STRIKING IT RICH: Let cricket rule over rugby at Christmas

“I can do this.” No, unfortunately for Stormers supporters that wasn’t Clayton Blommetjies speaking to himself before he missed a conversion that a gifted pelican might have been able to kick through the posts to win his team their game against the Bulls, but me psyching myself into the drive home from the north/south derby.

The possibility of a drink at a nearby pub came second to the allure of what awaited at home. Which was a dilemma - watch the massive Guinness Six Nations match between England and France, or the Betway SA20 final between MI Cape Town and the Sunrisers Eastern Cape.

For someone who has always sworn against the shortest format of the sport in favour of test cricket, that it required choice is a compliment to the SA20 to what it has done to pique interest and entertain.

It may be bubblegum, but it is tasty bubblegum. And going to Newlands as a supporter as opposed to being a reporter was particularly enjoyable over the past month, to the extent that on Sunday I woke up feeling a bit bereft. No more SA20 to look forward to for almost a year, and a crying emoji would be inserted here if I was in the mood to cheapen this piece.

Going to Newlands, and the one trip to Paarl in midweek mentioned in the previous edition of this diary, was special not just because taking on the antic disposition of being a supporter allowed me to shout out the inane things that would be unsuitable for a rugby press box.

Most of it culled from what I remember of watching cricket at Kingsmead in the 1980s - “Hit the rubbish”, “You will never get him out!”, “Go big or go home!” Okay, that last one is more 1990s or early noughties.

Needless to say, friends who accompanied me to the cricket squirmed in embarrassment as if I was sitting there wearing a Faf speedo. Or to be more specific, had removed my shorts to reveal my Faf speedo. Don’t worry cricket lovers, that ain’t going to happen, it is for the gym swimming pool.

EARLY SUMMER KICK-OFFS ARE CRAZY

Back to Saturday night and me channelling Jody Scheckter, with mention of that name probably a good indicator of when last I was really passionate about Formula 1, for the drive home. Fortunately the traffic police have their act together in Greenpoint these days, and it was a relatively smooth ride through the traffic via the Helen Suzman Boulevard and onto the N1.

Which wasn’t the case by the way for many people driving into town before the game. Some people of my ken only managed to get to their seats at halftime.

I was wise to it and left for the DHL Stadium more than three hours before kick-off. But those who had less wisdom thought they could leave the Blouberg area two hours before and make it. Not a sausage, unfortunately.

That is something for spectators to think about going forward, particularly if these derby games continue to draw test match crowds, as well as the organisers of the games. 2pm is a really silly time to kick off a rugby match on a Saturday in Cape Town.

And for several reasons. Not the least of them being that rugby has become a summer sport in South Africa. If you want spectators to be comfortable, let alone players to remain healthy, no rugby match should kick off before 5pm anywhere in this country before the end of March.

Fortunately it was Friday that saw 31 degree heat. Saturday was six degrees cooler. But there’d have been a lot of unhappy people, and possibly many Faf speedoes around too, if it had been the other way around.

RUGBY HAS BECOME MORE WATCHABLE

So anyway, let the digression end, and let’s return to the issue at hand - it’s not a journey of Greyhound Bus from Cape Town to Joburg proportions between the stadium and my house. The Nissan Navara does it in just over half an hour even in the traffic. Admittedly wind assisted in the home direction at this time of year.

But the Greyhound might well have been called upon had the cricket not clashed with the rugby. My daughter had tickets for the Wanderers and I now love the SA20 enough to contemplate spending 15 hours on a bus for the privilege of being at a big game.

The choice of travel being about cost as much as not wanting to collide with a summer weather system at 39 000 feet.

Not that the cricket did win out when home was reached. The Six Nations game eventually did take preference, with occasional flicks over to the cricket, just because it was so watchable. And seeing as World Rugby often get brickbats from this direction for their constant meddling with the laws, let’s say that the latest law changes are for the betterment of the sport.

The Vodacom United Rugby Championship derby that took up the first part of the afternoon was both absorbing and highly entertaining. Mistakes were made but I actually thought the handling of players from both teams might have been a bit better than in years past, and it was played at a furious tempo. Jake White said afterwards it was like a test match, and he wasn’t wrong.

The Twickenham game though was next level and it is hard to remember when last I watched an international match that was so absorbing. The French made lots of mistakes, to be sure. And let it be said too, though I may say this in a separate piece later in the week, that the French remain the French.

That is said in the sense that for all the great strides France have made on the rugby field in recent years, they do sometimes still appear a bit suspect temperamentally. If you disagree, tell me which really big games, the real clutch ones that define a season or competition, they have won in recent years.

No, not the World Cup quarterfinal against South Africa. They lost that even if it was by only one point. And no, not the deciding game of that year’s Six Nations either. They lost that to Ireland, and quite comprehensively too.

And last year? Well, Ireland smashed them in the opening game, and it was in France. When they were under pressure for a recovery, they then drew with Italy and were referee assisted in beating Scotland.

France, had they held onto their passes and capitalised on opportunities presented, would have beaten England in this latest match. And by a proverbial mile too. But that’s the issue - they so often just don’t do what is expected of them.

They are not quite as bad as the Proteas at ICC World Cups, or for that matter Ireland with their inability to get beyond the quarterfinal of a RWC, but they do under-achieve.

GATLAND DOES HAVE LOSING FORM SINCE 2019

Fortunately for them their first game in this year’s Six Nations was against Wales. Let’s not talk about Wales here. This isn’t being run in print form, but if it was they’d have to cut down a forest, and I am too green to contemplate that happening, just so Wales’ many challenges can be listed.

What maybe should be snuck in here though is that much though I respect Warren Gatland as a coach, and if you look back you will note he has been one of the historically successful Wales coaches and was good with the British and Irish Lions too, he has had a remarkably poor run since 2019.

That’s referencing his long losing sequence at a time for the Chiefs in New Zealand, the lost Lions series in 2021 as well as his most recent losing sequence with Wales.

Just like losing can become a habit for a team, it can be a habit for a coach too. Although that is probably a reason for Wales to keep Gatland on as at least he is used to losing, which Wales will probably carry on doing for the time being regardless of who coaches them.

If someone like Michael Cheika, actually particularly Chieka, was in charge he’d bring huge entertainment value with his spectacular hissy fits but I also doubt he’d have the patience to stay in the job for longer than a month.

WELL DONE TO CAPE TOWN’S GAUTENG CONTINGENT

The cricket? Well that was interesting too once the Six Nations game was done, and the nerves had settled. Nerves because for once, and this is a rare thing indeed, I did actually want England to win. Just to push France down a peg or two.

The cricket was interesting for several reasons, but one of them was that there were times it appeared to be a home game for Cape Town. Which is understandable, for more than half of the Cape Town team do call the Wanderers home.

At rugby there was some comment from fellow journos about the number of Cape bred players in the Bulls team. In fact the question was put to Jake afterwards, and he answered it as he should have done: “That’s just how modern professional sport works”.

I wondered later on whether the same people who decried the number of Cape educated players in the Bulls rugby team paused to consider the fact so many of the MI Cape Town team’s heroes like Ryan Rickelton, Rassie van der Dussen, Kagiso Rabada, Delano Potgieter, Reeza Hendricks etc actually play for the Lions domestically.

It isn’t something thought about much among football supporters in England. There was a time when Liverpool’s first choice team included just one genuine Scouser in Trent Alexander-Arnold. But when Liverpool win, who among their supporters care that Mohammed Salah is actually from Egypt and that Alisson plays his international football for Brazil?

FORGET ABOUT CHRISTMAS RUGBY

Any suggestion that the nearly 50 000 who pitched at DHL Stadium on Saturday were all passionate Stormers supporters would be very wide of the mark. There were Bulls jerseys and flags very much in evidence around the stadium.

Here’s an admission - when Clayton Blommetjies lined up his attempted match winning conversion, I didn’t bother to look. For me, it was a cinch, a pelican could kick it, so I started working on my match report. After the kick there was a roar from the crowd, and there seemed to be some jubilation in the air, so I just assumed Blommetjies had been on target and the Stormers were in the lead.

It was only in the hold up before what was to be the last restart of the game for the referee to check out an incident on the big screen that I noticed that the scoreboard hadn’t changed. The Stormers were on 32 and the Bulls on 33. That was what the stadium announcer said too. “Hang on a minute, what is going on here?”

The fact of the matter is that passionate though the Stormers supporters were, they might have been outdone in decibels at times by some pockets of the Bulls support. Not that the host support was out-passioned, for that would be wrong. And ultimately it was just a special day out and I am sure one that those there would want to repeat.

The sell out crowd for the game outnumbered the turnout at the last Stormers/Bulls derby in Cape Town by nearly 10 000, and to me that is significant. The previous two Stormers/Bulls derbies hosted at the DHL Stadium were both so-called “Christmas derbies”. In the sense that they took place in the Christmas week.

Some of the local administrators, as well as their counterparts at the URC, got quite excited about the 39 000 crowd that turned up at the last “Christmas derby” and used it as vindication for playing games at a stage of the year many stakeholders, including the players and coaches themselves, feel should be free of rugby.

As John Plumtree put it the last time he was in Cape Town, players are not robots. They have families who they want to spend the Christmas period with. For my money, there should be a break in rugby in this country from mid-December, meaning the second Investec Champions Cup game, to the third Champions Cup game in the second week of January.

Cricket has always been the sport associated with the festive period, starting with the Boxing Day test and for me the end of the holidays has always been whichever happens to be the last day of the New Year test.

Next cricket season there will be no home test matches, and test matches should take priority for that period when there are, but we are hearing that the SA20 will start on Boxing Day. So let that be the primary sporting focus at that time, for the argument that South Africans want Christmas rugby on the basis of turnouts over that period has no validity.

That this game in February was sold out and the last Christmas clash between the same teams not so is an indicator that it is not Christmas rugby that is the draw, but Stormers versus Bulls. And my money, if I have any left after using this expression more than once in the space of a few paragraphs, says that the return derby at Loftus three weeks from now, in other words March, will be sold out too.

If the franchises are not going to lose out financially by having the derbies played at a different time, in other words not at Christmas, then why have them at Christmas? Let Betway20 be the focus until the second weekend of January arrives.

AMERICAN SPORT

Those cricket traditionalists who say the T20 format isn’t cricket aren’t completely wrong, and I am on their side. But then does it have to be cricket?

Given the Newlands experience of the past month, with a real rock concert atmosphere pervading towards the end and after some games, it is something quite different to cricket as we know it - but the skills are something to behold and the razzmatazz, plus the excellent marketing, is at a level I would expect from a sporting event in America.

When it comes to franchise rugby, the recent Stormers games have eclipsed it in terms of turnout, but those heady few weeks in 1999 when Bob Skinstad was captaining the Stormers in their ‘Men in Black’ campaign is still in my mind the benchmark of what a sporting vibe should be.

The closest repeat experience to that was at the Newlands cricket ground during this year’s SA20. If you haven’t experienced it make sure you do later when it all kicks off again later this year.

YOUNGSTERS COMING THROUGH

There are always many youngsters putting up their hands in SA rugby, but the same holds true for cricket.

I helped out with commentary at the youth test between SA-under19 and England under-19 at the WP Cricket Club last week on the CSA Youtube channel and although the local selectors had made five changes that more regular followers of that level weren’t happy with, and there were also star players like Lhu-andre Pretorius and Kwena Mphaka absent to SA20 commitments, the quality on view was impressive.

After being involved in an exciting draw in the first test in Stellenbosch the week before, the SA side lost the second game, but it needs to be seen in context. Many if not most of the England players are contracted to counties and have played quite a bit of the four day format, whereas that isn’t the case for locals coming out of school.

They may have had a bit of exposure to multi-day cricket, but not extensive experience of it.

So the four day games were a great place to start and the hosts acquitted themselves well. They might even have won had they had Mphaka and Pretorius playing for them.

T20 TACTICS CONFUSE ME

Having more of an appetite for the first class game than the fast food format it probably isn’t surprising that I may be a bit behind when it comes to the tactics employed in T20.

Batting Heinrich Klaassen as low and as late in the innings as Durban SuperGiants did confused me no end, so it was pleasing to see the middle order batter come good when he finally did get shifted up in the order to a position where he could face more deliveries and build an innings.

Ditto Dewald Brevis at MI Cape Town and to some extent Tristan Stubbs at the Sunrisers too. On the Brevis line, which obviously MI got away with because they won the competition, it was a personal disappointment when last Sunday in the game against Capitals he only got to bat in the last over of the innings.

I was not alone either. Every time a new batter came out, the people around me in the north stand at Newlands would go into a chorus of “Where is Brevis?”

Cape Town won that game by nearly 100 runs and the back up batsmen all made full use of their opportunity, so it was all good, but it did give me a taste of the disappointment paying spectators may feel when they come to watch specific players who end up not playing at all.

It is understandable though that in the shortest format there is so much emphasis on flexibility. When there are so few balls in an innings, where the short side boundary is does matter more than it would in a longer game, as does who is bowling and whether or not there is a left/right combination at the crease. So it’s ultimately a case of live and learn, which is fun.