THIS TIME THERE’S NO DEBATE
So, we South Africans start this municipal election week with at least one thing we know we can celebrate - the country rules the world in both rugby and now cricket.
Yes, the Proteas did win the World Test Championship last year to become champions in what to many remains the most important format even if crowd figures don’t always reflect that. But while they were deserved winners of the trophy/mace, and it was done fairly and squarely, there was still a debate to be had around whether or not they were in fact the top test team in the world.
That Lord’s test was a momentous occasion but a once-off, it was possible for some in the global media to find the oxygen to write it off as a possible aberration. Just as was the case in rugby in 1996, when the All Blacks came here to win a series that for them made a point about which team was really the best at the 1995 Rugby World Cup, it felt like this latest series might be one that would set the record straight.
Not that the Proteas only started to set the record straight in Gqeberha, meaning the second test, which as I wrote in my previous Striking It Rich, is par for the course due to SA playing the five day format so infrequently and often not being “Test hardened” at the start. Nope, after having so many question their right to be in the WTC final by virtue of a perceived easy passage to it, the Proteas started to put the record straight in the months that followed the 2025 final.
A drawn series against Pakistan in Pakistan is nothing to be quibbled with, and then came the momentous event in my eyes, one that may even have exceeded in terms of achievement what happened at Lord’s - a whitewash of India in India. That was the first time SA had managed it in 23 years, and while it was only two test matches, the Proteas underlined their dominance in the second game of that rubber after a brilliant, tight win defending a low total in the first.
As it turned out that was the last time the Proteas played red ball cricket until the first test in Durban in early October. But in doing well on the sub-continent, they’d already made their point about being worthy champions 11 months before this series started. The Aussie series, once they’d been hardened in a Kingsmead game where rust was exposed, the Proteas were back to their most resilient.
They no longer look, like the 1995 Boks were, a team that became champions in a one-off final against a side many viewed as the real No 1 both before and after, and the world rankings going into this series supported that, but now do genuinely look like the best test team in the world. Which is reflected by the latest ICC test ranking - No 1!
The Boks have been No 1 in rugby for some time now, but for a brief week where New Zealand usurped them in the RGR, and they look likely to hold onto that position through the November international window that will feature the Boks playing in the away leg of the Nations Championship.
FOUR DAYS AT NEWLANDS AND AN AFTERNOON AT RUGBY
So this column was supposed to come out on Friday, but I couldn’t get it together before I had to rush off to Newlands for the fourth day of the test. I missed following the first game of the series at all because I was in the bush (Olifants area in Kruger National Park) that weekend and didn’t want to be drawn into it as frankly I am an addict once I click in. But, after finding my way back to Cape Town via 12 days in the Drakensberg I was determined to be present for all the four days it was possible to be at.
Why not the fifth day? Ridiculous scheduling which saw the Proteas complete their magnificent come-from-behind triumph around 20 minutes after the Stormers had kicked off their Vodacom URC game against Ulster. After missing three successive home games at DHL Stadium because I was travelling, I had to be there.
It did cross my mind to go to the morning session, but traffic from the southern suburbs to Greenpoint can be extremely slow moving on a Saturday. Commentator Shaun Pollock told us that it was “around 15 minutes” from Newlands to the rugby venue. Maybe on a day when there is absolutely no traffic, but not on a Saturday just after lunch.
Anyway, last week was a pretty exhausting one for me, at least if you looked at it from the perspective of what I have previously described as ‘the life of the Idle Rich’. I left the Drakensberg the previous Friday, the day after the end of the Gqeberha test, bound for my favourite spot at Buccaneers Beach Lodge, via the longer R56 route because of road works on the N2 between Kokstad and the former Transkei capital of Mthatha.
To those who are interested, that meant Drakensberg Gardens to Underberg, Underberg to Swartberg on the R617, the gravel road link from there to Matatiele, and let me tell you the bird life was phenomenal (I haven’t seen so many grey crowned cranes since they were prolific along the Transkei Wild Coast in the early 1980s), then through a whole host of Eastern Cape towns that have recently changed name to Khowa (it used to be Elliot). From there you find the R408 and R58 to Ngcobo and then turn off before you reach Cofimvaba, from memory this was the R61 you turn off, and you hit the N2 south of Butterworth (now Gcuwa). It was a road less travelled for me, which there aren’t too many left in that part of the world, and the initial part through the mountain passes heading towards Ngcobo was spectacular.
Anyway, I covered the Sharks and Stormers games that Friday and Saturday from the bar/restaurant area at Buccaneers, which overlooks the magnificent bay heading out toward the very distant Cape Morgan lighthouse (you see it flashing at night) and my friendly fish eagles on the Chintsa lagoon that I mentioned in a previous SIR column.
The Sharks won in Cardiff and it was a great win for them, the Stormers beat the Scarlets but they played a bit like the Proteas batted in the first innings at Newlands after they’d reached 203 for 1. In other words, like they’d done their job already, could forget the basics, and could hit out. I don’t know what the rugby equivalent is of showing a weakness for short balls but the Stormers were guilty of it in that game.
From there to J-Bay to see some mates and onwards to Cape Town on the Monday, arriving in the evening just in time to do some work before the early departure for Newlands last Tuesday morning for the first day. I managed to dovetail my work, getting in stories early before the day started and the cricket pretty well, but it did leave me a bit exhausted by Friday, when I think a certain amber liquid imbibed under the Oaks might have caused the incredibly painful gout in my ankle that had me hobbling around like a rugby player in a moon boot.
KG WAS RIGHT
It was great seeing Aiden Markram and Marques Ackermann (by the way I’d love to see him in the middle order) start the test by getting to 158 without loss. It meant it was shaping up as a relatively stress free game for us Proteas fans as it looked like SA might bat the Aussies out of the game in the first innings. Which they should have done.
But let it be said that the Aussies should also have done that to us when they got the opportunity to do so. When play ended on the second day with Australia one run ahead and six wickets in hand, I feared the worst. It looked to me then like the Aussies might make in excess of 500 or even 550 and make the winning of it impossible to the hosts. And that storyline became even more inevitable when after an hour on the third morning the Aussies were 370 for four.
Getting their last six wickets for 59 runs brought SA back into the game, and I disagreed with those who towards the end of day three were negative around the Proteas effectively being 40 for 4 with Temba Bavuma out late in the day. To me that situation was still way preferable to what I expected at the start of the day when it looked like we might go into day four with just one result possible.
As someone who has a good memory of SA’s first post-isolation test win over Australia in Sydney in 1994 I always give the Proteas a chance when they defend a low last innings total. Yes, it was a different time and different pitch, but Alan Border’s Aussies were set 117, and fell for 111.
So I had a faint hope that maybe even 117 would be defendable at Newlands if Simon Harmer got any help from the pitch. Again, definitely a very different pitch, but a low score was defended in the first game in India last November. And guess what Australia were bowled out for at Newlands? The same total they were dismissed for back in 1994!
So even 40 for 4 starting day four was okay for me, and I guess for the Proteas too. I hear Supersport rugby commentator Matt Pearce tweeted on the morning of the fourth day that it looked like a fine day for a “RickelTON” and that was kind of exactly what I said when I bumped into legendary former Bok and Supersport analyst Schalk Burger and we had a discussion around the game’s prospects. This was while I was nervously pacing the perimetre of the ground (before the gout) in the final session of day 3.
Bavuma and Matthew Breetzke were trying to preserve their wickets for the next day at the time when Schalk said to me that we needed someone to make 150. I said “I bank on Rickelton, he owns Newlands”. He does. Apart from that double ton against Pakistan a few years back he goes into Maestro mode when he plays for MI Cape Town in the BetwaySA 20.
Schalk agreed but also said he had a high regard for Breetzke and thought he might come good. Which he was maybe unfortunate not to do after doing all the hard work. There were some stupid short ball dismissals, and David Bedingham will have to find a better way to respond to a rib tickler than trying to klap the next one that comes in that direction for six as that is exactly what the Aussies wanted him to do, but Breetzke’s dismissal to a deep fine leg catch was unlucky. In seeing out the first hour and a half with Rickelton on day four Breetzke did a lot of work towards helping the Proteas’ position stabilise and was an unsung hero.
But I mentioned Kagiso Rababa in my sub-heading there and why did I do that? Oh yes, the fast bowler said after the Gqeberha test that he hoped there’d be a big crowd at Newlands for the last game as he “Capetonians have nothing else to do”.
And maybe he’s right. The atmosphere on all four days I was there was like a weekend day and yet they were all week days. What is that? Why these games were played during the week beats me. If the final day was scheduled for Sunday, and not on the same day as a Stormers game, we’d have had a full house.
THE EXPERIENCE SHOWS UP THE NEW YEAR TEST CONTROVERSY
So obviously being there for four days and not being confined to a press box but walking (or limping) around the ground and sitting in various positions meant there were a few conversations. And I lost count of how often I was told by the loyal Cape Town cricket fans who took time off work to be at the Aussie game how miffed they were that they cannot get tickets for the New Year’s test against England. And that includes me.
I was at the last SA/England New Year’s game back in 2020, and I remember it feeling like a home game for England. This New Year’s test could be the deciding game of the series, and yet it sounds like CSA has sold all the tickets to foreign clients paying foreign currency and for hospitality and/or accommodation packages.
So it won’t be the same experience for the Proteas the next time they play at Newlands, they won’t get the same voluble home support just because us lot will be locked out. The mind boggles how it can be allowed that what is effectively one of two guaranteed markets when it comes to tests in this country - the regulars at Centurion constitute the other - is sold short. I’d love to call for a boycott of cricket tests but I know that is impossible because, as the old 10CC song goes, “We don’t like cricket, we love it…” Well, we love tests.
No, the crowds in other centres outside of Cape Town and Centurion aren’t nearly good enough but I also think there should be context. Firstly, Durban just doesn’t draw crowds. Yes, the rugby crowds are coming back to Kings Park, and hopefully more so now that the Sharks are doing well, but a lot of the crowd volume there is built around pop concerts that the games are paired with. When it came to St George’s Park, mates who were there tell me there was an unbearably cold wind blowing most days
Secondly, this is exam season in South Africa. The school kids are about to do their end of year exams, the university and other students too. The aforementioned Shaun Pollock had it right - test cricket is most supported in this country in the festive season at the height of summer.
Only come this festive season the Capetonians who love their cricket won’t be at Newlands. The Barmy Army will be there instead. Because they bring barmy money. It is the way of the world but it stinks.
IF IT IS SATURDAY AFTERNOON IT HAS TO BE RUGBY
So what was the DHL Stadium experience like? A bit ho-hum initially, to be honest, because there was somewhere else I wanted to be. It’s great being at a Stormers game, but one was a test and the other a club game. Cricket would definitely have been my No 1 choice had it not been for having to write about the rugby. But it was good to get both events in, a rugby match and cricket test, in during the same week, and as stated in my headline to this column, both sports are flying in this country right now.
Indeed, it is becoming evident at the Stormers in particular that the sort of heightened expectations that are around the Boks are starting to circulate that team too. In the sense that a few years ago a 33-7 win over Ulster would have sparked a huge celebration. This time it felt like the reception was more muted because winning has become the norm and the expectation.
It takes me back to an old quote I once saw applied to Twickenham when Will Carling’s England were in their pomp in the 1990s and winning consecutive Grand Slams. Carling’s team would win every game but it wouldn’t satisfy a crowd that wanted entertainment. The line: “Rule No 1 at modern Twickenham is no longer that England must win, but that they must win in style”.
The Stormers did show enough style, they also made mistakes, but the biggest positive was the performances of respective 19 and 20 year-olds Markus Muller and Yaqeen Ahmed.
Later in the day I watched Zekhethelo Siyaya tear Munster apart. Every weekend there’s some youngster tearing up the script and rewriting headlines. SA rugby is in a good place going forward. So is SA cricket given that we have a Bangladesh series to look forward to so the Proteas will for once be test hardened when England arrive.