Luke Alfred
Happy 25th, South Africa
It's a quarter-century since their return to big cricket this month, and for all the magic they've produced, they've also displayed an ability to confound
Luke Alfred
14-Nov-2016
For 21 years South African cricket fans lived in a twilight world of implausible allegiances. They supported Manchester United or Spurs, Wales when they played rugby. Some went the other way, giving the traditional New Year's fixture between Western Province and Transvaal at Newlands a cachet it probably didn't deserve.
Some of us - count me in this group - invented traditions and affiliations on the flimsiest evidence. Embarrassing as it now sounds, I supported Mike Gatting's England as they romped through Australia in 1986-87, because I was born in Hendon, a suburb in north-west London.
A year later, huddling around a small black-and-white Philips television set, I watched Will Carling's England defeat Australia 28-19 at Twickenham. A South African cricketing alternative wasn't yet in sight, and so I cheered when Simon Halliday scored England's victory-clenching try. I had to support someone. What else was there to do?
Full postThe Australian aura we never thought would shatter
In the early 2000s, South African fans couldn't imagine a world where Australia didn't pummel their side. But they live in it today
Luke Alfred
26-Oct-2016
In the Christmas break of 2001, my family and I holidayed in the Cederberg, a remote wilderness area about two and a bit hours' drive north of Cape Town. We rented a cottage at the foot of a gravel pass and spent long, lazy days with our three young sons splashing about in the nearby rock pools at the foot of our veranda.
The cottage had no television, radio reception was erratic and the nearest newspaper - invariably a day or two old - could only be found if you were prepared to slog 60 or 70 dusty kilometres back down the valley. At the time, the South Africans, captained by Shaun Pollock, were struggling their way across Australia. It was a nuisance - but, let's be honest, oddly convenient - not to have to follow them too closely.
One day in early January we decided to escape the inland heat. We bundled the children into their car seats and headed for the soft, misty seascapes of the Namaqualand coast. Out of the mountains, radio reception improved. We tuned in just in time to hear about Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer putting the brutal finishing touches to yet another Aussie victory.
Full postThe charming antiquity of Willowmoore Park
The Benoni ground has hosted the likes of Denis Compton, footballers, and other athletes over the years. Might it soon have a bigger role to play in South African cricket?
Luke Alfred
04-Oct-2016
Jacques Rudolph was probably being excessively colourful when he once referred to Benoni's Willowmoore Park as "varkpan". Translated from the Afrikaans, varkpan literally means "pig tray" in English. A generation of young white South African men conscripted during the 1980s knows them well, because varkpans were the compartmentalised stainless steel trays into which your daily meals were slopped. They are symbols of an age, much like lockers and infantry browns. To the male South African mind they say much about the exercise of arbitrary power, meaninglessness and fear. They are anything but neutral.
Call me perverse, but contrary to Rudolph's deep love of the place, I've always liked Willowmoore Park. I like the fact that that if you screw your neck around from the far corner of the ground and look east, you can see Benoni's famous mine dump, its yellow sands quietly blowing away in the spring winds.
I like the fact that the western grandstand probably dates back from the 1930s, and if you look into the underside of the roof you can see a crazy quilt of supporting girders, many of which look strangely superfluous, and so give an impression of post-Edwardian vanity. It's like looking into another way of seeing the world - or another mind - and it's pricelessly and utterly charming.
Full postSouth Africa need to get their bite back
Their mongrel seems to have gone AWOL, tail between its legs
Luke Alfred
18-Aug-2016
It all got a bit lippy during England's final Test against Pakistan at The Oval a few days ago. Alex Hales pulled a much-shown face that wouldn't have been out of place in the pre-school sandpit, and predictably perhaps, given their enforcer-like swagger, Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson weighed in with their two ha'pennies worth soon enough.
Like those of many fast bowlers, Broad's and Anderson's emotions run fairly close to the surface. No one smells the slow bleed of self-belief like the pair, and this, in part, is what makes them so dangerous as second- and third-spell stalkers. To get self-righteous about the occasional indiscretion seems hypocritical, because it forgets that radioactivity is hot-wired into their DNA. They can resonate in no other way - and wouldn't be the cricketers they are without it.
When he was coach of South Africa, Mickey Arthur used to talk with an amiable yet slightly puzzled air about Dale Steyn's "red mist". It was a strange and quixotic beast, liable to descend without warning and disappear over the horizon just as quickly. One of the notable features of South Africa's slide down the Test rankings in recent months has not only been the absence of the visibly tiring Steyn but the almost complete lack of mongrel in their approach to the game. Where is the snarl? The calculated nastiness? The occasional fumes of anger?
Full postDo it like Dean and Kuhn
In these times of discontent in South Africa, batsmen like Dean Elgar and Heino Kuhn show that quotas don't necessarily have to cause heartburn
Luke Alfred
29-Jul-2016
Winter on the highveld is traditionally cold and dry, but recent days have seen widespread unseasonal rain across it and almost everywhere else in the country. There have been heavy falls of snow on the mountains, and photographs in the newspapers and websites have shown railway stations under metres of water, cars in parking lots floating casually downstream like so many bath-time ducks.
In this type of weather, cricket is not exactly front of mind, although it will slide into the frame as the New Zealanders drift south from two Tests against Zimbabwe shortly to prepare for their twin Tests against South Africa next month.
It's already a nicely poised series. New Zealand are an open-minded, streetwise lot, while the gifted South Africans seem to have taken their fractiousness to the next level. There has been bickering behind the scenes in the latest round of contract negotiations - the threat of free agency is the thing in South Africa at the moment - and we have a board that demonstrates little leadership or grace under pressure. Last season's domestic match-fixing debacle shows no signs of finding closure, and from everywhere comes the fidgetiness of widespread discontent.
Full postColin Ingram, South Africa's invisible man
How a talented batsman has come to be an emblem of the neglect of a region
Luke Alfred
12-Jul-2016
Scattered thinly across South Africa is a clandestine group that dare not speak its name, made up of malcontents, cheroot-smokers, conspiracy theorists and flat-earthers. I write of the "Colin Ingram Appreciation Society", or CAS for short.
Here is a clan that goes about the serious and not-so-serious business of appreciation far from prying eyes, a world of prompts, winks and secret handshakes. Wherever Ingram takes to the crease, the society is in full session: runs are counted carefully, boundaries celebrated with high-fives. Every innings is deconstructed breathlessly. WhatsApp messages, frequently adjectivally heavy, detail his every move.
Ingram once appeared to be of the manner born. His father - remarkably, this is true - was a Protea farmer in the mountains and kloofs north-west of Port Elizabeth, so Ingram had portent-filled beginnings. He was educated at Woodridge High, which also produced Mark Rushmere, another neglected soul. Once out of school, Ingram hauled himself off, of all places, to the fledgling academy in Bloemfontein, to better to understand himself and his game.
Full postWhy South Africa need to liberate themselves from shame
They're a very good ODI side, if only they can change the culture of their cricket
Luke Alfred
21-Jun-2016
I'm running out of things to say about South African cricket. This is partly because, as far as the ODI side is concerned, they seem to be developing and stuck fast at the same time. Here, after all, is a team that won two big series in the last eight months, beating India (away) 3-2 in October and beating England (home) by the same margin in February. In countries with less difficult-to-please punters (and press) they would be given grudging dues as emerging champions. Not here.
The recent busy tinkering under the bonnet seems to have paid dividends. They've jettisoned David Miller, re-embraced Wayne Parnell, and are learning to trust Aaron Phangiso and Tabraiz Shamsi. They also seem to have realised that there is life without Dale Steyn. Morne Morkel made the XI only at the start of the final leg of matches in the current tri-series, on the quicker wickets in Barbados.
There is newly discovered rigour from the selectors and a comparative sense of liberation in playing away from home. The cobwebs seem to have been shaken off after a poor opening performance against West Indies - and Sunil Narine - in Providence. Here is a team beginning to draw together. Onwards and upwards.
Full postRemembering 2008
As Mickey Arthur takes charge of Pakistan, he could do worse than look back at successful tours of England and Australia eight years ago, when he coached South Africa
Luke Alfred
30-May-2016
We all like to think we understand a coach's alchemy - perhaps because it makes us seem more insightful than we really are. Matters are often more complicated, a case in point being Mickey Arthur, the recently appointed coach of Pakistan.
Here in South Africa, Arthur had a reputation for being easy-going, warmly trusting to a fault. In the Australian context, however, he foolishly insisted on grown men doing homework - though that was a symptom of his struggles rather than their cause. The very idea of Arthur giving Morne Morkel homework ("The ANC is an example of African liberation movement perverted - discuss.") is patently ridiculous, so why entertain it elsewhere?
Arthur's reputation was established on two tours, to England in 2008 and Australia in 2008-09. At Lord's in the opening Test on the first of those two tours, South Africa could only muster 247 in response to England's 593 batting first (Ian Bell 199, Kevin Pietersen 152), creating the quicksand of a follow-on.
Full postThe juju is bad for South Africa
The last few months have been a steep comedown. What has gone wrong?
Luke Alfred
18-Apr-2016
In one grim season, South African cricket has transformed itself from being a healthy citizen of the world to an outpatient with a dicky heart. With stents, pacemakers and blood-thinning medication, the man in pyjamas has been stabilised, but there was nearly a corpse in the back of the ambulance. Obituaries could have appeared on three or four occasions. They might yet still.
The worst moment - the heart-stopper, one might say - was a few weeks ago against West Indies in Nagpur. Quinton de Kock cut the ball to point and set off on a run, ball-watching; watching him, Hashim Amla started on the run, and when de Kock stopped, he followed suit. The mutual hesitation lasted only an instant but it seemed like a moment we'd been living in for years. The nation was momentarily united and we were all thinking: "We've been here before - it's not a good place to be."
Run-outs always have something smoky and pathological about them. They're like dropped catches, except they take place in a different part of the game. As a rule, happy teams don't drop catches; as a rule, confident, at-ease batsmen don't get run out. One doesn't need to gaze too hard into the microscope to realise that forensically all the anguish of a lost summer was condensed into one passage of indecision.
Full postDown to the pointy end in South Africa
The domestic season is coming to an end and familiar scenarios are playing themselves out
Luke Alfred
29-Mar-2016
Four seasons ago, under the stewardship of Matthew Maynard, Titans' batsmen failed to score a first-class century. Last season they scored ten, and with two matches to go in this season's Sunfoil Series, they have scored ten already.
"We're aiming for 13," says coach Rob Walter breezily. "There's no science to it. We just wanted to do better than last season and felt 13 was within reach. Heino [Kuhn] has scored three of the ten, and six batsmen in all have scored centuries, which we're pleased with."
On Thursday, Titans host their neighbours, Lions, in the penultimate round of the four-day competition. With Titans on top and Lions, the holders, in third spot, the match is a final in everything but name.
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