Here is a video of South Africa’s most famous active cricketer, taken eight years ago: Fall In Love Again – Laura Wolvaardt
On Sunday I watched the final of the Women’s T20 (20 overs) World Cricket Cup final. I watched it on the big screen of the Sports Bar, a pub in Harbour Road, Kleinmond. We do not have TV at home and anyway I like the Sports Bar even if it is going through a rather bleak period right now. There was only a small crowd in the bar, consisting of whites, coloureds, Indians and black Africans, mainly men but with a few women, wives, girlfriends and bar tenders. I don’t know how representative it was of South Africans, but it certainly contained both sexes and the main race groups. It was most interesting to observe their reactions to the cricket and hear their observations about it.
I had come mainly – well, entirely – to watch Laura Wolvaardt, the captain of the Proteas, the South African team. It makes me feel important to drop names, and since Laura is the only famous person I know, she gives me my only opportunity for doing so. I am friendly with her father, Derik, from working together in nuclear power. I’ve known Laura, if fleetingly, since she was born in 1999 (which gives her a chance of living in three centuries). From an early age, she took a keen interest in cricket. At the age of 13 she played for South Africa’s Under-19 team; at 17, she became the youngest South African cricketer, male or female, to score a century in international cricket; she produced prodigies for South Africa in all three formats of cricket, test, one day and T20. In 2023, she became captain of the Proteas in all three.
T20 cricket is a rather brutal affair. Since the batters have so little time to score, they have to be daring, take chances and hit out, scoring high if lucky, going out early if unlucky. This makes more for excitement than finesse. Some cricket aficionado, a puritan for test cricket, said, “T20 cricket makes clubbing baby seals look artistic”. An unfortunate remark, although you know what he meant. Another way of looking at it is to say that T20 just condenses all the calculations and tactics of test matches into a few tense, thrilling moments. Last year, in South Africa, the Proteas lost to Australia in the world cup final.
The Sports Bar has two big TV screens, one above the main bar, another above an adjacent dining table. The bar lady did not know how to work either. (I never know how to work any TV. Why does everyone have three remotes for one TV set? Only one works and you never know which.) Anyway, her more knowledgeable boozing clients did know, and set up the women’s cricket on the screen above the bar. Then a group of young black Africans came in, stared for a while at the women playing cricket, and asked disapprovingly, “Is this women’s cricket?” They were annoyed, since they wanted to watch a truly African sporting contest, namely Liverpool versus Chelsea. (I had thought that Manchester United was the favourite African team but supporters seemed to have changed their allegiance to Liverpool, the more successful team in recent years.) Somebody set up the other screen for the English soccer.
The cricket began. Sitting at the bar on my right was a large Afrikaner, a loud, friendly man, who seemed very knowledgeable about cricket. It turned out he had played both rugby and cricket at a high, provincial level. He looked more like a rugby player than a cricketer, but so did Kallis I suppose. To my left was a large, friendly, even louder coloured man, equally knowledgeable. Next to him was a large Indian, also friendly, also loud, also knowledgeable. From the start all three took a keen, excited interest in the match, all three took it very seriously and all three were 100% behind the South African women.
There was some sort of altercation between them and the young black men watching the soccer. There was an exchange of words, and then the older coloured man told a younger black man to “watch your fokking manners!”. Everybody laughed and resumed watching sport.
In the semi-finals, the Proteas had beaten, indeed thrashed, Australia, last year’s champions, in a magnificent victory, with Laura scoring 43. The final was against New Zealand. South Africa won the toss and elected to field. I thought the wisdom of this decision might lead to learned discussion by the men at the bar, but it didn’t. The match began, with New Zealand scoring well. The rising star among South Africa’s bowlers is Nonkululeko Mlaba. All the men at the bar acknowledged her skill and acumen. It dawned on me that there was not the slightest trace of racism or even racial preference from any of the men at the bar. They didn’t see Mlaba as black but simply South African, and so to be supported, and very able, and so to be admired. My guess is that the black men watching the soccer would have regarded Laura and Nonkululeko with equal indifference, not because of their skin colours but because they were cricketers.
Another thing I realised was that none of the men at the bar were the slightest bit condescending about the women sports. They didn’t strike me as feminists, and I doubt any of them paid much heed to women’s rights or any of that sort of thing. The just liked sports and didn’t distinguish at all between sportsmen and sportswomen. At the same time, I noticed that none of the women in the pub, including the girlfriends and bar tenders, had the slightest interest in the cricket or indeed in any sport at all. They were also indifferent as to whether the players were men or women; they found them all equally boring. My guess is that Laura has far more male fans than female fans.
She certainly had fans at the sports bar. The coloured man told me beforehand, before he knew I knew Laura, that she was the brightest star in the firmament, the best thing in South African sport. On her South Africa’s fate rested. I told them that I knew her father quite well. They were terribly impressed. The Indian man insisted on buying me a drink because of it. He bought me a glass of red wine, costing R30. I saw the bar lady pouring it in front of me from a five-litre box of “BC Red Wine”. I applaud such openness. In Cape Town, especially Kalk Bay, when you order a glass of the house red, they go into some back room and pour the glass from probably the same sort of five-litre box (I can’t tell the difference) and charge you R70 for it.
All the men next to me were very knowledgeable, by no means my usual experience in watching sport, especially rugby, where few of the fans understand the rules or can tell you why the referee has blown the whistle. Cricket is a very technical game and requires very precise rules, which the men next to me seemed to understand. At one stage the New Zealand batter missed with her bat and the ball struck her body. The coloured man immediately cried out something to Laura 7,000 km away, but Laura seemed to hesitate, pondering something. Finally she made a sort of “T” sign with her arm and her bat, and the umpire made a signal to someone in the stands. “Laura had only one second left!” said my drinking companion, in relief and some exasperation. I didn’t know what he meant but he explained it to me. Today in cricket, as in soccer and rugby and, crucially, in tennis, cameras and electronic sensors can record far more accurately than the human eye the exact place where the ball hit the ground or whether the soccer player was offsides or whether the bat nicked the ball or, in this case, whether the batter was out for leg-before-wicket (LBW). In simplified form, LBW occurs when the ball would otherwise have struck the wicket but instead strikes the batter’s body. In this case all three of my companions thought that the New Zealander was LBW, but the umpire did not raise her finger. They told me that each team has only two calls for a “Player Review”, where the captain of the relevant team can ask the umpire on the ground to ask the “Third Umpire” in the stand to look at the camera recording of the ball. Apparently, the captain has only 15 seconds from the delivery to make the call. Laura only made it in the 14th second. The beer drinkers were right. The camera showed the New Zealander was out.
But New Zealand continued to bat well, piling on the runs. Towards the end, they could afford to take chances and blast the ball. The only six of the match came from Maddy Green. My companion offered me a technical analysis of the strategic error of the offending South African bowler. “Dit was ‘n kak bal”, he added by way of supplementary explanation.
New Zealand got 158 runs, a high total but by no means unbeatable, especially by batters of Laura’s calibre. As well as being captain, a daunting task, Laura is also an opening batter, equally daunting. She began well, with smooth, calm confidence. My companions applauded her every run, recharging their glasses all the time. I notice they didn’t offer her any advice. They obviously trusted her judgement. After 35 minutes, South Africa was doing well, with slightly more runs than New Zealand after the same time. Then Laura was caught at 33. There was a low sigh in the pub. I think everyone then knew we were doomed. “We can still win”, said someone, but he did not sound sure of himself. My loud companion became quieter and soon predicted accurately that we were lost. Amelia Kerr was outstanding, the commanding presence in the New Zealand team. After Laura went, our leading batters fell quickly, nobody getting more than 20. Our final score: 126. New Zealand were world champions. We had lost another final.
What happened? The loss seemed to be psychological. Is South Africa depending too much on Laura? If so, I am sure this is not her intention at all. She is not bossy or over-bearing. Quite the opposite, she seeks to lead by encouragement and co-operation. I cannot explain what happened. Perhaps we should not bother much about it and just think about winning the next championship without being obsessed about it.
Laura was named top scorer in the tournament, captain of the tournament and captain of an imaginary world T20 team. But South Africa had lost the championship to New Zealand. Laura acknowledged our defeat with her normal grace and dignity and gave high praise to New Zealand. She is a remarkable woman. Some sporting champions are very good at their chosen sport but hopeless at everything else, including intellectual and academic endeavour. The outstanding example is Muhammad Ali, maybe the greatest heavyweight of all time. He not only was dazzlingly fast, with lightning reflexes and wonderful balance, but he had a brilliant boxing brain, as he showed when he outsmarted the younger, stronger, harder-hitting George Foreman in their famous world championship encounter in Zaire in 1974. But Ali had an IQ of 83, almost at mentally retarded level, and was first refused entry into the US armed forces because of it. Laura is quite different. She excelled at everything: academic, artistic and sporting. She was top of her class at her Milnerton school and got seven distinctions in matric. She composed music and sang her own songs, as you can see in the video in the opening sentence of this article, when she was still at school. She remains as I have known her from the age of about five: quiet, confident, self-contained, demure, sensible.
Her fans at the Sports Bar are anything but quiet and demure but they all salute her. Laura and Nonkululeko and the rest of her team give high hope for South Africa. But so do the loud, friendly, liberal, foul-mouthed boozers at the Kleinmond Sports Bar. I left that evening depressed at the Proteas’ loss, but cheered by the evening. A bit too cheered, I was told, when I staggered home. I was on my bicycle, in case any traffic officer is reading this.
[Photo: Screenshot D&P Cricket Video]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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