Luke Alfred
Walking down Dolly's Cape Town streets
There's little in the Upper Cape that commemorates the legacy of Basil D'Oliveira
Luke Alfred
11-Mar-2016
Fifty-six years ago almost to the day, a shy Cape Coloured cricketer boarded a Cape Town flight bound for Heathrow. He had never flown further than Nairobi before and was petrified, his angst sharpened by the fact that Cape Town had shut down in the preceding days due to a march by 30,000 Pan Africanist Congress members protesting against the rule that natives needed to carry passbooks. The march went off peacefully thanks to the leadership of a 23-year-old first-year university student called Philip Kgosana. Memorably, he was wearing short pants because his wardrobe consisted of too-small shoes, donations and hand-me-downs. No rakish beard or artfully angled beret for Kgosana. The revolution will be conducted by men in short trousers.
Basil D'Oliveira was similarly impecunious. He was flying to England after bagging a contract with Middleton in the Lancashire League thanks to the generosity of strangers. Neither he nor Middleton could afford the flights, and so began a series of raffles, fundraisers and occasional matches held in leafy suburban subterfuge. Wes Hall, Middleton's pro during the previous season, wasn't given a leave of absence by his employers, Cable and Wireless, and D'Oliveira found himself with an unlikely contract. He was loath to leave his young wife, Naomi, in the Bo-Kaap (Upper Cape) behind, but as frightening as this opportunity was, he needed to take it.
Frank Worrell had almost brought a West Indian side to South Africa the previous year, although at the last minute the tour was cancelled. D'Oliveira sensed the noose of world opinion was tightening around apartheid's neck. The Sharpeville Massacre was nine days old. It was now or never.
Full postThe freshness that Quinny and KG bring
The two young men have a fearlessness and self-belief that are at odds with the culture of caution that has marked South African cricket for long
Luke Alfred
19-Feb-2016
There's every reason to believe that in Kagiso Rabada and Quinton de Kock, South African cricket has discovered two players to pin its long-term hopes on. Both from Johannesburg, they hail from very different backgrounds. Rabada's father is a general practitioner. His son was a day boy at the expensive St Stithians College in Randburg, a school that has done much to resuscitate its cricketing fortunes in recent years by awarding boys there bursaries, which Rabada didn't have.
De Kock's early sporting life took place not far away, where as a youngster he played baseball - generally a blue-collar game here in South Africa - for the Randburg Mets. There he paired up with Gift Ngoepe, the son of a domestic worker who lived in the Mets' clubhouse, forging a close friendship. While Ngoepe has gone on to play professionally as second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates, de Kock quickly left baseball behind, becoming a boarder at King Edward VII School in central Johannesburg. Only the easy left-handed slugging from the diamond remained. Most other things - like playing squash or writing - he did with his right.
Apparently de Kock was not as trim then as he is now. "He was quite a chubby kid in his first year of 1st team cricket," says Eugene Marx, long-time cricket master at King Edward. "I remember the 1st team rugby coach taking Quinton and another boy, Malcolm Nofal, for running round the rugby field with sandbags around their necks."
Full postSouth Africa's weird season
From chopping and changing in selection to the latest fixing scandal, the country's cricket is in for testing times, at least in the immediate future
Luke Alfred
28-Jan-2016
"Voluptuous panic." It's a lovely phrase. It comes from Richard Linklater's Boyhood, a film about a goofy Texan kid called Mason. He's taking down photographs of his girlfriend from his high-school art exhibition - they've just broken up, she's dating a jock - and Mason is chatting to a teacher. She uses the phrase to describe the feeling of going off to college, of leaving the familiar behind. Freedom looms but there's a dizzy edge to what beckons.
There's a kind of voluptuous panic enveloping South African cricket at the moment, scary and mildly intoxicating. The reflex - my reflex - when faced by so much change is to call up the reassuring certainties of the past. We can summon images of Jacques Kallis blunting the best attacks in the world; Graeme Smith doing his Churchill thing during fourth-innings chases. Then there was Dale Steyn, grooving the outswinger at the MCG. And Paul Harris and Neil McKenzie and the boundlessly humourless Bouch. There was Alviro Petersen, Ashwell Prince, Vernon Philander, Morne Morkel. Even the ones that remain somehow seem to have left a part of themselves behind. It suddenly looks horribly different, and you feel a stab of regret. We should have celebrated them more, counted our blessings more publicly, been more generous in our praise.
Where relative continuity was once a feature of South African sides, this season the selectors seem to have stepped through the looking glass into utter weirdness. For the Centurion Test against England, they made five changes, this at the end of a sequence of eight Tests (going back to the first Test against India in Mohali), during which they used 20 players in all. Yes, injuries to players like Steyn (two Tests this summer) and Philander (one) have played their part, but there seems to be a worrying hell-or-glory bravado from selection convenor Linda Zondi and his men. They're making reactive decisions in trying to make bad decisions look good; they're pandering to the gallery and they're besotted with the holy grail of trying to find another Kallis, which surely explains the flirtations with nominal allrounders like Chris Morris (against England) and Simon Harmer (against India).
Full postRemembering James Logan
On the parallels between cricket in pre-Boer War times and now
Luke Alfred
05-Jan-2016
Cricket's subtle mysteries have always attracted the rich and powerful - John Paul Getty Jr, Allen Stanford and, closer to home, Nicky Oppenheimer, with his fabulous library of unread books. Here in South Africa we've heard of the politicians and patrons once associated with the game, men like Cecil John Rhodes and Abe Bailey, but know less about hucksters who used cricket as a vehicle for their restless ambitions.
One such individual was James Logan, the so-called Laird of Matjiesfontein, who became the sport's major benefactor in the 10 years prior to the Anglo-Boer War. Logan's story is told in Dean Allen's fascinating book, Empire, War and Cricket in South Africa, and it is impossible not to see in the sweep of Allen's tale instructive parallels between cricket then and the goings-on of the current South African summer.
Born in 1857, Logan was one of five children, the son of a railway worker in the Scottish Borders. He was resourceful, good at school and a larrikin, allegedly running away to sea - Allen isn't sure - to escape appearing in court on poaching charges. Whether he ran away or not, Berwickshire couldn't hold him. He was soon bound for Rockhampton in Queensland but his sea legs deserted him by the time he rounded Cape Point. He jumped off in Simon's Town and, being a son of the railways, found his way to Cape Town station. Once there, he worked as a porter, soon becoming stationmaster.
Full postBattered South Africa take on equal opponent
It's similar to 2004-05, when, having lost in India, South Africa played an evenly matched England team at home
Luke Alfred
19-Dec-2015
England have arrived in South Africa and, if you listen carefully, you can hear the slightly unedifying sound of wise men climbing onto the fence. This has partly to do with the fact that these teams are so evenly matched, the stats for weight, reach and career knockouts being pretty much identical. Beneath this, disguised but present, seethe the juicy waters of dislike. Cricketing equals, emotionally these teams are hemispheres apart. South African sport takes place in a pre-ironic age. It inclines to dourness, with occasional humour but no wit. Contrast this with England's cricketers: they are more verbally adroit but can be snide. World views are likely to collide.
The situation is coloured by the fact that these cricketing cultures are so tightly coiled. The South Africans who have played cricket for England often come from the former colonies of the Cape and Natal. Allan Lamb, Craig Kieswetter and Jonathan Trott were all Cape boys; the Smith brothers, Robin and Chris, were from Durban. The flawed maestro Kevin Pietersen hails from Pietermaritzburg. A still-beautiful colonial town now Africanised, it was until recently the last outpost of the British Empire. Many clues to Pietersen's insecure brilliance lie here, amidst the faded bandstands and spaza shops, where England play the second game of their tour as they prepare for the Boxing Day Test at Kingsmead. Indeed, Pietersen's slightly bombastic striving owes much to his provincial background. Neither African nor English, he had more than most to prove.
Now England are here without him and are apparently better off for it. This is the most English England of recent years and the most African South Africa, particularly if Temba Bavuma bats at six at Kingsmead. Kagiso Rabada is unlikely to play, given Kyle Abbott's form in the fourth Test against India, but if he does, Cricket South Africa will at least have pleased Fikile Mbalula, the populist comedian better known as the minister of sport.
Full postCan South Africa trust in Tabraiz Shamsi?
If they are serious about improving their T20 record, they could do worse than give Titans' promising chinaman bowler a look-in
Luke Alfred
27-Nov-2015
Domestic cricket here in South Africa is currently dominated by the Ram Slam T20 Challenge. For many reasons, it's an interesting tournament, not least of which is the fact that South African cricket has never quite wrapped its head around the demands of the format. Gary Kirsten, the coach then, came back from the World T20 in Sri Lanka three years ago muttering about "dark collective mists" when the South Africans failed to make it past the Super Eights. We are - in T20 terms at least - still in the philosophical fog.
There are suggestions, however, that the view might be clearing. Last Friday night at Newlands, two of the top three teams in the competition, the home-based Cobras and the up-country Titans, faced off, with Titans sneaking home by nine runs to go to the top. Representing the respective franchises were two players who could yet have profound roles to play in the next World T20 in India in March and April - Cobras' Richard Levi and Titans' Tabraiz Shamsi. Levi - most of us already know about him - is a blacksmith right-hander comfortable against pace and iffy against spin. Kirsten took him to Sri Lanka three years ago, where he blotted his copybook slightly by reverse-sweeping Saeed Ajmal and getting bowled. As a career move it had distinct disadvantages, although there have recently been some indications that all could be forgiven. Levi's time in the wilderness might be coming to an end.
If Levi is all grim destruction, Shamsi is all cocksure effervescence. He's a chinaman and googly bowler with almost the best economy rate in the competition, and with his variations and attitude he has the priceless ability to make even calm batsmen look flustered. He didn't take a wicket at Newlands on Friday night, his four overs going for 17, but he bamboozled poor Andrew Puttick so badly that it was almost laughable. In the final of last season's 50-over competition in February, Shamsi trapped Levi leg before to halt Cobras as they were fast disappearing over the horizon. From 180 for 1 with Levi's dismissal for 104, Cobras flapped and splashed to 285 for 8. Shamsi's breakthrough prevented them from posting in excess of 300; with Dean Elgar (100) and Albie Morkel (134 not out) to the fore, Titans won by five wickets, when a couple of weeks prior to that it was moot as to whether they would make the playoffs.
Full postThe ex-wild man of the East Rand
Andre Nel was always getting into trouble, but he had talent and his heart was in the right place - as he's proving now, dishing out guidance and tough love to upcoming cricketers
Luke Alfred
12-Nov-2015
South African fast bowlers traditionally come from places somewhat off the map. Dale Steyn hails from Phalaborwa, a nondescript copper mining town not far from the Zimbabwe border; Morne Morkel comes from Vereeniging, all heavy industry and steel; Andre Nel was born in Germiston, educated in Boksburg, and played much of his cricket in Benoni, which makes him an East Rander, the seen-better-times gold mining country East of Johannesburg. There's even a local phrase for citizens of the East, with its collapsing mine-dumps and polluted slimes dams, its not-unpleasant sense of time and fortunes lost. "You can take the boy out of the East Rand," it runs, "but you can't take the East Rand out of the boy."
For all of Nel's wild years, he's always been proud of his roots. He's an East Rander down to the tattoo on the inside of his bicep, and he loves the idea of chip-on-the-shoulder disadvantage that's essential to those who play their cricket there.
"I'm a pretty stubborn oke," admits the coach of the Easterns semi-professional side. "I'm always up for a scrap, that's what we're all about, and that's what I learned from Jet [Ray Jennings] when he was a coach here. You can't do some of the things he did anymore, like refuse guys water and lunch. You've got to be cleverer and know which buttons to push. But don't tell me it can't be done. I always find a way to make the players feel special."
Full postWhat Rabada's success says about South African cricket
The system might be creating opportunities in enough places, but things aren't all hunky-dory
Luke Alfred
19-Oct-2015
When Kagiso Rabada arrived at St Stithians College in northern Johannesburg, he was a flash left-hander with every shot in the book. "He reminded us a little of Brian Lara," said Wim Jansen, the school's director of cricket. "He was pretty flamboyant when he joined the school in Grade 8."
As a bowler, Rabada was wild. With his willowy frame and liquid slide to the crease, he could always bowl fast, but he was cavalier in his preparation and struggled with no-balls. Jansen said the school's coaches forced him to measure out his run to the centimetre, and before long he was deep into the subtle arts of composing an over. He worked on his core strength and wasn't over-bowled; the school smartly seeing to it that he wasn't pitchforked into the arduous extra regime of club cricket like so many other young fast bowlers. He duly made the Gauteng Under-15 team in his second year at school and played four years of 1st XI cricket, helping make St Stithians one of the most powerful cricketing schools in the land.
While Rabada was still at school, Jansen introduced the idea of a walkway of trees. The concept was borrowed from Wynberg Boys' High in the Western Cape - Jacques Kallis' alma mater - and involves planting young trees alongside a path around the first team cricket oval. Trees are planted for significant achievements - hundreds and five-wicket hauls - and despite taking loads of wickets at school, Rabada matriculated at the end of 2013 without a tree bearing his name.
Full postRemembering Duif the Dutchman
The South African sports photographer captured some of the country's big cricket moments
Luke Alfred
28-Sep-2015
There's been great sorrow here in Johannesburg this past week with the death of Duif du Toit, the sports photographer. You couldn't miss him. Irrespective of the weather, there he was, tanned legs in trademark shorts, ponytail waving, his beard getting slowly whiter with age.
He had this trademark phrase. In response to something he agreed with, he'd say "same" in his thick Afrikaans accent. He wouldn't say "Same as me", or "That's right", or "I agree." He'd simply say "same" and nod; then he'd take another sip of whatever he was drinking and give you the gravelly du Toit chuckle.
Duif was what English-speaking South Africans call a Dutchman - an Afrikaner. With its jostling registers of fondness and mild superiority, the word can't be translated. There's respect in there and perhaps awe, combined with the idea that Dutchmen can be, well, just a little different. They wear shorts in the Stade de France in late November; they smoke Gauloises and wear flak jackets and drive Land Rovers without even the vaguest nod to irony, because, well, that's for others, perhaps even the Fancy Dans in the press box. By contrast they are content to file photos three times a day and stand at the back of press conferences and smile when little boys in India come up for an autograph but first ask: "What is your good name, uncle?"
Full postWould it have been different with Khaya Majola around?
Cricket in South Africa is perilously close to being irrelevant for the country's largest demographic group
Luke Alfred
01-Sep-2015
These are troubled, grit-in-the-shoe type times for South African cricket. Something is obviously wrong, although opinion diverges as to what exactly this is. Could it be a post-World Cup hangover? The delayed personality and experience vacuum that has followed the retirement of stellar players? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that neither AB de Villiers nor Hashim Amla - captain of the ODI and Test sides respectively - are naturally gifted or inspirational leaders, a situation compounded by the fact that coach Russell Domingo has his apologists as well as detractors.
Long have the South Africans been searching for a settled 50-over opening partnership and too often finishers and lower middle-order power-hitters don't close or clear the ropes. There are too many left-handers with similar strike rates in the upper order of the ODI side and normally good fielders are dropping catches. The South Africans even look unhappy. Victory in the ODI series against New Zealand on Wednesday night at Kingsmead brought no joy, only relief. Clearly, there are issues.
Graeme Smith is the one of the few men in these moody, on-edge times who has been prepared to call a bat a bat. He's been in the SuperSport commentary box for the duration of the just-completed New Zealand series, and his style has been to hector his fellow commentators by asking them direct questions. A well-developed capacity for fence-sitting seems to be a mandatory requirement for the men from SuperSport and it's been instructive to see Smith probe for the outside edge. His emotional chafing with the chums and the system is almost tangible. It's also poignant because you sense he knows what's wrong in the team and broader environment but he's no longer in a position to do very much about it.
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