Chasing a Childhood Test Dream
Or not upsetting Future Paymasters
Some legends of the game prefer to leave the spotlight to current players, happy to go about their new lives outside of cricket, or they remain involved in a low-key manner. Others are more than happy to be quoted on the smallest of whimsies. ‘Rent-a-quotes’ they’re called in the media.
The latter are friendly, sometimes a little insecure and very useful for filling column inches and meeting deadlines. The former, however, tend to make far more impact when they do choose to judge or speak. Steve Waugh is in that group. He was asked whether Test cricket might be heading towards extinction following Cricket South Africa’s announcement of a ‘C’ team to tour New Zealand next month.
“It’s going to happen if the South African Cricket Board are any indication of the future, keeping their best players at home”, he said. “If I was New Zealand I wouldn’t even play the series. I don’t know why they’re even playing. Why would you when it shows a lack of respect for New Zealand cricket?” Waugh told my dear friend at the Sydney Morning Heralds, Malcolm Conn.
“Is this a defining moment in the death of Test cricket?”, Waugh asked, rhetorically. “History and tradition must count for something. If we stand by and allow profits to be the defining criteria, the legacy of Bradman, Grace and Sobers will be irrelevant”.
Waugh wasn’t alone amongst former and even some current players outside of South Africa to express their shock. The irony for South African lovers of Test cricket is that we’ve known for over three months. But it needed to actually happen for the rest of the world to take it seriously.
SA Test coach, Shukri Conrad, was asked (mischievously) whether it had required great discipline from him to keep quiet about the contractual cock-up with the SA20 which left him with three months to cobble together a make-shift squad of the up-and-coming, the forgotten and the wannabes to protect and defend the longest unbeaten record in the history of Test cricket. New Zealand have never beaten South Africa, home of away, in 17 series since 1932.
“I’m genuinely phlegmatic about everything I say. Yes, I’m going to back myself to come up with something for New Zealand and we’re going to try and keep that record intact when we get there.
“I can bemoan every fact but that is not typically South African. Typically South African is getting up and finding a way, finding a plan and then making a plan. So, we are good to go and we’ll face that frontier when we get to the land of the Long White Cloud,” Conrad said.
You needed to know the man, probably for decades as I have, and see his eyes when he answered, to understand.
“There has been forward planning, I cannot focus only on the ‘now’, I had to keep one eye on how things might pan out in New Zealand – and also in the West Indies and Bangladesh and then the home series at the end of the year,” Conrad said.
Part of that planning included a phone call to David Bedingham, in Durham, who explained shortly before the Cape Town Test against India how the key part of that conversation went:
“He said there's a possibility (of playing Test cricket) and as soon as I heard there was a chance, I'm quite a realistic, but obviously when I heard that no one from the SA20 can play I thought okay, well my chances of playing will be quite high. So, I didn't even have a second thought and agreed to take my name straight out of the (SA20) draft,” Bedingham said.
“I've always loved Test cricket and playing it has always been my priority. If I start doing well in T20 leagues and they come calling, then perfect, but the main aim is always to do well in Test cricket and enjoy all it offers,” Bedingham said before admitting that he never expected to play in the Tests against India.
“I was definitely only thinking of the New Zealand series, and that was just to go on the tour, maybe not actually playing. This was a great surprise and I’m really thankful to Shukri for giving me the chance.”
Bedingham is fortunate that he can follow his passion and dreams. His relationship with Durham, for whom he averages over 50, gives him some welcome financial security. He can effectively pick and choose which Tests he plays. Whether he goes to the Caribbean for two Tests in August will probably depend on whether Durham are challenging for the County Championship title.
Tony de Zorzi, on the other hand, was about to be named as captain of the Proteas squad to New Zealand where he would have opened the batting in the two Tests. Ten minutes before the squad was announced the Durban Super Giants announced that they had signed him – as a replacement for fast bowler Kyle Abbott.
Abbott was signed at the Player Auction for R175,000. De Zorzi would have received in the region of R250,000 for the New Zealand tour. So, would he actually be out of pocket by signing for the SA20? “That is contractual and confidential,” a spokesman for the SA20 told me. Make of that what you will. The point is, the vast majority of players – including de Zorzi – simply cannot take the risk of saying ‘no’ to the mini IPL.
The prospect of sitting on the DSG bench for a month rather than playing Test cricket in Mount Maunganui and Hamilton may not excite him. Just below the surface it probably saddens him, but upsetting future paymasters could have lifetime consequences. And that is why Test cricket will continue to diminish towards inconsequence.
In the meantime, we wish Neil Brand, Bedingham and the rest of the squad all the very best in February. They are all extremely talented cricketers, some yet to reach their best and others a little past it, but there is no doubt they will do their best and represent South Africa with pride.
SA Test Squad to New Zealand: Neil Brand (captain), Raynard van Tonder, Keegan Petersen, Zubayr Hamza, David Bedingham, Khaya Zondo, Clyde Fortuin, Ruan de Swardt, Mihlali Mpongwana, Tshepo Moreki, Duanne Olivier, Dane Paterson, Dane Piedt, Shaun von Berg
The major flaw in the "they have no choice" argument for me is that the leading players (and in reality it's the leading players we're talking about here: no-one's going to be tearing their hair out about the quality of the NZ tour party if, say, Glenton Stuurman is or isn't in it, despite the fact that he's one of the country's better red-ball bowlers) are essentially opting to be mega-rich rather than ordinarily rich.
I remember Cricinfo publishing a few years ago a list of central contract salaries by country--and if I recall correctly, the only country where an average (not even top) centrally contracted player (that is, the kind of player who could expect to play almost every test and who everyone is wringing their hands about) wasn't earning at least 10 times the median wage in that country was New Zealand. That's the key point to me--otherwise it's like being a lawyer and saying that you're poor compared to Leonardo di Caprio's lawyer when in reality in most countries lawyers are very rich people.
That means that essentially we're talking about greed--no more and no less. The players we're talking about are generally ALREADY unimaginably rich by the standards of the average South African, English person or Barbadian. (It's more complicated, I know, for those on domestic contracts outside the "Big Three"). Even this is relatively new--25 years ago the best-paid English player was being paid somewhere around what a player like Jake Libby, who's never been near the England team, is getting from his county now.
If you define the entire future of the game according to the di Caprio's lawyer scale, then it's just a race to the top (or bottom). Literally nothing else matters--history, ethics, national pride; caring about your fellow citizens who can't afford to come and watch you play or those poor sods on domestic contracts and without a SA20 deal who'll be out of a job by 2028; what your investment is supporting (great! a super-money Saudi league! Oh well, who cares about a bit of homophobic violence, some institutionalised misoygny and cutting your political critics into bits!)--even the sustainability of the system you've created.
So ultimately there is a choice--just as those of us in any other job can choose to have an ethical dimension in our job choices. It is to say no to the IPL juggernaut--and sure, it's not an easy decision because you could be putting your career at risk if you're under about 30 if the strategy doesn't come off. It means saying "if I'm going to witter on about valuing national pride or test cricket, then I'll play for South Africa against New Zealand rather than sit on the bench for DSG--or play for DSG. And if that means that my own board is going to blacklist me, then as a group of players we need to bring about personnel change in that board. And it probably means finding a way to do without some or maybe even all of the income we get from the BCCI, which will mean accepting a considerable pay cut. But hey, Pakistan manage it--and anyway as a leading player I'm on x times the median wage so I've got more than enough, and many times what any previous generation of players would have earned even without franchise money".
The alternative to this is helping to set up a system where by 2030 there is no cricket, even franchise cricket, which isn't run out of India or maybe Saudi Arabia. And that IS the death of cricket--unless your only values are those of wanting to be as rich as di Caprio's lawyer. But a leading player has to make the first move.