Jon Qwelane
We in this country are a bunch of losers, born losers, and we seem proud of it.
And because cricket is mainly a sport with a large white following and big financial sponsorship by large white-led businesses, I suspect that is the reason we have not yet heard Arnold Makhenkhesi Stofile, the minister of sport, telling cricket authorities to get their house in order or he will do it for them.
Neither has Thabo Mbeki told the Proteas that they lack dedication and are not proud enough of their country, in comparison to the youth of 1976.
Not that I want him to say such things to people still licking their wounds and skulking around with their tails between their hind legs, but the silence of the two usually voluble politicians has been deafening.
Mercifully, a broken finger seems to have become stuck in captain Graeme Smith's ever-blabbing mouth; we have not yet heard his excuses for the humiliating whitewash by Australia on home soil.
And the loudmouth does have excuses galore, except to own up to the fact that ours is a very poor side indeed.
'Just a fluke'
A few weeks ago, after that fluke victory, since dubbed "the greatest game in cricket history", I told a rather jubilant friend that it was just that: a fluke.
His response was to tell me that in two or three years, the current side will be the world's "greatest".
But, even given the fact that one-day cricket is far removed from the five-day version, one should have been able to expect a decent showing from the players in the Test series, but that did not happen.
When the rugby Springboks were showing no signs of emerging as a cohesive, competitive machine from the doldrums, the ever meddlesome Stofile kicked in and helped engineer the downfall of Brian van Rooyen. He was the one fellow who boldly stood up to the nonsense of the racists and their financial blackmail.
Within a few weeks, the national football team was thoroughly humiliated in Egypt, where they failed to score a single goal.
True to form, Stofile and his boss, Mbeki, laid it on very thick and the former let it be known that he did not want lacklustre interim coach Ted Dumitru.
If anyone had any doubts about political interference in sport, these were surely removed by the pronouncements of the two politicians.
Dumitru bit the dust, and hopefully we shall not hear anything about him again.
This sounds self-contradictory, but it is not. The meddlesome politicians jumped in opportunistically when the teams were not performing.
The cricket authorities cannot claim to be unaware of the mammoth rot in the game, unless they are hoping for Stofile to climb on them with his gumboots on.
And while we are still at it, someone please tell Smith to keep his mouth on holiday; at least his nauseating gum chewing keeps him quiet.
Proteas 'a bunch of losers'
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Drone 42
No comment
Bookmarks