm that the 103 he shared off 62 with Klaasen was the major stand of the innings. If the perfect runchase exists, South Africa’s on Tuesday may be it.

“Yesterday at training I was hitting everything with the outside half of the bat or the inside half of the bat,” Klaasen said in his television interview. A day later he seemed to hammer everything out of the heart of his willow. How had he addressed the issue?

“We fixed a little technical thing yesterday after about 50 balls of inside-and-outside edging,” Klaasen told a press conference. “I tried to stay still and calm, especially my hands. After that everything seemed to hit the middle a little bit better, and I took that confidence into today’s game. It was one of those days when the first couple went into the gap. The rest was simple. I felt like I got a couple of loose deliveries, which I capitalised on. That set my tempo for the innings.”

Hope, who knows a thing or two about ODI batting having scored four hundreds and a half-century in his last 17 innings in the format, concurred: “Every single ball he struck just seemed to find the gap. I know those days as a cricketer. Everything seems to hit the middle of the bat and you find the boundaries with ease. When he came in I thought we were ahead of the game. We needed just two more wickets at that stage and we pretty much could have wrapped it up.”

Klaasen’s performance followed Markram’s star turn with the ball, in which he took 1/30 from his full quota of overs. Markram wasn’t alone in his tidiness: of South Africa’s six bowlers, only Ngidi went for more than a run a ball. Consequently, the Windies’ momentum faltered after Ngidi ended Brandon King’s 72, scored off as many deliveries, via an edge onto the stumps in the 22nd. That was part of a slide of 5/77 from the 19th to the 35th.

Between all the feats, facts and figures, leave room for the most important truth of them all: Tuesday’s game wouldn’t have happened without the sacrifices so many South Africans made in the past. Klaasen, Bavuma, Markram and the rest of that side of the dressing room divide would never have played for their country of birth, much less captained the team or scored centuries for them. The West Indians might never have been allowed into the country, much less onto the field. If they somehow made it as far as the boundary they would have been at best arrested, at worst shot.

We should acknowledge every day, but especially on Sharpeville Day, that without big politics there can be no big sport.

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More middle practice than match

“I am always learning from them. The young guys have different thought processes.” – David Miller on the generational divide.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

IT isn’t often that the dress rehearsal looms as a taller order than opening night, but that’s South Africa’s reality going into the third men’s ODI against West Indies in Potchefstroom on Tuesday.

What comes next for the South Africans — two ODIs against the Netherlands in Benoni on March 31 and at the Wanderers on April 2 — will likely decide whether the home side qualify directly for the World Cup in India in October or November, or will have to bother with a qualifying tournament in Zimbabwe in June and July.

The first match of the current series, at Buffalo Park in East London on Thursday, was washed out without a ball bowled. The visitors won the second, at the same ground on Saturday by 48 runs. In a word, handsomely. Tuesday’s game, like the first two, counts for nought on the World Cup Super League standings — unlike the matches against the Dutch.

But the West Indians are easily stronger opponents than the Netherlands, who have lost all five ODIs between the sides. That said, Dutch supporters are no doubt still glowing in the wake of their team’s deserved win over South Africa at the T20 World Cup in Adelaide in November. Maybe lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice, but a committed XI could.

Even though that seems unlikely given South Africa’s apparent revitalisation under new coaches Shukri Conrad and Rob Walter, no-one will make the mistake of taking victory over the Dutch for granted. The best way to prepare to nail down wins in those games is to hit the ground running on Tuesday.

With Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen and David Miller in the squad — they weren’t for the first two games — South Africa’s batting should be more solid than it was on Saturday, when they debuted four players in the format. But the Windies have strength in depth in all departments, which will make them slight favourites to earn a third white-ball series win in South Africa.

Both teams know winning on Tuesday won’t move the needle on their bid to reach the World Cup, and the West Indians seem resigned to have to go to Zimbabwe to make it to India. That leaves the match in an awkward place; somewhere between a middle practice and an experiment.

So, rather than a hard-fought contest, expect an intriguing spectacle on a ground where 300 hasn’t been breached in the six list A games played there since the start of last year. And where the team batting second have won only two of those matches. And also where the sides who have won batting first have dismissed their opponents all four times. Expect a dress rehearsal, and pretend it’s opening night.

When: March 21, 2023; 10am Local Time (1.30pm IST)

Where: JB Marks Oval, Potchefstroom

What to expect: A flat pitch, a temperature of 31 degrees Celsius, and a thunderstorm in the afternoon, when a 40% chance of rain has been forecast.

Team news:

South Africa: Aiden Markram and Heinrich Klaasen return to the squad from rests and David Miller from the PSL. They could replace Ryan Rickelton, Rassie van der Dussen and Tristan Stubbs.

Possible XI: Quinton de Kock, Temba Bavuma (capt), Aiden Markram, Tony de Zorzi, Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, Marco Jansen, Bjorn Fortuin, Gerald Coetzee, Lungi Ngidi, Tabraiz Shamsi

West Indies: Why fiddle with an XI that won well in Buffalo Park’s not dissimilar conditions on Saturday?

Possible XI: Brandon King, Kyle Mayers, Shamarh Brooks, Shai Hope (capt), Nicholas Pooran, Rovman Powell, Jason Holder, Akeal Hosein, Odean Smith, Alzarri Joseph, Yannic Cariah

What they said:

“I’ve been there for many years now and I want to make the impact that I can, on and off the field, with the new guys in the squad so they can feed off my experience and learning. I am always learning myself; learning from them as well. The young guys have different thought processes.” — David Miller on being a big fish in a pond not short of younger, smaller fish.

“It’s something we speak about in meetings. We’re just trying to win more games. We didn’t have a successful 2022 and we are trying everything to turn it around,” — Shai Hope on the Windies’ emphasis on forward momentum in the wake of losing 16 of their 21 ODIs last year.

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Change writ large on Buffalo Park’s scoreboard, and grass banks

“They were amazing. We know people want to come and see good cricket, and cricket is also a party in the Caribbean.” – Shai Hope on the Buffalo Park crowd.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

A sizeable chunk of the membership of the Buffalo Club was not happy. How dare Border cricket decide to put up a new scoreboard? And so impede the members’ view of the Indian Ocean, which they could see lapping onto Eastern Beach from their clubhouse’s privileged perch on a hill overlooking Buffalo Park.

It wasn’t enough that the members could watch all the live cricket they wanted in the comfort of their club, and without having to bother with buying a ticket. They wanted the view, too. To hell with spectators who would benefit from being better informed about the match.

The club’s ownership of the ground gave them a false, unpaid for and unearned sense of entitlement and superiority over the wishes and needs of the ticket-buying thousands who thronged the grass banks and stands on big match days.

This was deep in the dark 1990s, when Buffs’ membership was even whiter than the make-up of the teams who played at the foot of the hill and the crowds who watched them. Then, clubs like Buffs, which had until recently been physically, mentally and emotionally ensconced in the bosom of the apartheid establishment, were seen and saw themselves as bastions of the old order.

You want fairness? Democracy? Something closer to unity? What you hoped would soon be reality? Rather join United or Willows in Buffalo Flats and Mdantsane, brown and black areas of East London. And, if you’re white, be satisfied and shut up. Not many years earlier and you would have had the security police asking whether you were a communist or a terrorist, or both — they were the same thing for the goons, anyway — for wanting to play cricket with and against people who were not white. Or the cops would not have bothered to ask before they took you away. Buffs and their ilk was not for you and your ilk. Exactly the same people, and their enablers, among them members of clubs like Buffs, demanded that sport and politics be kept strictly separate.

So you wonder what the membership of Buffs club thought while they watched the second men’s ODI between South Africa and West Indies on Saturday. These days they keep themselves apart from the hoi polloi not with the help of repressive legislation but with a sturdy fence that runs across the hill horizontally, marking out where the club’s lawns end and Buffalo Park begins. The membership is less white than it used to be but it is still attuned to affluence über alles, even though it can no longer shut itself off from reality.

Only seven of the 24 people — umpires included — who took the field on Saturday were white. Better yet, one black player’s century was followed by another’s: Shai Hope, in his first match as the Windies’ captain, scored 128 and Temba Bavuma made 144, his second hundred for South Africa in as many innings in the wake of his 172 against the same opponents in the Wanderers Test. Both are career-bests for Bavuma.

Many in the crowd were of the same blood as Hope and Bavuma. They availed themselves of the wide expanse of lawn on the outside of the unusually shrunken boundaries in an all-dancing, all-singing carnival of cricket-watching. The magical melody of Zizojika Izinto, an isiXhosa hymn and struggle song, poured through them many more times than once.

The singing and dancing rose and fell and rose again even as it became apparent to these proper cricket people — they and their forebears have been part of the game in South Africa since they encountered it at colonial mission schools in the Eastern Cape hinterland some 180 years ago — that only Bavuma stood between South Africa and defeat.

It was one thing for Hope to bat with verve through stands of 86 with Nicholas Pooran, 80 with Rovman Powell, and a mad dash of 42 off 22 with Alzarri Joseph; quite another for Bavuma to hobble on one-and-a-half legs — he hurt himself in the field — through 41.2 overs to play with such authority and urgency.

Bavuma and Quinton de Kock put on 76 before South Africa’s captain shared 61 with Tony de Zorzi. Of the 49 realised in the company of Lungi Ngidi, Bavuma scored 36. Ngidi, a tailender’s tailender, was inspired enough to heave Akeal Hosein over midwicket for six. The West Indians, having piled up 335/8 — their highest ODI total against South Africa — probably knew they had the game won, especially as the wickets mounted. But Bavuma kept the possibility of an improbable victory at least half alive.

“The ball before I got out, I said to Lungi, ‘If we can get two 15-run overs here, we can get them to panic,’” Bavuma said during his television interview. Only when he flapped at Joseph and gloved a catch behind, the ninth wicket down, was the issue put beyond doubt. Two balls later South Africa were dismissed 48 short.

Starting with his 109 in an ODI against England in Bloemfontein on January 29, Bavuma has scored three centuries in seven innings for South Africa and twice passed 50 in five trips to the domestic crease. In his previous dozen innings his 65 in the Boxing Day Test at the MCG was his only half-century and his highest score. Where were all the runs coming from?

“My mind is a lot more clear as to what I’m trying to do and how I’m trying to do it,” Bavuma told a press conference. “I’m feeding off the confidence I’m getting from the players as well as the new coaches [Shukri Conrad and Rob Walter]. I’m just enjoying my cricket.”

Hope, in his press conference, said of Bavuma’s effort: “He deserved to win the game, playing an innings like that. But there can only be one winner.”

Along with Bavuma’s and his own batting, Hope also enjoyed the crowd: “They were amazing. That’s something that we as West Indians appreciate as well. We know people want to come and see good cricket, and cricket is also a party in the Caribbean.”

Little wonder Zizojika Izinto had kept ringing around the ground. The song’s title translates as “Things will turn around”. Up at Buffs Club, the members knew things had indeed turned around. And not only because they could see, instead of waves lapping onto Eastern Beach, the feats of people like Hope and Bavuma writ large on the scoreboard. The Windies captain was wrong: sometimes there’s more than one winner.

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Contextless contest for South Africa, West Indies

“You want to keep that good thing going. But you can’t ignore the fact that this is a big year from a 50-over point of view.” – Temba Bavuma says Test success won’t win the ODI series.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

“SMALL earthquake in Peru, no-one killed.” That, junior journalists in South Africa used to be told by grizzled, hard-hearted editors, would be the definitive headline on the definition of a non-story. The men’s ODI series between South Africa and West Indies, which starts in East London on Thursday, presents a sporting equivalent: three games not in the World Cup Super League (WCSL) schedule. What’s the point?

The problem with inventing a mechanism to give cricket context, of which the WCSL is a prime example, is that games that do not fall within its ambit are rendered irrelevant and redundant. Talking about prime examples, this series is exhibit A.

Maybe the closest we can get to a reason for the rubber to be played is that it offers the South Africans time to tune up for their two games against the Netherlands in the coming weeks — which are indeed WCSL fixtures — and the West Indians a chance to accustom themselves to conditions similar to those they will encounter in the World Cup qualifier in Zimbabwe in June and July.

The outcome of another WCSL series, between New Zealand and Sri Lanka on March 25, 28 and 31, has a direct bearing on whether South Africa will qualify directly for the World Cup in India in October and November, or join the Windies in Zimbabwe. There’s a delicious tension in the South Africans playing their first match against the Dutch on the same day — but hours afterwards — that the Kiwis and Lankans complete their rubber.

Both South Africa and West Indies have new normals to get used to in the next few days. Rob Walter will be on hand for the first time as the home side’s white-ball coach. His appointment was announced on January 16, but Shukri Conrad, his Test counterpart, took care of the shop during the ODI series against England in the last week of February. Or while Walter was still in New Zealand, where he had coached since 2016.

Temba Bavuma told a press conference in East London on Wednesday that the transition had been smooth: “The chats are a continuation of what we had during the ODI series against England. As much as Rob wasn’t there, he was interacting and actively involved with the guys. It’s a matter of using that same language and using this opportunity against West Indies to refine our way of playing.”

Shai Hope has played 161 matches for West Indies across the formats, but this will be his first game as captain. Might it unsettle him that the man he replaced at the wheel, Nicholas Pooran, is also in the squad? As is Rovman Powell, Hope’s vice-captain, who has led the Windies in three ODIs and a T20I.

South Africa’s men’s team were last in East London for an ODI in October 2017. West Indies have played only two games of any sort here, most recently an ODI in January 2015. But both teams can rest assured that not much about the conditions has changed. The pitch promises to be slow and the bounce low, and there will be wind.

Totals of at least 300 have eluded teams in Buffalo Park’s last five list A games, which have delivered two centuries and two hauls of four or more wickets. This is not a place to play pretty cricket, but it does tend to bring out the best in those who win here. Even in matches devoid of context.

When: March 16, 2023; 1pm Local Time (4.30pm IST)

Where: Buffalo Park, East London

What to expect: A sleepy surface that could be granted a spike of life by an 80% forecast for rain on Wednesday night. That’s mitigated by the patchy history of drainage at this ground.

Team news:

South Africa: There’s a lot going on here. Wiaan Mulder and Keshav Maharaj have been withdrawn because of a side strain and a ruptured Achilles. Wayne Parnell, himself a squad replacement for Mulder, has come down with an illness but managed to train on Wednesday. Consequently, Marco Jansen and Tabraiz Shamsi have been added to the squad. Sisanda Magala has split the webbing on his bowling hand. Andile Phehlukwayo is battling lower back spasms. Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortjé have been rested, as has Aiden Markram — but only for the first two games. David Miller, who is playing in the PSL, is available only for the third match.

Possible XI: Temba Bavuma (capt), Quinton de Kock, Reeza Hendricks, Tony de Zorzi, Heinrich Klaasen, Tristan Stubbs, Wayne Parnell, Gerald Coetzee, Lungi Ngidi, Bjorn Fortuin, Tabraiz Shamsi

West Indies: Unlike their opponents, there’s little to report. Everyone in the squad is fit and well and available for selection.

Possible XI: Shai Hope (capt), Kyle Mayers, Nicholas Pooran, Brandon King, Roston Chase, Shamarh Brooks, Rovman Powell, Keacy Carty, Jason Holder, Shannon Gabriel, Yannic Cariah

What they said:

“You want to keep that good thing going. But you can’t ignore the fact that this is a big year from a 50-over point of view. That’s the main priority.” — Temba Bavuma on transferring Test success to ODIs.

“The qualifiers are just down the road but the main focus for now is the South Africa series. We definitely need to qualify for the World Cup. Everything we do now is geared towards that.” — Shai Hope outlines the West Indian mindset.

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Advantage SA, but world needs winning Windies

“I think it was a gamble to get me on.” – Wiaan Mulder after taking 3/1.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

ONE of your opening bowlers is in the dressingroom, curled around a colicky stomach. Your wicketkeeper is up on blocks with cramp. Good thing mere moments are left in the second session. And yet, rather than trying to run down the clock, you are hustling to squeeze in another over.

The absentees return an hour later. Your ’keeper is moving about as well as C-3PO, all creaks and clacks and awkward angles. But, as he gingerly sinks to his haunches behind the stumps, he yells: “Fuck, it’s great to be back out here!” Your big fast bowler runs in for his first delivery since coming back, his eyes ringed with discomfort — which melts when the batter who has faced twice as many balls as anyone else in the innings at that point splays his back foot, angles his bat, and chops on.

That was the nub of the narrative in St Lucia on Saturday, starring — in order of their appearance above — Lungi Ngidi, Quinton de Kock, and, exiting stage left, Shai Hope. Whatever hole South Africa fell into, they found a way out of it. Whatever advantage West Indies earned, it was nullified.

The South Africans, having scored 203 runs for the loss of their first five wickets on Friday, saw their second five crash for 59 a day later. But the tone of the West Indians’ reply was set when they lost their captain, Kraigg Brathwaite, to the first delivery of the innings. Thereby hangs a sub-plot.

Before Brathwaite gloved Kagiso Rabada down the leg side and was caught behind, Wiaan Mulder had shouted: “Keg ball!” That meant, as a reward for predicting the dismissal, Mulder was duty bound to buy his teammates — all of them — a drink. “That’s unlucky for me, I suppose,” Mulder told an online press conference after stumps. “It’s an expensive ball, but it’s just to create a bit of ‘gees’.”

‘Gees’ is the Afrikaans word for spirit. West Indies could have used more of it. They shambled to 149 all out — exactly as many runs as they are behind — in two sessions on a day’s play that ended in sunshine after it looked like it would be curtailed by bad light and rain.

When the weather was closing in, it said plenty that, unlike the South Africans before tea, the West Indians seemed to be itching to get the hell out of there. Even the head groundskeeper, Kent Crafton, stood holding a corner of a cover on the boundary as the gloom loomed. Who could blame him: it’s difficult to see a way back into the match for the home side. Let’s not forget, too, that the visitors don’t need to win to seal the series.

“It was a pretty average day for us,” Hope offered in his television interview, adding superfluously: “Cricket is one of those games where, whoever plays the best on the day will come out on top.”

Please, West Indians, don’t take these observations as slights. Know that your great teams of the 1980s and ’90s were more responsible than anything else for keeping cricket relevant among a generation in far-flung countries and even hemispheres for whom the game would otherwise have been as uncool as cardigans and camomile tea. Without the example, set by the way those sides played and won, of what was possible in a wider society stuck in one gear, cricket would have been another reason for much of the rest of the world to despise their parents and everything they stood for. Instead the rampant success of people starkly different and from the other side of the world to the rest of Test cricket’s tired crowd gave the young what little else could: hope for the future. And not only for cricket. What ominous figures like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and the hideousness of apartheid, stole from their lives, West Indies cricket helped give back to them.

But that was a long time ago. It hurts to see the Windies play like they have done too often since those bright days, including in this series. And it doesn’t hurt West Indians only. The world needs, now as it did then; maybe more than ever, credible diversity. The game and everything around it suffers when those who claim it for one sect or culture or country or another are enabled in their dirty work. Because they don’t stop at claiming cricket. They want to tell us some people are better, more deserving, more human than others. So the fire in Babylon needs to be rekindled to a blaze, for all of our sakes.

That is not Mulder’s focus. He took 3/1 in four overs to hasten West Indies’ demise: they lost their last four wickets for six runs in 22 deliveries. “I’d been struggling with rhythm, so I was just trying to land the ball in the right area,” he said. “I think it was a gamble to get me on.”

Possibly. But, on a day already dizzy with bilious bowlers, cramping ’keepers and gratuitous groundskeeping, you would have to be daft not to take a punt on a kid who called — clairvoyantly, as it turned out — “keg ball!”

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Beware the tides of June

“We’ve been exposed to our limitations in terms of what we need to do as a batting unit.” – Dean Elgar

Telford Vice | Cape Town

THE world has 195 countries. Only 18 of them have smaller populations than balmy, beachy, beautiful St Lucia. A 2021 estimate says the island, which lies south of Martinique, north of St Vincent and north-west of Barbados, is home to only 184,401.

If you think that makes it sound like the perfect place for a sunstruck holiday, pandemic permitting, you’re not alone: 423,736 tourists spent at least a night there in 2019, a record for the country in a single year.

Thing is, almost all of them had left by the end of April; like they do every year. Again, pandemic permitting. Because from June to October St Lucia receives, on average, more than 200 millimetres of rain in each of those months — during which anywhere between 15 and 20 days are wet.

And here we are, about to go into two Tests in St Lucia. In June. For now the forecast is for clear skies at least until Monday, but more than one of the South Africans has noted how “the weather changes every half-an-hour”. West Indies have played seven Tests at this ground and won just one of them — against Bangladesh in September 2014. Four of the others have been drawn. All of them were played in June, and all of them were affected by rain or bad light. The three matches that have been won were in February, August and September.

None of those games have involved South Africa, who have played only three white-ball games in St Lucia. In the first of them, the 2007 World Cup semi-final against Australia, they crashed to 27/5 inside 10 overs and sank without trace. They also lost to India and Pakistan there in the 2010 World T20I. The optimists among us will note that they have yet to play West Indies at this venue.

Not that they have had many opportunities to play in the Caribbean at all. South Africa were most recently in the region for an ODI tri-series in June 2016, and their last Test series there was in June 2010. That was during their march to the top of the rankings, which they reached in July 2012.

Now in seventh place after losing 10 of their last 13 Tests, the South Africans are a long way from those heady days. So it’s difficult to put much store in the fact that they have never lost a Test series to West Indies. The home side won the inaugural match in the format between the teams — a one-off in Barbados in April 1992 that marked South Africa’s return in, well, whites from apartheid-induced isolation — but South Africa have claimed all seven rubbers the sides have contested.

West Indies are in sixth position, and looking up rather than down after winning or drawing all four Tests they played last year. South Africa are hopeful of being able to look up, but their recent form means they will have to earn that right.

The series is being played in the shadow of New Zealand’s showdown in England, and the second Test coincides with the World Test Championship final between India and the Kiwis in Southampton. But neutrals could be attracted by the fact that the rubber will feature some of the more exciting pace bowlers in the game letting fly on what could be a helpful pitch. It’s not often you can watch Jason Holder, Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortjé without changing the channel.

Then there’s the contest between Kraigg Brathwaite, who is in his second series as captain, and Dean Elgar, who is in his first. Not forgetting a first Test that could feature three debutants in Jayden Seales, Kyle Verreynne and Keegan Petersen.

So sunny St Lucia could yet give us a few reasons to be cheerful about a series that might seem forgettable before it’s even forgotten. If only it wasn’t being played in June.

When: Thursday June 10, 2021. 10am Local Time

Where: Gros Islet, St Lucia

What to expect: One of the more seam-friendly pitches in the Caribbean, which is usually written off as a place where decent surfaces go to die. That’s when it’s not raining in June.

Team news

West Indies: The removal from the equation of the intimidating Shannon Gabriel because of a hamstring injury will bring relief to the visitors’ ranks. His likely replacement, Jayden Seales, is an unknown quantity. Little wonder: at 19, he has one first-class cap to his credit and has played only 10 senior matches. Kieran Powell last played a Test in December 2018 and Shai Hope in July 2020.

Possible XI: Kraigg Brathwaite, Kieran Powell, Shai Hope, Kyle Mayers, Jermaine Blackwood, Jason Holder, Joshua Da Silva, Alzarri Joseph, Rahkeem Cornwall, Kemar Roach, Jayden Seales.

South Africa: Temba Bavuma is a doubtful starter with a hip problem. Should he not make the grade — on Wednesday Dean Elgar sounded more hopeful than convinced that he would — Kyle Verreynne will make his debut in the format. Keegan Petersen is also set for his first Test. Although the visitors have arrived with four spinners, expect an all-seam attack.

Possible XI: Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram, Rassie van der Dussen, Kyle Verreynne, Keegan Petersen, Quinton de Kock, Wiaan Mulder, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortjé, Lungi Ngidi.

What they said

“I saw a young bowler perform in games where Test players and the best of our best of our regional first-class players were playing and he performed exceedingly well — better than a number of players who have been playing first-class cricket for a number of years.” – Roger Harper, West Indies’ selection chief, on Jayden Seales

“We played a two-day game leading up to this Test, which has been two tough days of cricket. On the first day our batters were exposed to some of the most harsh conditions we could have experienced. On the second day the battle between bat and ball was extremely competitive. We’ve also been exposed to our limitations in terms of what we need to do as a batting unit. We’re aware of the failures we’ve had in the past [but] the one thing we can control is our preparation. We’ve prepared very well.” – Dean Elgar

First published by Cricbuzz.

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