Jacques Kallis? Legend. What about Brian Lara? Magician. And what does that make Shane Warne? Entertainer. But surely you meant Herschelle Gibbs? Waste. It was one of those inevitable lulls during a Test match, and the cricket hacks of India and South Africa were engaged in a jovial joust as they pondered Test cricket without Jacques Kallis.
“Describe, in one word, what Kallis has meant to the game,” a local scribe said, turning to the motley crew from Mumbai, Madras and beyond that had flown in for the mini-Test series.
And so the answers flowed, and cricket’s good and great were given a swift appraisal by the armchair experts.
“Well, this is fun. But what about the game’s administrators,” the challenge rose.
“Srinivasan?”
Now, having dabbled in the odd league fixture against Chatsworth and Raisethorpe’s finest citizens, I am well aware that my Indian brethren have a wicked way with words when they need to. But even I was somewhat taken aback by the response from the foreign legion.
One considered tweak of his magnificent ’tache, a nibble of his sweet meat – smuggled in from afar – and then came the straightest bat offered by anyone from India in December. “He is a mucking runt,” he grunted, or at least a choice phrase that rhymed with my innocent translation.
Ah yes, the man who has decided that he is bigger than the game, and will trample over anyone who questions that deluded logic, is as popular as polio on the streets of India.
And now, empowered by the knowledge that he can count on the turncoats that run cricket in Australia and England, Srinivasan and his board of greedy Goven(d)ers are attempting not just to enjoy the biggest slice of ICC pie, but to take the steaming oven and sell their own hot-cakes.
Those on the wrong side of the counter, such as South Africa, will die a slow, painful death if the “Big Three” get their way.
The Proteas named their first post-Kallis squad this week. Among the names was Wayne Parnell, an intriguing talent, a mystical Muslim maverick who hovers intermittently between great and grating – sometimes in the same over.
He will never replace Kallis, but there is hope that he can find that happy place that makes him a poor man’s Mitchell Johnson, perhaps.
He, along with the Millers, the De Kocks, the Mkhizes, the Maharajas and the Van der Merwes to (hopefully) come ought to form the foundation of the most cosmopolitan Test line-up in history.
But you have to seriously wonder how lofty the stage will be for them to display their talents in a few years.
South African cricket may well be celebrating the sort of mediocrity that engulfs our “other” national sport, but with not nearly the same economic spin-offs.
We thought enduring political isolation was tough. But imagine, if you can, how crippling financial isolation would be? We are already feeling the effects of a shortened Indian tour, but if they snip off the strands of the umbilical cord that we still have attached to cricket’s top table, we are well and truly mucked.
These are indeed dangerous times for the future of our cricket.
Haroon Lorgat simply has to gather enough support from all the other hind-tit suckers of the game, and hope to goodness that a united front at least forces the “Big Three” into a rethink and, perhaps a re-shuffle of the cards they possess.
They will reconvene this week, and we will hang on to every word, every crumb. We are at their mercy. We really can’t go on without them.
These dirty, mucking runts. - Sunday Independent