“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.
Cricbuzz
Bulletproof Truth 