Tony Greig – Bulletproof Truth

Caribbean cookie crumbles, Scotland’s flowers bloom

“This is probably one of the lowest points I’ve had with the team.” – Jason Holder

Telford Vice / Harare Sports Club

OH flowers of Scotland! It’s not so much that they beat West Indies in their men’s World Cup qualifier at Harare Sports Club (HSC) on Saturday. After all they now own consecutive victories over them, having won the T20 World Cup match between the teams in Hobart in October.

It’s also not that the Scots have come out on top in 16 of the 27 white-ball internationals they have played from December 2022. Nor that they are 12th in the ODI rankings, above Nepal, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates — the other three teams who were included in the ICC pecking order for the first time in June 2018. Nor that they have easily the highest winning percentage of those teams since then. From June 2018 they have won 38.12% more of their ODIs than the Dutch.

Nor is it that Scotland have beaten Ireland, the UAE and Oman — and lost only to Sri Lanka — during the qualifiers despite the absence from their ranks of 108 caps worth of white-ball international experience. Brad Currie, Josh Davey and Michael Jones have opted to stay with their counties, while Brad Wheal is injured but likely would have done the same.

Unfairly, for neutrals of a certain age and perspective, nothing Scotland did at HSC on Saturday mattered as much as the confirmation of the unhappy transformation of the men in maroon to maroon macaroons, to crumbling Caribbean cookies. They are fragile and easily chewed, swallowed and forgotten; mere morsels of empty calories. And now, for the first time, they are not good enough to go to a World Cup: Saturday’s result means West Indies have no chance of qualifying for this year’s tournament in India in October and November.

It’s been a long time coming — since 1995, when the Windies’ domination of the global game started to slip. For 20 years from the start of the inaugural World Cup in 1975, when they triumphed, they won 265 of the 452 matches they played — a success rate of 58.63% — and lost only 121. Since then they have won 355 and lost 536 of 999; a winning percentage of 35.54. The difference is 23.09%.

That’s a hopelessly inadequate way to gauge decline. Rather the truth of it is in the West Indians’ sloped shoulders and slow movement, in their bleak disbelief at having played another poor stroke, in their desperate trudge through the memories of how good their elders and betters were used as they make their way towards the boundary.

In 1976, Tony Greig, England’s unpleasantly aggressive South African-born captain, was rightly castigated for saying, before the start of a Test series that would define the era, “You must remember that the West Indians, these guys, if they get on top are magnificent cricketers. But if they’re down, they grovel, and I intend, with the help of [Brian Close] and a few others, to make them grovel.”

Thus provoked by an undeserving beneficiary of a deeply racist society drawing too close a connection with slavery, Clive Lloyd’s West Indians whipped their former masters 3-0. The real sadness of their current state is that now they are struggling under the weight of their own accumulated failures.

The assumption that the good times would keep on rolling in the Caribbean, and other teams’ efforts to catch up, notably Australia’s, cost West Indies their place at the top of the pile. This we have known for ages. But the past seven days have brought push to shove with rude and indecent haste.

Last Saturday, in front of a roaring, rollicking HSC crowd of 21,000 in a ground built for 10,000 — around 4,000 of the extra 11,000 were accommodated on the rugby field next door, which was equipped with a big screen — they were beaten by Zimbabwe. These things happen, especially against a confident, skilled, talented, ably captained, cleverly coached, passionately supported home side.

But, at Takashinga on Monday, the Netherlands ran West Indies off their feet; first piling up 374/9, their record ODI total, to tie the match and then dominating the super over thanks to Logan van Beek’s heroics with bat and ball.

And then came the bonnie Scots, well drilled and flinty, and not at all awed. Winning the toss on another damp Harare morning helped, but it still needed proper bowling to reduce the Windies to 81/6 inside 21 overs. Brandon McMullen knocked over the top order of Johnson Charles, Shamarh Brooks and Brandon King in the space of 14 of his deliveries and at the bargain price of seven runs. Jason Holder and Romario Shepherd staved off utter ignominy with a stand of 77, but a target of 182 was never going to be enough to hold Richie Berrington’s side. They knew it, and wended their way to victory with seven wickets standing and 6.5 overs to spare.

Christopher McBride slapped the first ball of the reply, a full toss from Holder, straight into midwicket’s hands. But Matthew Cross and McMullen snuffed out any hope of a fightback with a partnership of 125. Cross took his team home with an unbeaten 74.

Unlike on Monday, when, led by Holder, the West Indians kept up a lively level of chatter in the field until deep into the Dutch innings, a forlorn and desolate silence prevailed as the Scots chased the runs. The last ball of the 12th over captured the mood — Akeal Hosein bowled to McMullen, who swept to midwicket, where Kyle Mayers shelled the catch. For good measure, the throw back to the middle sailed high and wide of everything and a bonus run accrued.

“No difficult questions, please,” Holder implored as he arrived for a press conference. “There are no easy questions,” he was promptly told. For instance, had he known a more dismal moment in his more than 10 years and 251 matches as a West Indies international?

“This is probably one of the lowest points I’ve had with the team, but there’s still a lot of positives,” Holder said. “I was really happy and excited for Nicholas [Pooran, the tournament’s second-highest runscorer] and the way he has played throughout this competition.

“It’s good to see some of the younger guys get an opportunity on a big stage, and try to grasp it. I don’t think all is lost. There’s a lot of young guys in the group who can definitely develop and turn things around for West Indies cricket. We’ve got a young crop of guys. We’ve just got to put some support around them.”

Pooran turns 28 in October. Shai Hope and Roston Chase, the Windies’ next most successful batters in the qualifiers, are 29 and 31. Their leading wicket-takers are Alzarri Joseph, Mayers and Hosein, who are 26, 31 in September and 30. That’s not a lot of youth. But, if you’re Holder, struggling for little reward as your 32nd birthday looms in November, maybe almost everybody else seems younger and fresher.

“It’s disappointing, especially after last year’s effort in the T20 World Cup where we didn’t qualify [for the second round]. I’ve had the luxury of playing in two 50-over World Cups and a couple of T20 World Cups. They’re special occasions. This one will definitely hurt, as the one last year did. But there’s no point moping and keeping our heads down. We’ve got to find a way to turn our cricket around and head in the direction we need to head in consistently. There’ve been too many fluctuations between good and bad performances.”

There was no such gloom in the eyes of Doug Watson, Scotland’s coach and a South African far more pleasant than Greig: “That’s a proper blueprint for how we want to play. Bowl a team out — we dropped one catch unfortunately — and then someone in the top four batted through the innings. That’s what we’re looking to do in all our games.

“It shows that we can compete at this level. We realise we have to play at our best to compete. It’s tough cricket. Games like this are a real highlight for us and we look forward to them. We see it as a privilege to play in them.”

No-one intercepted Watson as he left the room. Holder was asked to stop and pose for selfies. It’s not much, but at least the Windies will have that when they are sent homeward to think again.

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Windies’ warning looms over South Africa’ success

“Before the game I got an opportunity to speak to Brian Lara. I had to pinch myself.” – Temba Bavuma

Telford Vice / Centurion

BRIAN Lara was there. So was Jimmy Adams. Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, too. Kagiso Rabada, Marco Jansen, Gerald Coetzee, Tony de Zorzi, Tagenarine Chanderpaul, Alzarri Joseph and Joshua da Silva were not yet born.

It was February 1995, and it was the last time West Indies won a Test series on the road against serious opposition. As in teams who were not Bangladesh, who have earned respect in that time, or Zimbabwe, who have squandered the little they had.

Before February 1995 the Windies had gone 16 other away rubbers — half of them drawn — without being beaten, or to February 1980. Fifteen years without failure have been followed by 28 years of mostly defeat: they have lost 33 and drawn only three away series. Again, that’s not against Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, who they have beaten in eight rubbers. They have also lost a series in Bangladesh.

Lara was in the Centurion dressing room on Thursday to see South Africa complete victory by 87 runs inside three days in the first Test. So was Adams. They are now West Indies’ performance mentor and director of cricket. What might they have thought of their successors’ display? Maybe that they knew the feeling. For all their individual heroics Lara and Adams were part of more defeats than victories. West Indies won 32 and lost 62 of the Tests Lara played. Adams celebrated 21 wins and endured 23 defeats.

Despite that the West Indians remain popular wherever they play. What they lack in substance they make up, to some extent, with style. They express their thoughts on the game more articulately than most, and they are rarely churlish. For instance, and in contrast to what has become a tiresome trend, Kemar Roach chose not to refer Kumar Dharmasena’s decision when he was trapped bang in front by Rabada to end the match. “I pretty much knew it was out, I thought let’s get out of here,” Roach said.

He was less matter-of-fact about reaching 260 Test wickets, which saw him usurp Joel Garner and take over fifth place on the Windies’ all-time list. “When I first came into the West Indies team he was the manager, and I spent a lot of time in his room communicating with him and learning some tricks of the trade,” Roach said. “He took me under his wing and he checks in with me once in a while. We had a good friendship, so to pass him is a great honour … sorry Mr Garner.”

What’s not to like about nice guys who seem content to serve as reliable victory fodder for home sides in various countries? Little wonder South Africa’s win was only moments old when a cry went up from sparsely populated stands: “We want more!”

But that doesn’t nearly capture the Windies’ appeal. They became standard bearers for innovation, verve and downright sexiness in a game mired in conformity, orthodoxy and the staleness of something your parents indulged in. Their fast bowlers arrived at the crease not sideways as the MCC decreed, but chest on. And prolonged their careers as a result. Their batters, particularly Viv Richards, understood the value of sheer force of personality.

They came to England in 1976 as rebels in search of a cause beyond playing what was demeaned as “calypso cricket”. Tony Greig’s racist verbal clumsiness, spat out in his still white South African accent, gave them that cause and set them on the path to become shining examples of black defiance and excellence.

Almost simultaneously, apartheid’s armed goons unleashed their full force on Soweto’s youth in deadly fashion. This confluence of causes inspired generations of oppressed black South Africans — who were prohibited by law from playing with whites and thus representing their own country — to support West Indies.

Before this match, Temba Bavuma spoke of doing exactly that growing up. How did he separate the badge of his boyhood from the team whose downfall he had been charged with plotting as South Africa’s captain? “Off the field that sentiment is quite big in me, but once we get on the field — like with all competitive sportsmen — it’s us versus them; we want to do what we can to win the game,” Bavuma said. “It’s a team I hold in high respect and high regard. Before the game I got an opportunity to speak to Brian Lara. I had to pinch myself. He came to me and said, ‘Big up, all respect to you for the position that you have.’ He wished me well.”

Bavuma was born in May 1990, Rabada in May 1995. Thus the defeat of apartheid at the ballot box in April 1994 could be construed as a dividing line between them. But the wonder in which the Windies were held easily leapt that five-year gap.

“I have huge admiration for the West Indies’ cricket culture,” Rabada said. “As a bowler, how can you ignore that famous attack and the likes of Viv Richards and Brian Lara, Gordon Greenidge … the list goes on and on. They dominated world cricket at a stage. The whole world knows about West Indies cricket. They’re a phenomenal side and they have a phenomenal cricketing culture. I’m friends with many of them. I admired the players who have come before and the current players. They would have played a role in my cricketing upbringing.”

The respect crosses the dressing room divide. Here, for instance, is Jermaine Blackwood on Lara: “He’s legend. It’s great for us, as players, to be around him. We grew up watching Brian play, and to have him in our dressing room is big plus for us.”

Or is what’s mutual the nostalgia, and the cautionary tale it tells? Lara is among the most spectacularly gifted players yet to grace a cricket ground, and Adams among the most gritty. But the team they played for ran on the fumes of the past, and their current incarnation is further removed still from the side that ruled world cricket under Clive Lloyd and Richards.

Maybe the affinity between the teams owes something to South Africa looking back in unspoken awe at what Graeme Smith’s side accomplished in August 2012 when they captured the Test mace. And in something like fear at what they might become if they continue to follow the West Indian trajectory. But, for more than two days, the South Africans could put those concerns aside.

They resumed on Thursday with a lead of 179, but with only six wickets standing on a pitch that smiled on seam bowling throughout. Aiden Markram’s 47 was their only score of consequence and Roach took 5/47 as they were dismissed an over before lunch, setting West Indies a target of 247.

The visitors had the time to get there but not the batting, especially with a focused Rabada mowing through the order with sleek precision to take 6/50. Blackwood’s 79 shimmered with the kind of attitude that was required, but there was little else where that came from and the match was decided an hour after tea.

West Indies, then, will not be able to undo on this tour what the past 28 years have done to their reputation as a Test team. The second match of the series, at the Wanderers, starts on Wednesday. Then it’s onto the white-ball stuff. Lara and Adams will be there. And with them the past and present, and the future of those not yet born.

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Zondo’s story has many chapters

“I’m always nervous, whether I’m playing a club game or my son is throwing balls at me.” – Khaya Zondo

Telford Vice / London

HYDE Park looked like an African savannah on Thursday. Not that lions or lionesses, or indeed cricketers or footballers of any kind, roamed the vast undulations of London’s usually green and pleasant heart. It was too hot for that. Aside from the baroque splendour of its trees, the parched park was a patchwork swathe of beige.

The UK’s most intense summer since 1976 will do that to even the most lush spaces. Like Lord’s, less than three kilometres to the north, where the Test series between England and South Africa starts on Wednesday. What has the heat done to pitches at cricket’s grandest ground?

Not the obvious and helped the spinners, it seems. They have claimed only 18 of the 186 wickets to fall there in first-class matches this season. That includes the Test against New Zealand in the first week of June, when Lancashire leg spinner Matt Parkinson had to come haring down the highway to make his debut as a concussion substitute for Jack Leach.

Parkinson had Tim Southee caught at slip in New Zealand’s second innings — the only wicket of the 35 that fell in the match that belonged to a slow bowler. No spin was bowled in either team’s first innings, and only 18.3 overs in the 170.2 overs bowled in the second innings. In the most recent first-class match at Lord’s, between Middlesex and Sussex three weeks ago, spin accounted for three of the 29 wickets and 54 of the 365.1 overs. If mad dogs and Englishmen really do go out in 2022’s midday sun, not many of them are spinners.

According to Southern Water, this region of England had less than two-thirds of its average rainfall for the first six months of 2022 and only four millimetres in July — when the long-term average is 50.3 millimetres. Temperatures have hovered around 30 degrees Celsius for weeks, and the rain that has been forecast for next week will come — if it comes — as a relief to everyone except cricket aficionados who have turned their attention to Lord’s.

Doubtless Khaya Zondo isn’t thinking about any of the above. For one thing, he’s not in London. For another, he can’t do anything about the weather. For still another, he is focused on staying in the selection frame for the first Test. He did that on Tuesday and Wednesday by batting for more than three hours for his 86 in a tour match against England Lions in Canterbury. It was the South Africans’ biggest innings in terms of runs and deliveries. Importantly, Zondo showed a level of patience that earned 130 dot balls from the 166 he faced. He was undone on the second morning without adding to his overnight score, when he left an inswinger from Sam Cook and had his off stump rattled.

“I’ve accepted my limitations,” Zondo said in an audio file released by CSA after the close on Tuesday. “I’ve also accepted where I am good and I’ve just kept working, trying to get better with each ball I face, just keep adding building blocks on top of each other.”

The first of those blocks was laid during practice — “I went into the nets and worked on my balance, worked on playing the ball late” — to help him adjust to the conditions: “It’s definitely different to South Africa. The ball nips a lot more, and you never really feel like you’re in; you’ve got to make sure you’re always awake. As soon as you think you’re comfortable, that’s when the ball does something you don’t expect it to do and that’s when it catches you off guard.”

After 213 first-class innings, he was not immune to anxiety: “I’m always nervous, whether I’m playing a club game or whether my son is throwing balls at me. So I’m always nervous when I pick up a bat. That’s good nerves.”

Zondo scored two half-centuries and a century in nine innings for Darwen in the 2015 editions of the Northern Premier League and the Lancashire Cricket Board Cup. He last played in England on South Africa A’s tour in May and June 2017, when he made 66 runs in four 50-over innings and a single in each trip to the crease in a four-day match. His effort this week is his best anywhere since he reached a career-high 203 not out in a domestic first-class match in October 2021. In eight subsequent innings in the format he has twice passed 50.

Zondo’s latest effort has complicated South Africa’s selection deliberations. He batted at No. 7 with Ryan Rickleton, Rassie van der Dussen and Aiden Markram above him. All could be competing for one place in the Test XI. Markram made 10 and Van der Dussen 75 in the first innings, and they were 20 and eight not out at stumps on Thursday. Rickleton suffered a first-baller on Tuesday.

The naked numbers say Zondo has done the most among them to crack the nod, but rarely are these matters so simple. Markram played himself back into confidence and form at the IPL, and just more than three weeks ago Van der Dussen, a reassuring presence in South Africa’s line-up, scored a yeoman 134 in extreme heat in the first ODI in Chester-le-Street. Rickleton reeled off two centuries, a 95 and three half-centuries in eight first-class innings for Northamptonshire in June and July.

You might have heard Zondo’s name mentioned for reasons other than his achievements on a cricket ground. In October 2015 he was, at then captain AB de Villiers’ insistence — and with the acquiescence of Hussein Manack, the selector on tour — left out for the deciding match of an ODI series at the Wankhede. CSA investigated and decided his omission was wrong, and Zondo’s testimony to the Social Justice and Nation Building project in August last year revealed how deeply affected he had been by his treatment.

“I switched off mentally for the rest of the day and I detached myself from the team because it was clear I was not wanted,” Zondo said. “Switching off helped me cope with everything that was happening. The hardest part was watching players who were selected ahead of me having the opportunity to shine for South Africa on a world stage, in India, and having a chance to play and potentially impress and get future IPL opportunities.”

Dean Elgar’s flight to India for the subsequent Test series was brought forward to enable him, rather than Zondo, to feature in the white-ball decider. It is not often remembered that South Africa piled up 438/4 in that match, with Quinton de Kock, Faf du Plessis and De Villiers all scoring centuries, and also largely unhighlighted that the visitors won by 214 runs. Neither is it recalled that Elgar took guard at No. 7 with four balls left in the innings, faced only two of them and finished five not out. Was Zondo, albeit then uncapped, honestly not trusted to do something similar, or better?

If you’ve heard Zondo’s name for still another reason, it might be because his father, Raymond Zondo, was appointed South Africa’s chief justice in March. In June 2017 Zondo senior was named as the presiding high court judge in an inquiry into allegations of state capture and corruption during Jacob Zuma’s tenure as president from May 2009 to February 2018. In a damning and shocking report that runs to more than 5,000 pages, Zondo found that “the [ruling party] ANC under Zuma permitted, supported and enabled corruption”.

Zondo junior and the rest of South Africa’s squad have found in England circumstances that will feel oddly familiar to them. They are no strangers to the water restrictions that are being implemented here, and the planned power outages that loom because of the surge in energy prices — prompted by Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine — are common on the sharp tip of Africa.

Then there are the dots connected by history. When the English refer to 1976 as their last properly hot summer, they’re not only talking about the weather. In the build-up to a Test series that year, Tony Greig said of his team’s imminent opponents: “You must remember that the West Indians, these guys, if they get on top are magnificent cricketers. But if they’re down, they grovel, and I intend to make them grovel.”

Greig’s words, spoken in the thick, rough accent of the Eastern Cape of his birth, where he had leaned on his privilege and the luck of having a Scottish father to make the leap to England, did not land well. A white South African who had failed to denounce apartheid or racism telling black people he wanted to make them grovel?

Michael Holding and Andy Roberts answered the question on behalf of millions worldwide by taking 28 wickets each in the series, and Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge by scoring three centuries each. And they were only the brightest stars in West Indies’ 3-0 triumph.

Also in 1976, indeed during that series, South Africa’s winter was turned white hot by government’s insistence that Afrikaans — the language of the country’s oppressors — be used in black schools. The reaction was what became known as the Soweto Uprising, which killed between 176 and 700 mostly young people and lit the touchpaper for what became, in 1994, the defeat at the ballot box of apartheid.

Raymond Zondo was 16 when Soweto’s flames were lit, and almost 34 when Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first rightfully elected president. Khaya Zondo is 32 and still fighting for fairness. Will he get it on Wednesday? And, if he does, will it rain? In Africa, that would be a blessing. But not at Lord’s.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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