Why neutrals should back South Africa against Australia in WTC final

The Guardian

3 days ago

On a recent episode of The Grade Cricketer podcast, the hosts, Sam Perry and Ian Higgins, tore lumps out of South Africa in a foul-mouthed tirade about the World Test Championship final against Australia. Perry predicted a finish 'inside three days' and Higgins, practically thumping the table, said: 'If I don't look at a scorecard and South Africa are three for spit my TV is going through the window.' Cue big alpha chuckles and main-character knee slaps.
I know they were joking, skewering Australian arrogance as much as South African frailty, and that they have built a formidable brand that runs on side-mouthed jibes and hyperbolic bluster. Still, the lizard part of my brain lit up in protest. How dare they dismiss my countrymen? I wasn't alone in taking offence.
Then my prefrontal cortex took the wheel and my anger turned to resignation before morphing into sadness. Not because they're probably right, and that anything other than an Australian romp would constitute an upset, but because of what a one-sided affair would say about the game.
What we are looking at might one day be remembered as a high-water mark for global Test cricket. This could be the last chance a team other than Australia, India or England have a shot at claiming Test cricket's big prize. Notions of a competitive ecosystem are already threadbare. Captains representing one of the three wealthiest boards have lifted 71% of ICC titles since 2006. Another trophy for Pat Cummins would only emphasise this gulf.
So we are all supporting South Africa next week, right? We should be. Even proud Australians who recognise there is more at stake here than bragging rights. Remember when Fanie de Villiers skittled Allan Border's boys to win a nail-biter in 1994? What about JP Duminy's 166 in Melbourne in 2008, a knock that convinced Ian Chappell to prematurely declare Duminy as 'the young batsman most likely to usurp [Ricky] Ponting's title' as 'master of the willow wielders'. Would you like to see visitors from West Indies, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka put up a fight on your own patch? If so, you'll swap gold for green and consider the implications if events at Lord's unfold as expected.
As things stand, South Africa will not host any men's Tests next summer. The official line is that this barren spell – the first since the country was readmitted to international cricket in 1992 – will allow for stadium upgrades for the 2027 50-over men's World Cup and provide a rare stint at centre stage for the women's team. But it is hard not to interpret this as a harbinger of things to come.
Sure, Australia (in September) and England (in December) visit for three Tests in 2026, but what happens then? If the Proteas, considerably outgunned compared with their richer rivals, get hammered in those marquee series and fail to take games beyond four days, how long until the beancounters at Cricket South Africa decide to focus instead on white-ball glory?
And what of the players? They have held up their end of the deal, qualifying for the final. It is not their fault their board cannot organise more Tests. How long until Kagiso Rabada decides that third spells in the late afternoon dirt are not worth his time?
There has already been a haemorrhaging of talent from the Test arena. It has been more than a decade since West Indies started battling to field their best players in whites. South Africa's fastest bowler, Anrich Nortje, opted out of a central contract to focus on white-ball cricket. So, too, has New Zealand's Kane Williamson, the winning captain of the first WTC in 2021. These aren't canaries in the coalmine. They're the equivalent of hornless white rhinos, stripped of what made them majestic, not by nature but by necessity.
There is a cruel irony to South Africa clinging on to relevance in the shade of cricket's rulers. As Tim Wigmore chronicles in Test Cricket: A History, an epic telling of the 148-year story from its inception to Bazball, it was a South African who was the architect of the original big three. Abe Bailey, a mining magnate with close ties to Winston Churchill and Cecil Rhodes, helped establish the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909. Almost six decades before the 'I' stood for 'International', cricket's first governing body was a flag bearer for the British empire. This meant teams such as the USA and Argentina, at the time more worthy of a seat at the top table than South Africa, were left to wither on the vine.
The next WTC final is scheduled for 2027, the same year Test cricket turns 150. A century and a half of a game prized for its depth and difficulty, but who will be there to celebrate? This tournament, flawed and fiddly though it may be, has proved to be the last thread keeping teams such as South Africa tethered to relevance. Their victory at Lord's would be a victory for all cricket, a reminder that those on the periphery still matter.
In an interview with Ali Martin this week, Sanjay Govil, the new co-owner of the Welsh Fire, made a prediction for the future of world cricket. 'Cricket might go the way of football in Europe, where they play for the clubs but then play for the country when required,' the Indian IT mogul said. 'There is still going to be Test cricket, but maybe – again, I'm just thinking through it – it is played just three months a year in two blocks of six weeks. Then X amount of time for the IPL, MLC, the Hundred etc. And not all players overlap. But I see the calendars evolving.'
At first I was alarmed. A franchise owner proposing structural reform to Test cricket is enough to spike any purist's blood pressure. We have all seen how short-format cricket has cannibalised the game. South Africa sent a significantly weakened team to New Zealand last year as their best players were contractually bound to a domestic franchise competition.
But what if he is right? Change is necessary and clearly something isn't working. Test matches are costly and unwieldy, and while mismanagement is a root cause, stubborn nostalgia will not save the format.
Four-day Tests might be the solution, at least for the smaller teams who would then be able to play three-match series rather than unsatisfying two-Test shootouts. Plug those into Govil's two six-week windows and Sri Lanka, West Indies, Bangladesh and the rest of the game's second tier could end up playing 12 Tests in four series in the year. No team is scheduled to play more than 11 Tests in 2025. Sometimes you have to go backwards in order to go forward.
Imagine getting us five-down and Will Jacks comes out to bat?' – Harry Brook appears more than satisfied with the strength of his batting lineup.
No one needs to go too far down memory lane to recall World Test Championships of yore as the inaugural one was held as recently as 2019 but the proposal for such a tournament was first championed by the West Indies legend Sir Clive Lloyd in 1996. Lloyd was centrally involved in a universally acknowledged great inaugural final, also at Lord's, the first World Cup final in 1975. Now this is a match cricket fans go misty-eyed about and Tim de Lisle was our guide in 2019 when he wrote about his recollections as a 12-year-old at the time: 'The players were wearing whites, with no names or numbers on their backs. The bowling was opened, for Australia, by Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, a pair to strike fear into any opponent, yet no batsman felt the need for a helmet. Clive Lloyd of West Indies made a match-winning hundred wearing glasses. The past is another planet.'
England managed to see off traffic and West Indies in the third ODI.
Jonathan Liew hails the great Joe Root.
And Gary Naylor examines the opening week of the Blast.
… by writing to Daniel.
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