To South Africa, With Love, As They End Big Title Drought with WTC Triumph Over Australia

At play, three boys. Between Soviet-styled residential buildings, with Maruti 800s and Premier Padminis parked at its yawning black entrances, lie stacked stones for stumps, beige compound walls for catchers. The alpha gets to be India, of course. The runts of the pack choose between Australia and South Africa. This is a reenactment of the Titan Cup – the greatest triangular series ever played – from a few months ago, and, on cue, the hosts and the Proteas have reached the final. Now, a housing co-op in central Bombay beats with the pulse of that magical place situated to the south of this very city, but seemingly a country away for these little boys, the Wankhede.

‘South Africa’ needs two runs to win the trophy from the final over. ‘Australia’, making himself useful as a boundary fielder by the main gate, is chirping away as the Aussies on the telly tend to. To ‘India’, a cunning under-arm leg-spinner waiting by the bowling stone, ‘Australia’ says: “He is South Africa. He will find a way to lose.” The Saffer, all of eleven, grimaces and sends a silent prayer to his hero, idol and perhaps even a real god, Hansie Cronje, whose picture adorns a steel cupboard in his room in the form of a Sportstar poster. Sidenote: In this gum-pasted centrefold divided by staple-pin tears, Cronje, strangely, is bowling in a jumper. Sidenote 2: At home, in his apartment, this boy’s grandmother always folds her wrinkled hands in front of a cardboard calendar of Lord Muruga. But for the boy, especially before math tests, the Cronje poster is his reassurance.

Two runs, six balls. India bowls a straight one. South Africa, with a frowned-upon batting grip (top wrist facing the bowler), flicks the rubber ball into the headlight of a Fiat 118 NE and is out. Like in the real Titan Cup decider, South Africa has mucked up the easy chase. In the Chembur compound, India and Australia celebrate by the gate, even as South Africa channels his inner Brian McMillan, tucks his Power bat under his arm, rips off the imaginary Velcro from his imaginary gloves and heads over for the ceremonial handshake. Dusk broods over Bombay with the same ferocity as it once engulfed McMillan and the Proteas at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1992. It’s time to go home and despair.

WHAT DID YOU feel when South Africa – quite possibly the only ever heavyweight-underdogs in the history of global sport – won their first world title in cricket since the end of the Apartheid, 34 unending years ago? I felt for that boy, who would have chosen to be South Africa in any game of building cricket, even if India was on offer. I am prone to shedding a tear or two at remarkable sporting feats, but on Saturday (June 14), as Aiden Markram struck a fourth innings hundred for the ages, as Kyle Verreynne bashed the winning boundary to the Lord’s fence, as Keshav Maharaj wept and captain Temba Bavuma closed his eyes with the weight of history, or the lifting of it, on the famous London balcony, my eyes remained dry and my fist remained uncocked, unpumped.

Instead, I only thought of that boy, with no roots in South Africa but wholly South African in his idea of cricket, for when he was just six, seated beside his granduncle on a sofa set in the autumn of 1991, glued to Doordarshan, he grasped the meaning of this great sport as a cricket team was readmitted into the international fold at the Eden Gardens. The old man bemoaned the lost careers of Procter, the Pollock brothers, D’Oliveira and (Barry) Richards to exile, even as our eyes fell upon these smiling, unknown faces on the TV, offering friendship and a fight; incredible names that would soon drip off our subcontinental tongues, for they were known kitchen items. Cook, Rice and Wessels, how could they not become household names?

Just three months later in February 1992, Wessels went on to captain South Africa in their first World Cup in the absence of Rice (and Cook). But Down Under and beneath the southern cross, new stars constellated in Jonty Rhodes and a certain Cronje – both making their debuts against the hosts at that very Benson & Hedges World Cup. Soon, in building games and the turfless maidans just beyond, everyone wanted to crash airborne into makeshift stumps like Jonty and no one, no one wanted to ever get run-out, for one would then have to live with the tag of Inzy.

The six-year-old wept his first salty tears of sporting pain with the events of the semifinal in Sydney ’92 – as a ridiculous rain rule reduced the ask of 22 runs from 13 balls to 22 runs from 1. Little did he know that this pain would become a most reliable companion at world events, right through the long journey into adulthood. It would take one knock from Brian Lara in Karachi to end the hopes of the only undefeated side going into the knockouts, Cronje’s crew having won five out of five at the group stage of the Wills World Cup in 1996.

That year, 1996, was a good year for this South Africa tragic, however, for he would watch his first live cricket match at the Titan Cup final, get shooed away by Robin Jackman while seeking an autograph but end up receiving his first (and last) signature in a book by the end of the bittersweet night. The signer was Nicky Boje, and a special mention to Derek Crookes, who waved at the boy en route to the team bus.

THEN CAME 1999. The year the boy, now a senior in a boarding school, received a great shield for the rest of his tumultuous teenage years: no break-up or rejection would hurt him more than Edgbaston. The boarding school did not have televisions, but all dorms were in (illegal) possession of pocket radios and transistors. Under heavy quilts to muffle the sound of All India Radio, the boys held both breath and hands as Damien Fleming began the final over in the Birmingham semifinal, with Australia needing 1 wicket and South Africa, scratch that, Lance Klusener needing 9 runs. Muted screams accompanied the first two balls being banished to the ropes by Zulu, reducing the target to 1 run from 4 balls. Surely they can’t lose from here, they thought. Surely they can, they found out. The loudest sound of that night was that of silence when two deliveries later, a ball-watching Allan Donald was run out.

That was just heartbreak, for the real tragedy occurred a year later when this teen’s first love, the South African cricket team, found itself in the middle of the biggest outbreak of match-fixing in cricket. At the very centre of this cancer was Cronje, claimed the investigating officers of Delhi Police. Perhaps the greatest unifying factor in a racially-divided nation after Nelson Mandela himself, first denied the charges, then admitted to his guilt. And two years later, the fallen hero was killed in an aircrash. The world, as the kid knew it, was never the same again; neither was cricket. He would always love the game, but void of an essential ingredient, that of fandom.

His college years were bracketed by the disillusionments of the ODI World Cups of 2003 and 2007. The first, hosted by South Africa in 2003 for the very first time, ended with a group stage elimination, once again in a fixture that ought to have been won. Playing against Sri Lanka and the threat of further rain in Durban, Mark Boucher clattered Muttiah Muralitharan for a six in Kingsmead to put SA on par with the Duckworth-Lewis target. Then, as the heavens opened up, Boucher defended the next Murali ball and scurried off the field, believing the Proteas had qualified for the Super Sixes, only to be informed by the authorities that the DLS requirement was ‘par score plus one run’.

When they lost the semifinal of the 2007 World Cup in St. Lucia in a straightforward manner to (who else but) Australia, it almost felt like a curse had been lifted. At least they had lost to a significantly better team, and not arbitrary laws (1992, 1999, 2003). Plus, the young man, now 22, had discovered the numbing powers of alcohol. It still took copious amounts.

THREE YEARS ON, by 25, the man had a job, a profession. As a cricket journalist for a national daily, he travelled to South Africa for India’s long tour in 2010-11. It felt like a homecoming. He drank with Rudi Bryson, the all-rounder who once tormented the great Shane Warne in an ODI series, in his new role as a suite-owner at Supersport Park. Bryson didn’t let him pay. Nearby, in Centurion itself, he padded up to take on Fanie de Villiers, after the fabulous fast bowler – who used to shine the cricket ball with armpit sweat – laid down the condition that no interview could be held without batting against him in his home nets first, the 22-yard strip christened Tour de Fanie.

“Only if you wipe the ball in your underarm,” said the cricket journalist and Fanie laughed, then obliged. Bat connected with ball all of once in 15 minutes, when 46-year-old and long-retired Fanie put an end to the misery. “Come on, let’s talk,” he said. “Hope you are a better journalist than a batsman, son.”

In Cape Town, Herschelle Gibbs, somewhat of a pariah then due to the release of his tell-all autobiography, revealed to the cricket reporter that Steve Waugh didn’t actually utter those mythical words from the 1999 World Cup – “You just dropped the World Cup, mate.” Gibbs also felt that the upcoming World Cup in India, the 2011 edition, could be South Africa’s best chance to end the drought. When the squad was announced in Johannesburg, most of the legends the man contacted for his report – from Shaun Pollock to Pat Symcox – echoed Gibbs’s sentiment. This could be the year.

Until, it wasn’t. In a quarterfinal match in Dhaka better remembered for the quiet Kiwis finding their sledging voices, Graeme Smith’s South Africa lost control of an all-but-won chase and collapsed. And that dreaded C-word, only used in hushed tones to describe South Africa until then, was brazenly shouted out by newspaper headlines – chokers. It soon became the go-to word for the Proteas at world events, as New Zealand’s South African-born Grant Elliot clubbed Dale Steyn for a six in the 2015 World Cup semifinal at Auckland, reducing the fieriest of fast bowlers to his knees, and again at the 2024 T20 World Cup last year, where the men’s Proteas team made their first-ever final of a world event. The elusive trophy was pretty much in the bag in the final at Barbados, with just 30 runs required from five overs and six wickets in hand. But India’s Jasprit Bumrah, predominantly, and also Suryakumar Yadav, fielding and catching by the boundary ropes, had other intentions. So, just like that, all over again, SA lost by seven runs.

That loss possibly wrecked a population the most, including those who were long numb by such recurrent losses. Weeks after the Barbados agony, Telford Vice, the excellent cricket reporter from Cape Town, sent this poignant Whatsapp message to his Indian colleague: “Not sure I can watch anyone play any sport ever again.”

JUST A YEAR ON, though, South Africa had made yet another world final, in what was the third cycle of the World Test Championships. They had won this trophy, the mace, before, but not in a final following tournament play. So, yet again for South Africa and their legion of powerless followers, this was it, another chance at redemption; another shot at exorcising great ghosts. Only 69 runs were needed for victory on Day Four, with Markram and Bavuma at the crease as the overnight batsmen. But in a match dominated by the bowlers, with 32 wickets falling in three days, it was far from over.

Many thousand miles away from the media centre at Lord’s, the man in this story, now very much middle-aged at 40, expected the worst from his living room. When Bavuma departed early to Pat Cummins – destroyer of dreams as us Indian would know over and over again – with 65 runs still needed, past terrors resurfaced: 22 off 13, 9 off 6, 30 off 24. As did the cutting words of the boy playing Australia from all those decades ago in the building game in Chembur, Bombay: “He is South Africa. He will find a way to lose.”

Perhaps it was the calm of Markram. Maybe it was the collective will of a nation tired of finishing second, always the bridesmaid and all that. But two excruciating hours later, some 15 minutes into what should have been lunch on Day Four, the Proteas did what they had never done in cricket before: pull through and cross the finish line in a global event in cricket, which crowned them as world champions. For all South Africans, the overwhelming emotion was that of relief. “Sheesh!” texted Vice from Lord’s. But somewhere in India, a 40-year-old man thought of his 6-year-old self who fell in love with a sport largely thanks to a cricket team that was never his, and set him free.

That boy, at play, was finally at peace.

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