"But I Digress ..." (30 page)

Bring me the head of Stuart Dickinson

BUSINESS DAY, 19 JUNE 2003

T
HIS WEEK, I HAVE
done two things that are very good for the sporting soul. This time of year is so fraught with anxiety and the acid twist of nervous anticipation that we must take advantage of this slight lull to refresh ourselves – to boost our systems and replenish our strength before the thunder of the Tri-Nations and the slow, relentless simmer of the cricket tour to England.

The first thing I did was watch last weekend's match between England and New Zealand. Obviously this did not settle any nerves as regards the looming spectre of playing both the All Blacks and the All Whites this season. The match was played with an intensity and controlled ferocity that made me gloomy just watching it. But while the game itself offered no encouragement to the South African fan, it was sheer balm to hear foreign commentators finally noticing the sustained, egocentric villainy of that officious Antipodean git, Stuart Dickinson.

Dickinson, a man whose surname is precisely five letters too long, has single-handedly ruined more afternoons of South African rugby than any man I can think of, including Sean Fitzpatrick, Stephen Larkham, Hugh Bladen and the guy who accidentally spilt his beer over the decoder down at the Chalk 'n Cue. If a mad rugbywatching scientist had to create an evil monster, using only the words “self-important twerp” as his brief, he would come up with something resembling Stuart Dickinson.

Now I am not saying that Dickinson is biased and dishonest, mind – I am merely saying that from time to time Dickinson's mutton-headed incompetence is to the naked eye almost indistinguishable from how I would imagine bias and dishonesty to look. I am continually staggered that the world of rugby does not rise together, bearing flaming torches, and drag him from the public eye to a hideous death. The reason, I can only assume, is that so far Dickinson has only seen fit to torment South Africa, so no one out there is much fussed.

But then on Saturday he made the mistake of giving England four penalties in four minutes, and suddenly Murray Mexted was roused to action. “He should have his whistle taken away!” raged Murray. The fact that Dickinson awarded the next fourteen penalties to New Zealand did little to console him. As the match wore on and the Dickster forgot who he wanted to win, he simply contented himself with handing out a penalty every two minutes and six seconds. The man is a disgrace, and it was strangely soothing to hear, for once, commentators from another country notice it too. As Murray and Grant Nesbitt anguished about the grinning, ginger-haired Jack O'Lantern apparition of Stuart Dickinson, I could only sit back and smirk. “Welcome to our world, boys,” I smirked.

But even more consoling to my ravaged sporting heart was the SAB Yesterday's Heroes function at the World of Beer in Johannesburg. Yesterday's Heroes is an annual event at which SAB gathers together some of the most beloved South African sports stars of yesteryear in order to remember them, honour them and get them drunk on free booze. I am alas not myself a sports star of yesteryear, but I managed to wriggle my way through the door. “You must be a journalist,” said the doorman, running a disapproving eye over my unsporty and distinctly unheroic build.

I blushed, but it was worth it. I sat in the World of Beer, bobbing in a sea of lager, and listened to the stars tell stories. Spook Hanley expressed unrecordable opinions about the modern game; Lee Barnard told unrepeatable locker-room anecdotes about certain sportmen's, er, hidden dimensions. All around, the days were called up when sport, even professional sport, was fun to play, when characters could emerge, when camaraderie was the glue that bound teams together. The very air was golden with greatness recalled in tranquillity.

These men, I reflected from the bottom of my umpteenth pitcher of draught, are not Yesterday's Heroes at all. They remain heroes – not merely frozen in our memories like flies in amber, but as a living part of all that we still cling to and cherish as worthwhile in sport. We can only hope that our children will grow up with memories as cherishable.

Andre Agassi – the womble of Wimbledon

BUSINESS DAY, 3 JULY 2003

I
HAVE NOT HAD
a happy Wimbledon so far. Not only, at the time of writing, are both the Williams sisters still in contention; not only did I lose my annual bet with Porky Withers when Wayne Ferreira blamed influenza for his early defeat, rather than his more usual torn muscle or twisted ankle; not only have I not yet seen a single streaker; on top of all this, earlier this week I missed out on giving Maria Sharapova the once-over to see what all the fuss is about.

It is her name, you see. Ever since an unhappy bout in my early teens wrestling with the first names, nicknames and patronymics of the cast of indistinguishable characters in an overly muffled Dostoyevsky novel, Russian names have been like kryptonite to me. I can scarcely tell an –ova from an –eva, an Anastasia from a Svetlana. When those names come up on the screen my eyes blur and start revolving in circles. How then to tell a Sharapova from a Hentushova, a Legova from a Hangova? How to tell the Queen of Scream from the Runt of Grunt from the Ally McBeal of Squeal?

I am not ordinarily much impressed by the ladies of modern lawn tennis. At one extreme are gum-chewing, jawbone-clicking loudmouths like the Williams clan; at the other are the prettily perspiring moulded plastic dolls with their eyes on the flashbulbs. In between is a legion of interchangeable chunky-legged bit players huffing and puffing and vanishing against the backdrop of billboards and bored spectators wearing sunblock. Who can tell them apart? Still, by all accounts this new Ms Sharapova could be the next big thing on court as well as before the cameras.

Personally, I rather doubt it. People are not ordinarily blessed with a double-dose of extraordinary genes, and much of the media reporting about Sharapova – a Kournikova that can play! – sounds a lot like desperately wishful thinking. Not that I would know. Having consulted the schedule and thinking I had made time to watch Sharapova play this week, instead I found myself wading through a syllabic firestorm of Svonarevas and Dementievas and even, embarrassingly, a Sugiyama. Ah well, I will just have to catch her when she teams up with Kournikova and a rejuvenated Gabriela Sabatini in
Charlie's Angels 3 – Court in the Act
.

Even more disappointing was watching Andre Agassi being dispatched at the hands of Mark Phillipoussis. In a sport desperately seeking characters, Agassi is the closest thing to it, which is depressing when you consider that he has all the personality of a tennis ball that has been left out in the rain. For the past 15 years the best thing you could say about Agassi's charisma is that he was not Pete Sampras. All his little quirks and foibles – that ghastly ponytail, those even more ghastly denim shorts, the still more ghastly body-hair and chest-wax saga – were not much more than careful attempts to put matter in a tennis-playing vacuum. Even his principal defining characteristic – a shuffling, bobbing gait that makes him resemble a chimpanzee trained to impersonate a middle-weight Eastern European powerlifter moonlighting as a bouncer at a West Rand nightclub, or perhaps just a womble – may be interesting at first but wears thin after the first set.

But the longer Andre Agassi's career has worn on, the more compelling he has become. He may not be much of a character, but he has plenty of it. Returning from the lower 140s in the world, making a happy second marriage with Steffi Graf, fighting on past the age when his contemporaries have moved on to lives outside of tennis … the Agassi story becomes increasingly interesting. The very fact that he is still grimly playing rather than finding some other means of fulfilment may well testify to the swirling void of his inner life, but it does not really matter any more. Agassi has become a hero to the no-longer-young everywhere. With his guile and his fiery talent and fiercely competitive heart, he tells us that it is still not too late. He brings some romance to the game. I hope he does not go just yet. Tennis still needs him.

A moment of rugby relief

BUSINESS DAY, 17 JULY 2003

T
HE AEROPLANE TO
Cape Town last Saturday morning was a sea of green, but it was a rolling sea, a gently heaving and swelling sea, not the tempest-tossed maelstrom of foam and thunder, breakers and troughs I had been fearing. The passengers were well behaved and for the most part sober, and as much as that pleased me, it also had me worried.

I suppose the subdued mood had something to do with the fact that the cabin crew took one look at the rows of frowning hearties in Springbok jerseys and supporters' caps and announced that there would be no alcoholic refreshments served that morning. It probably also had something to do with the fact that it was at an hour of the day when last night's pre-pre-match celebrations were still causing eyelids to droop and bottom lips to quiver. But mostly it was because although this was a planeload of men and women flying across the country to support their national team, it was also a planeload of men and women who were not expecting to have much to cheer about on the flight home.

There was one desultory “Bokke!” as the breakfast trays were passed around, and one misguided fellow in row 7 tried to start a round of “Shosholoza” as we circled Cape Town, but he had misread the mood. I perched in my seat, entertaining myself with the richly creative writing of the Saturday papers, but all the while worrying that the Newlands crowd would be resigned to defeat even before the game began.

Happily, it was not worry well spent. Newlands when I arrived was a cauldron of bubbling willpower. Before the teams ran out you could feel the massed hopes of the crowd forming a kind of electric force field in the air. As we watched the waves of the early Springbok assault breaking upon the Australians, the sound and fury in the stadium felt like a wall of compressed air; when Brent Russell – may his name be venerated and his progeny ever blessed – crossed for the first try the noise became so loud, the air pressure so intense, that it felt like silence, as though we had all been submerged under water.

I was sitting with the good people of the Australian Trade Commission, a one-man oasis amid a small field of optimistic marigold-yellow, and as we settled into our seats I noticed one of the Australians looking around the banked bowl of shouting green. He breathed out slowly. “Crikey,” he said.

As I sat – and frequently stood, and almost as frequently leapt up and down punching the air – watching the match, it occurred to me that the Springboks are just hooking us deeper and deeper. Forget the fabled fickleness of the French – it is South Africa that is the world's most unpredictable team. Just as we can never, ever be assured that they will put in a decent performance come the weekend, we can never, ever be confident they will not.

As my good friend Jacqui O once complained, being a Springbok supporter is a little like being an abused wife: they can be awful, terrible, they can make us sob ourselves to sleep and wonder why we stick with them. And then afterwards they come to us all ashamed and apologetic and promise that it will never happen again. And we believe them, and give them another chance, and then it happens all over again, and we resolve that this time – this time! – it will be the last chance ever. And then what do they do? They are the perfect gentlemen, and our hearts melt and we are won over once again.

No other rugby fans in the world have this sense of utter uncertainty when their team takes the pitch. I will once more be at the game at Loftus on Saturday. The All Blacks will be a much tougher proposition than Australia, but then again the opposition does not really matter. When the Springboks take the pitch, it is never the opposition we have to worry about.

Graeme, Lord Smith

BUSINESS DAY, 7 AUGUST 2003

W
HAT WERE YOU
doing when you were 22? Were you leading South Africa into sporting battle against England? Were you setting new South African batting records? I bet you weren't. Nor was I, come to think of it. When I was 22, I had nothing on my mind of more weight than wondering whose lecture notes I could photostat before the exam, and when I would finally break a worrying 10-month drought of celibacy.

To be fair, these are not worries that will be causing Graeme Smith's broad shoulders to stoop any time soon. For one thing, he can borrow the lecture notes that I photocopied when I was 22 – although I would suggest that if he continues in his current vein he should receive all the honorary degrees and doctorates he can carry in his kitbag. More importantly, it would be a national disgrace if Graeme Smith experiences even a single day's sexual drought for the remainder of his career. There have to be some perks for shouldering the burden of a nation's hopes and expectations at such a cruelly young age, and if you cannot come right on a regular basis when you are young, successful and the national cricket captain, then some searching questions need to be asked about South African womanhood.

I still cannot fully comprehend the enormity of Graeme Smith's first two tests against England. When he passed 50 in the first innings at Edgbaston I sat back and sighed with relief. Terrific, I thought. In the first test he has a reasonable score – no one can say he has failed – so for the time being at least he should be safe from the jackals and buzzards of public opinion, not to mention the burrowing dust mites of self-doubt. Had Smith experienced a slow start to the series, the English media would have taken off after him with a hammer, a wooden cross and a bucket of nails, and the South African media would have been trailing behind them carrying a sponge soaked in vinegar. Before you could turn around, every knucklehead with access to e-mail would have been sending misspelt messages to
Extra Cover
, demanding that Lance Klusener be made captain.

But Graeme Smith did more than avoid a slow start to the series – against a full-strength England attack, away from home, he scored more runs than any South African batsman has ever scored in a test innings, and more than any South African batsman has ever scored in a single test. In his next test, at Lord's, he not only scored another double century, not only passed Bradman's mark to the highest ever score at Lord's by an overseas player, but became one of the 10 fastest batsmen in the history of test cricket – and the fastest South African – to score 1000 runs. Given the loyalty and long memories of South African sports administrators and fans, that should secure his status in the team until, oh, at least midway through September.

But of course, in the usual fashion, when we South Africans are presented with a miracle, with a golden wonder-work, we start rapping it with our knuckles to find the weak spot, the feet of clay. I broached the subject of Graeme Smith with a friend after the first test. “Yes,” he said, “but it was a very flat pitch.” As though no one else in either team played on that same flat pitch without scoring a double century. As though no other South African test batsman in the history of South African cricket ever played upon a flat pitch without scoring 277. As though Michael Vaughan did not describe his century in the same match as the best of his career, citing both the South African bowling and the awkwardness of that very pitch.

If Graeme Smith were Australian, you would not be able to sleep at night for the stridency of the Antipodean trumpeting. They would know – and would be quick to let us know – that they had in their possession the brightest, most extraordinary new star in the cricketing firmament. Certainly, they have made more fuss over far less than what we have in Smith. Nor are they half so quick as we are to tear down what they have built up. We in South Africa are frequently wary of the greatness among us – we are more comfortable with mediocrity. Graeme Smith is not mediocre. He is something special.

It seems to me that this series, more than any I can remember, has all the elements of great and timeless drama. It is almost Shakespearean in its themes. Consider, a moment: In the build-up to the first clash, Nasser Hussain, the weathered warrior-king of an empire he has rebuilt by strength of will from the rubble and ruins he had inherited, lays down a personal challenge to Graeme Smith, the young king of a fractured invader tribe. In his public statements he turns the clash of nations into a clash of individuals – he invests the battle with the personal fortunes of the leaders.

It is a moment when destinies come into conflict. It is Smith's destiny to rise like a young god, sweeping all before him, storming the very citadel. Hussain, on the other hand, has pre-empted his own destiny – throwing down the gauntlet, he has thrown down the kingship. Whatever future the fates had in store for him, he has short-circuited the course of his career with an act of hubris that may yet foreshadow his fall. First the leadership, now his very place in the empire is imperilled – all is smoke and fire, and when the confusion settles it is Smith who bestrides the battleground like a laughing young colossus. There are great themes here – individual will versus destiny; embattled age versus the surging force of youth; the mantle of greatness and how it lies on those shoulders upon which it is thrust.

As Nasser begins to fade, fighting on and winning battles here and there but caught up in history's inexorable drift to stage-left, where he can only brood and look on as the empire he has built starts to crack and crumble beneath the hammer blows of the invaders, the destinies of Smith and Vaughan now range against each other. No matter what happens in the last three matches of the series, or the rest of his career, Smith has announced himself as one who is chosen by the sporting gods to perform great deeds and bear great burdens. “Those whom the gods would destroy,” an English fan misquoted to me recently, “they first make great.” Perhaps. We shall see.