Mental!

Yesterday’s cricket at Newlands was a bit mental and broke all sort of records. And even those records that it didn’t break, it threatened with physical violence and actual bodily harm.
Cricinfo’s chief statistician S Rajesh was watching it all from the safety of Bangalore and produced this wonderful summary of what happened, what didn’t happen and what nearly happened.

It’s worth a read.

And even today, it’s been a bit odd:

Lots of silly hype about 11/11/11 and especially about 11:11 on 11/11/11.

In the cricket at Newlands, SA messed up by being 111/1 11 minutes early at 11:00 on 11/11/11.
However, they made up for it 11 minutes later by needing 111 to win at 11:11 on 11/11/11.

*cue twilight zone music*

Great er… “weekend”…

What an amazing weekend for Cape Town sports fans.

There’s another football double-header at Cape Town Stadium, with Vasco da Gama up against Golden Arrows and Ajax Cape Town taking on Moroka Swallows – that’s tonight at 6pm and 8:45pm.

Then there’s Pro 20 cricket at Newlands (that’s Sahara Park Newlands to you and me), er… tonight at 6pm.

And then, if football and cricket don’t interest you, you can watch the Stormers take on the Lions at Newlands (that’s DHL Newlands to you and me). That one kicks off – predictably – tonight at 7pm.

The rest of Cape  Town’s weekend is completely sport free, although there is some sort of fashion parade at a local racecourse tomorrow.

But seriously – can’t these organisations (and in saying this, I’m assuming that there is some sort of organisation involved) talk to one another? I might have liked to do two, if not three of those matches, but I’m unable to because they’re all at the same time!

This will provide further ammunition for those who say that the Cape Town Stadium is unsustainable when a less than sustaining crowd turn out for the footy this evening. But those who might have gone to the footy (and then somewhere to some other sporting event on another day) are now going to some other sporting event on the same day.

It’s like organising Danny K at the Bellville Velodrome and Kurt Darren at Grand West on the same night that U2 are playing Green Point.

Bono is going to be justifiably disappointed if Cape Town spreads herself so thinly again.

UPDATE: But sing ho for a Cape Clean Sweep:
12,000 at the football to see Vasco win 1-0 and Ajax win 2-0 (and go top of the league).
13,000 at the rugby to see the Stormers win 15-0.
15,000 at the cricket to see the Cobras win by 5 wickets.

Good work, lads.

That match at Newlands

It was the biggie. The North/South derby match. The one that everyone had been talking about even more since they realised that this season, it might actually make some meaningful difference to the final standings of the Super 14 table.

We parked the kids with a handy Mother-in-Law, I dosed myself up with MedLemon and Corenza Para-C, chose to ignore the ongoing viral guests which have been (literally) plaguing me all week and headed down to the aging Newlands Stadium along with 49,000 others, in order to witness the fiercest rivalry in South African rugby.

And the Stormers of Cape Town were on a hiding to nothing. Ever since the Bulls (of Pretoria) announced that they would be resting “several” of their first team players for the match, the home side were in a metaphorical no win situation.
Lose and you’re the laughing stock of the country. Win and no-one is impressed, because you’re only playing the Bulls’ B team – albeit with several Springboks in the side.
At this point, for less-informed readers, I should perhaps explain that I don’t mean actual springbok springboks – as in the little antelope things – look, they’re bloody fast, but their lack of ball-carrying abilities renders them near useless in the more technical aspects of the modern game of rugby. Like, for instance, ball-carrying.
Seriously, if someone were to genetically engineer a robust and dependable ball-carrying arm onto an actual springbok springbok, I swear every rugby team in the world would be trying to sign it up.

But I digress.

What I mean is that several of the so-called Bulls’ B team have played rugby for South Africa at international level. So they weren’t actually that ‘B’ at all. Add to that the fact the many of the Bulls side didn’t have a match last week to recover from and – more cynically – that they didn’t have to be concerned about any suspensions for the upcoming semi-finals either, since presumably the A-team would be back for that game.
At this point, for less-informed readers, I should perhaps explain that I don’t mean the actual A-Team – as in Hannibal, Face, Murdoch and BA Baracus… oh… never mind.

But from the very first kick, it was clear that this was going to be one way traffic. The Stormers went ahead early through ex-Bulls winger Bryan Habana and never really looked back. Let’s not forget, that for all the Bulls’ excellent performances this season, it’s the Stormers who have the best defence record in the league (by some clear margin) and that defence never looked to be in serious danger tonight. Habana got his second try after 23 minutes before crowd favourite Andries Bekker added a third on 27 – effectively ending the game as a contest – at least as far as the scoreline was concerned.

Down 28-3 at half time, the Bulls did seem to come out for the second period with the sole intention of injuring as many Stormers players as possible. And by whatever means. There were a couple of shoulder charges, some nasty little exchanges after the ball had gone and one shocking incident involving a horrifying chainsaw attack on the Stormers’ scrum-half.
(I may have made that last one up.)

Job done, the second half was less entertaining than the first. Stormers’ centre Jacques Fourie dotted down to take the score to 38-3 and then the Stormers started resting their first team as well, a home semi-final (their first since 1999) against the NSW Waratahs already in the bag. With many key players taken off, the Bulls snatched a consolation try in the 78th minute.

It was a disappointing way to finish, but the job was done. And while – as I mentioned before – Pretoria fans will be anxious to remind everyone that this was hardly their starting XV, the history books will just list the final score: 38-10.

Bragging rights are therefore, for the moment at least, quietly settling down into a worn leather armchair with an expensive glass of brandy at a trendy yet understated cigar bar in central Cape Town.

Next week, South Africa hosts the two semi-finals: Bulls v Crusaders and Stormers v Waratahs. If results go with the home sides, it will be another Bulls v Stormers match-up in an all South African Super 14 final on 29th May – but this time, with the Bulls’ A-team – who will presumably have been locked in a garage with only a bakkie, a couple of tonnes of scrap metal and some welding equipment in the intervening period – in full attendance.

Watch this space.

Cross-posted at the SA Portfolio Collection Travel Blog

Last rites

It seems that Saturday’s rugby game may have been the final nail in the coffin for Newlands – traditional home of the Western Province Rugby Union. Previously, the Union had steadfastly refused to consider any move from the Newlands ground to the new stadium. However, popular South African rugby website keo.co.za thinks the friendly game at the new Cape Town Stadium may have forced their hand:

It was impossible for the 40 000 people who attended the pre-season game not to draw comparisons between the new stadium and WP’s home ground on the other side of Table Mountain. Quite simply, the one is modern, light and uplifting, while the other is old-fashioned, dark and depressing.

There is no reason for the rugby not to move from Newlands save for tradition. As has been remarked upon in the comments on this post, change is never easy to accept – especially where such a long and proud history exists – but there are very few occasions when clubs move to new grounds and stadiums and management and fans look back and are unhappy with their new home.

Newlands is inevitably going to suffer the same fate as those other rugby relics, and it’s time WP administrators accept this. They need to start preparing for the future, and the future of WP rugby – whether they like it or not – is in Green Point.

The Stadium would also benefit from the move and has already demonstrated that it can comfortably handle a big rugby occasion.
Having the Stormers and Western Province as an anchor tenant would be a huge bonus. The Stormers could fill the stadium for many of their Super14 fixtures and it would inevitably attract other large rugby events such as international matches.
Meanwhile, the Newlands Stadium site would be of huge commercial value as real estate.

All it takes is the courage to make the move.

Test cricket is still mainly boring

With dropping attendances, bore draws and the huge push towards shorter versions of the game, it was nice to finally see an exciting finish to a 5-day test match yesterday. The second time in three matches in this series, actually. (In the other game, England obviously wiped the floor with sorry SA).
But while the last over histrionics, South Africa’s constant and often desperate appealing and Graeme “The Cramp Man” Smith’s wonderful innings and penchant for referring everything were all briefly gripping to watch, it was really only the last couple of hours of the game which were actually “exciting”.

All of which leads me to believe that in actual fact, Test cricket is still mainly boring. And that isn’t really a problem if you’re happy to be bored; if you have days to spare at the ground or on the couch, beer and snacks to hand. But for the majority of us, that’s not the case.

The problem as I see it is that in order to get the exciting finish, you have to sit at least through four days of potential dross. And yes, I know there were “gripping” bits here and there, like the Steyn vs Collingwood thing and Fatty’s lovely innings, but mainly it was quite dull going through to motions stuff. For 4½ days. And that’s why T20 – which condenses the best bits from Test cricket into a couple of hours and is therefore exciting – has become so popular.

So what I propose is this: T6000 cricket. In this new and revolutionary form of the game, one takes scenarios from all the Test matches in history which have ended in an exciting manner. (There must be at least three or four of them.)
These scenarios would then be played out to a finish in front of a capacity crowd. Games would consist of one innings of variable length, as the different scenarios would kick in at different times. For example, I would propose that for yesterday, we start at tea on the final day – after all, it was mostly pretty dull before that.
So England (or South Africa, depending on who wins the toss) would start 5 wickets down, needing to survive 35 overs. 
In this case, the batting side could only ever get a draw, but them’s the breaks. And before you moan that you’ll never see the top batsmen playing, you’re wrong: the warm-up would consist of the top order being put through their paces before going and having a drink in the players lounge as their tail-enders actually play the game.
As an added benefit, since each 15-session match will now be played in one single session (a reduction of 93.33%), there will be less danger of player burn-out – a major cause of the top players not being able to play in the first place.

Sure, the purists will hate this, but they’re the ones with the time, the couch, the beer and the snacks.
For the vast majority, T6000 is the future.