ONCE upon a time cricket was the glue that held the British Empire together. The Little Englanders played the game in dusty climes on a globe swathed in fading red upon which the sun never set.
The public schools (and the grammars and crammers) churned out army officers and colonial officials to serve this vast machine with cricket as their gospel and Lord’s in London as their Golgotha.
Sir Henry Newbolt’s Vitaï Lampada was the eucharist of Empire:
There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night -
Ten to make and the match to win -
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”
The sand of the desert is sodden red, -
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; -
The Gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England’s far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of schoolboy rallies the ranks,
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”
Cricket is a particularly perverse game to understand, especially in the era before the limited overs version. The late great comedian/actor Robin Williams once memorably described it as “baseball on Valium”.
I remember seeing a tea towel, of all things, in Grahamstown, that described it thus:
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out.
When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.
When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!
Cricket, the ethos not the game, was the moral code.
If something was underhanded, it was simply not cricket, with all the contempt and horror that those words implied. You were expected to play life with a straight bat, defend your wicket, but walk to the pavilion with a gracious smile and your bat under your arm when the umpire gave you out.
And then we had Hansie Cronje.
By the time Hansie and Co were on the scene I had become a fanatical Proteas fan, stoked by the zealous spirit of the new Rainbow Nation, fuelled by litres of lager for the day/night matches.
I remember every time I opened a beer during Paul “Gogga” Adams’s debut he took a wicket - or that’s what I told my wife.
Cronje ruined all that for me.
Captain Courageous had sold our souls, not his, for a real mess of potage: a crappy leather jacket, a sack full of biltong and a couple of grubby wads of cash.
It didn’t matter that the allegations of match fixing and “weather reports” seemed to travel all the way Down Under, our guys had been bent, actively encouraged by their captain.
I had only recently rediscovered the joy of watching cricket, buoyed by the performances of the Proteas and especially the increasingly brilliant performances of the precociously gifted Kagiso Rabada.
The Australian tour though hadn’t gone well from the word go. Until last weekend, I thought the ridiculous shoulder charge incident was the lowest possible moment, hot on the heels of the Quinton de Kock- David Warner outburst.
But, as the rugger buggers would say, hold my beer.
It’s not just that the Australian captain and his coach and probably the entire senior playing cohort must have known of the plot, it’s the appalling way they sought to throw one of the youngest players, opening batsman Cameron Bancroft, under the bus.
Steve Smith refuses to countenance any thought that he will resign his captaincy.
He’s flown home only because he’s been banned from the final Test this weekend at the Wanderers.
This is the same man, who you might remember, set a new gold standard for hypocrisy in his condemnation of Proteas skipper Faf du Plessis during Mint-gate two years ago.
Hubris, as always, is a fickle bastard.
His deputy Warner, who might yet have plumbed even deeper depths of ignominy, has also temporarily stepped down.
With the benefit of hindsight Cronje did quit at least - in tears and, famously, blaming the devil, before appearing in front of the King Commission later and being banned for life.
Cricket Australia’s James Sutherland flew out to South Africa earlier this week to investigate, only to issue a one-size-fits-all apology, vow great retribution and then - in an amazing sleight of hand - absolve everybody, except the toxic trio, of any culpability.
The only upside thus far is that he hasn’t blamed the devil.
Perhaps the problems we seem to be experiencing world-wide off the oval can be attributed to the collapse of standards between the wickets and, most pertinently, the ethical sewer that is the sport’s governing body, the ICC.
We’ve got state capture, corporate collusion, effectively the theft of retirement funds through the collapse of Steinhoff that was more Ponzi scheme than proper profits.
None of this would have happened if enough of us cared enough to refuse to let it happen in the first place.
How can we bemoan Jacob Zuma taking everything on appeal when Smith’s rapacious abuse of the umpire decision review system seems to go against every tenet of fair play?
Everyone’s at it though, standing their ground, putting self above sacrifice always, even when it’s clear to a blind man that your stumps have been castled.
It simply isn’t cricket.