Don’t lie back and think of India

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

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First published by Cricbuzz.

Leading Edge: Why are skills and experience deserting SA cricket?

New players are minted every time someone makes a debut. Coaching doesn’t work like that. There is no reliable substitute for the years it takes the best of them to develop and mature.

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE in London

SOMEONE from Cricket Scotland got hold of a South African of their acquaintance the other day: “Could I run a wee few names by ye, laddie?”

The job of coaching Scotland’s national men’s team is available, and the suits (actually, the kilts) were getting on with filling the vacancy. Having sifted through the applications they arrived at likely suspects.

That’s where the Saffer came in. The Scot wanted an opinion on the South Africans who had shown interest.

Fire away …

One name. Then another. And another. Still another. A bunch more …

There were 15 in all. Fifteen! All vying for the privilege of presiding over the at-best middling performance of a team who struggle for recognition in a country where football and rugby matter exponentially more, and who will not be at next year’s World Cup.

Some of the 15 were engaged at franchise level, others with Cricket South Africa. All had gone through a long and careful process.

New players are minted every time someone makes a debut, and the progress of those of exceptionally rare quality, like Kagiso Rabada, can be hastened for the good of the cricketer, their team and the game alike.

Coaching doesn’t work like that. There is no reliable substitute for the years it takes the best of them to develop and mature.

That as many as 15 of high calibre should be looking for alternative employment is as loud as an alarm could sound: removing that much expertise and experience would be a severe shock to the system.

Then there’s coach No. 16. Adrian Birrell wasn’t in the mix for the Scotland post, maybe because he has been signed by Hampshire. The county, it has been reliably learnt, came looking for him and not the other way round.

Birrell spent five years as South Africa’s assistant coach, a position he reached after decades in the game that encompassed taking South Africa’s under-19 team to West Indies in 1992 and engineering Ireland’s defeat of Pakistan at the 2007 World Cup.

Now he’s left for at least three years, taking with him his Eastern Cape farmer’s sense of perspective — when the sheep are so maar that you’re sommer going to fax them to the abattoir, who cares who wins and loses?

But we should care that South Africa has neglected to get the most out of its investment in Birrell. Why not? It’s a good time to ask the question, what with Mickey Arthur in a Pakistan tracksuit these days and thus back in his home country for a few weeks.

Steve Elworthy hasn’t called South Africa home for years and he is unlikely to for years to come. Further evidence of his Britification was had the other day when he popped off to Buckingham Palace to have a medal pinned to his lapel by a jug-eared septuagenarian called Charles, who needs his mother to die before he can start the job that was unfairly reserved for him at birth.

Whatever you think of the British monarchy, they know an excellent administrator when they see one. Elworthy is exactly that, and now he is also a “Member of the British Empire” for “services to cricket”. He is also, of course, lost to the game in South Africa.

Birrell, Arthur and Elworthy are all white, which probably means they were better placed to market themselves in a wider cricket world that, shamefully, doesn’t trust blackness. Whatever. They’re gone.

South African cricket needs to ask itself why they left. And why at least 15 more want to follow them.