Dougie Oakes
THIS is a story about memory, about coming to terms with the past, about righting wrongs – and, most of all, about how the simple act of acknowledgement can heal old wounds.
On Monday at the Newlands cricket ground, during the tea interval in the Test between the Proteas and England, 47 former players who had played for previously segregated national bodies that had existed in the 100 years before cricket unity in 1991 were presented with Cricket South Africa (CSA) heritage blazers.
It was the continuation of a legacy programme that was launched in June 2014, with the first 10 recipients of various boards receiving their blazers. About 700 former players will be honoured in this way by the time the programme is completed.
Apartheid laws barred players from the old non-racial South African Cricket Board of Control (Sacboc), which later became the South African Cricket Board (SACB), from representing a united South Africa in Test matches against other countries. It is for this reason that this act of (even belated) recognition, in the form of something as simple as receiving a blazer, means so much more to them.
In a small way, this project is acknowledging their role in fighting apartheid in sport.
Stuart Hendricks, who travelled from Australia for the presentation, said: “For me, this has come to mean closure. It is a fitting and just way of recognising the sacrifices so many of us made in our playing careers during the apartheid era. Many people will find it hard to understand what this means to us.
“I had goosebumps when I walked on to the field to receive my blazer.”
Hendricks started his playing career with the Melbourne Cricket Club in the 1976/77 season, with Professor Brian O’Connell as his captain. “I joined the Montrose club after Melbourne folded, having being recruited by Riyaadh Najaar, who was then teaching at South Peninsula High School,” he said. He made his provincial debut for Western Province B against Boland, scoring 105 while opening the batting with the legendary Ivan Dagnin. “I was then chosen for the senior provincial side, representing them for 10 years, until I left for Australia in February 1989.
“I played with some great players during my career at club and provincial level, players such as Vincent Barnes, Armien Jabaar, Munsoor Abdullah, Mervyn Theron, Nazeem White, Clinton Ravens, Reggie February, Jacko van Graan, Nilton Muller, MZ Allie Zaghlul Adams and Joe Lambert,” he said.
Hendricks’s feelings were shared by other players of that era.
White, a teammate at both Montrose and Western Province, said: “Stuart was one of the best attacking batsmen in South African cricket. He had no respect for fast bowlers.”
And Barnes, one of the SA Cricket Board’s great fast bowlers and currently a Cricket South Africa senior coach, said: “It’s fantastic to see our guys getting some sort of recognition for the sacrifices – and the fantastic cricket – they played.”
During my years as a sports journalist in the 1970s and early ’80s, my interests always centred on the activities of Sacboc and later SACB. The one thing I will never forget was how I, like the players, bought into the South African Council of Sport (Sacos) philosophy of “no normal sport in an abnormal society”. I thus refused to use facilities which required permits for black people. I did not have a comfortable existence as a journalist whenever I was away from home. It meant having to book into places such as the Alabama Hotel in Port Elizabeth’s Gelvandale township, waking up on Sundays mornings to the smell of vomit and bacon. And the Milner Hotel in nearby East London was even worse. The players were usually accommodated in the homes of their opponents.
Facilities for non-racial clubs, generally, were below par, which would have explained why the battle between bat and ball during those years was most often won by the ball. But contests, whether at club or provincial level, were hard – with this story told to me by Trevor le Roux, a Capetonian who represented Natal in the Howa Bowl typifying the no quarter asked or given nature of the contests: “So Victoria is playing Montrose in a top-of-the-table club match. It’s in the days before helmets and it’s on a matting wicket. Lanky Baby Damon has just felled Jacko van Graan, one of our middle-order batsmen, with a vicious bouncer. They carry him off the field, groggy and with blood spurting from his head wound. It’s my turn to bat. I walk in, not exactly filled with confidence. And then I hear Montrose captain Armien Jabaar shouting: “ Baby, boul na sy kop toe!” (Baby, bowl at his head!)
One of many unforgettable matches was when Western Province’s Lefty Adams tried to do a cricketing version of Muhammad Ali – and actually pulled it off. It was March 1980 and in a low-scoring match at Elfindale, Eastern Province were left with the relatively easy task of scoring 62 for victory, when Lefty addressed his teammates (in Afrikaans) before the start of the EP innings: “I’m 42 (years old) – and that’s their number.”
Incredibly, the visitors collapsed – to 42 all out, with Adams recording the incredible figures of 6-3-7-6.
I was one of the few journalists to go for the jugular – when I called for Rushdi Magiet to be sacked as provincial captain after a run of (what I considered) poor form. I thought throwing the kitchen sink at him would be the best approach. So my introduction suggested his bowling, batting, fielding and captaincy were worse than useless – and that it was time for the selectors to axe him.
They didn’t agree with me – and a good thing too. The next game, Magiet produced a “take that” performance and, when I bumped into him shortly afterwards, he just smiled.
For me, one of the saddest things was the attitude of the journalists. Most of them were openly contemptuous of those who played on the Sacos side. In fact, Allan Robinson, an Argus journalist working at the company’s London Bureau, told me without blinking: “You guys aren’t good enough, so why do you not support the guys who are?” Another journalist, Sy Lerman, suggested that Sacos and others who opposed apartheid were, in fact, grateful for apartheid. Writing in Business Day in September 1985, he lambasted SACB official Ahmed Mangera, saying: “When it comes to maintaining his position on the cricket stage, Ahmed Mangera can be thankful for apartheid. When it disappears, he will surely disappear as unlamented as the system he fights tooth and nail.”
While working in London as a foreign correspondent for the Argus Bureau, I infuriated the Bureau chief, Cliff Scott, by covering too many stories revolving around the SA Non-Racial Olympic Committee and the British Anti-Apartheid Movement. One day he barked out at me that any anti-apartheid story had to be balanced by a story from a shadowy, pro-South African government sports grouping called the Committee for Fairness in Sport, which later turned out to be an SA government front organisation.
Monday’s blazer-award ceremony was an acknowledgement of how hard many South Africans had fought against apartheid sport. But it was also a reminder that the journey to a truly non-racial society still has some way to go.