The intensity and explosion of celebration surrounding our recent Rugby World Cup triumph is cause for a pause for reflection. People are stealing time off work to greet the Boks on their victory tour. We united like a charging horde to defend an alleged vulgarity made by one of our star players. We share memes of our favourite moments from the Rugby World Cup event, with special mentions awarded to underwear brandishing the colours of our national flag and the slaughtering of the Poms and the Kiwis.
The Proteas, who have also just beaten England and New Zealand in a promising ICC Cricket World Cup performance, do not inspire this type of fever. Why not? Cricket is, after all the third biggest sport in South Africa with development programmes that can rival that of rugby in terms of reach and inclusivity.
Yet they just can’t capture the public imagination like rugby. Why is this? What is it that cricket needs in SA to take that special place in our hearts and beer-consumption habits like rugby? The answer seems obvious: it needs someone in underpants, a good double-edged swearword, and the constant threat of imminent bodily harm.
Sophisticated brutes
Part of the thrill of watching rugby is that you are watching a bunch of sophisticated brutes playing at being gentlemen. These are not the average human being one might bump into by the water cooler at work. You have a hot-headed beast like Etzebeth as a lock and a daunting loosehead prop called “Ox!!!!!!” whose imposing entrance on the field makes the stadium reverberate when they call out his name. Then you have goblins like Faf de Klerk, whose contrary contribution is to be small and agile and troll the opposition with elf-like cunning and Speedo magic. We are not watching a rugby match, we are watching an episode of the A-Team or the X-Men where disparate characters bring different skills to the game and together somehow make it work. The big ones, the tiny ones, the leaders and the team players all on one field for one purpose.
It is an enchanting comic book story enhanced by the fact that the South African characters have such a violent and troubled historical and socio-economic legacy. It is full contact social catharsis which makes the blood-and-guts game on the field so much more symbolic, meaningful – and thus more entertaining.
The jokes about the (alleged) swearword and the silly undies are just further manifestations of the sublimated brutality and unrepressed primality of the sport we access vicariously.
Boring
Compared to rugby, cricket is slow. It is boring to the average consumer.
People like me might be more inclined to watch if Cricket SA spent quality time scouting for and developing more interesting-looking players with cool nicknames instead. They could source a hairy giant as a bowler and call him ‘the mammoth.” If you encourage him to wear a mankini during the final over, people like me will be cheering: “Woolly! Woolly!” and buying merchandise all the way home. Consider opening up the rules slightly to allow for the game to be more tantalising; batsmen who don’t wear helmets, boxes or batting pads might get extra points for instance. These two suggestions alone should add some spice.
Borrowing from the rugby formula, in hindsight, Kevin Pietersen was ahead of his time when referring to a fellow player as a ‘doos’ in a private text. In Afrikaans the word literally means ‘box’, but it has a slang application of what rugby players nowadays would call ‘die dom kant’. We could revive the word and teach the crowd to sing: “Hey, doos!” Arrange the song to the tune of the Beatles’ hit: “Hey Jude” and you could have a smash hit: “Hey, DO US a favour and let us win! We’ll take your sad score and make it better! Tra-la-la!”
That will get everyone to the stadiums and airports if we win the ICC Cricket World Cup!
Or will it?
People watch rugby and cricket for different reasons. The sports have diverse brand attributes. We should not confuse the manifestation of a brand highlight with the cause of it. When stumbling across something that ‘works’ in a field, the temptation is often to exaggerate it and focus on it, hoping it will keep the leads or sales or bums on seats growing exponentially. It doesn’t always work like that.
An apple is not an orange even though you find both in the fruit section of the shop and might consume both together in one salad or both sports via a remote control in front of the TV in one afternoon.
Overt decency
Cricket has an overt decency to it, a blatant restraint. It is competitive but not combative. It is subtle and complicated. Dopamine substitutes adrenaline. “Moer hom hard teen die kop!” is replaced with understated ball manipulation to achieve a similar advantage. The exhilaration of cricket comes from appreciating the unspoken nobility of two worthy opponents waging battle without the vulgarity and messiness of physical contact. You stick to the rules because you can. The rules are intricate because the people who understand them can.
My friend Ron, who guided me towards this insight, was horrified when I excitedly drew him a mental picture of “Woolly’ in his mankini, bending over outstretched as he bowled a googly. Yet Ron happily indulges in memes of Faf de Klerk prancing around like a Chippendale pony. Ron knows a dozen ways of covertly inflicting damage on the opposition inside the scrum. He even offers detailed instructions to our players on how to do it during the heat of a rugby game, but my suggestion that cricket players should be allowed to lightly tap the other team with the bat as they run past was unacceptable to him.
At the time, neither Ron nor I knew our conversation would lead to this writing or that he would feature in it as a sage but even anonymously – during a joking thought experiment – Ron could not, or would not imagine cricket anything else than it is. It would spoil the experience for him.
Projections
How’s that? Because sports are games we play with other people’s bodies. They are projections of complicated human dynamics plunged onto the fantasy of a level playing field.
We stop short of outrightly calling it ‘entertainment’ because it is real enough, and it has to be true or it would not be compelling. Combat sports like the UFC are now on a slippery slope to find that balance.
What can cricket learn from rugby? In a world where much of life is commoditised and commercialised, cricket has to be sure of what it offers that is keeping people loyal and should cater to that as a business enterprise. It has already adjusted its formula with the introduction of the T20 format to accommodate the need for faster games. But as for taking anything else from the apparent rugby formula as it highlights on social media at times, well, that would just not be cricket.
I wish the Proteas the retention of their composure and their cool heads and wish them the best of luck for the rest of the ICC Cricket World Cup. As for the Bokke – moer hulle, always!
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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Image by Lisa scott from Pixabay