A prodigal return

Even by World Cup standards, this was pretty dramatic stuff. The tournament8217;s rollercoaster opening match saw the West Indies snatching...

Even by World Cup standards, this was pretty dramatic stuff. The tournament8217;s rollercoaster opening match saw the West Indies snatching victory out of defeat 8212; or was it South Africa doing the opposite?

Lara appeared to have won the match for his team, only for Klusener to swing the pendulum, by swinging his bat, back in the hosts8217; favour. Before the distinct, familiar sounds of choking could be heard from the men in green. Beyond the result 8212; if, indeed, you believe in a life beyond the results 8212; is the irony of the situation.

Here was a team comprising mainly blacks playing and beating a team comprising mainly whites representing a country comprising mainly blacks. Confused? Not half as confused, presumably, as the average black man in South Africa for whom the game was long out of reach and who, having switched on the television on Sunday, would have seen President Mbeki and his predecessor Nelson Mandela supporting the Proteas.

The truth is, cricket is not the most popular sport in South Africa; football is, far and way, the dominant sport among the black majority. And even among the whites, cricket has to vie for attention with rugby.

For the blacks, both games are symbols of the apartheid era; especially rugby, which was forbidden to blacks. Post-apartheid, the game8217;s credibility among blacks wasn8217;t done any good by the Cronjegate episode. The iconic national team captain was clearly seen to have influenced and coopted an impressionable young black, Herschelle Gibbs, into his nefarious activities. Did he try it, for example, with the privileged, moneyed, socially secure Pollock, say, or Donald?

That8217;s the problem cricket faces in South Africa. To widen its appeal, to draw the best out of the grassroots, it has to have more black representation.

Thankfully, the quota system 8212; two blacks/coloureds in every team 8212; has been abolished; sporting quotas have rarely done any good. And in any case the same two who made the team under the quota, Gibbs and Ntini, make the team today on merit alone.