"But I Digress ..." (24 page)

Superstition in sport

BUSINESS DAY, 2 MARCH 2000

I
T TOOK ME
a long time to realise that other people have this power too. For years I shouldered the burden in silence, fancying it mine alone – this terrible power to win or lose sporting events, merely by the way I watch them.

Superstition is common in sport. This is probably because the world of sport is itself a charmed circle, separate from the laws of logic and humdrum causality that plague our workaday lives. It is a place of romance and dreams, of implausibilities and impossibilities, rewards and punishments that follow not the narrow rules of consequence, but grander principles that the mortal heart can only dimly comprehend. Sport is the business of the gods, and their ways are dusky. The bounce of the ball, the rub of the green – the fingers of the gods are upon all of them.

Many sportsmen, I know, have their own rituals. They have lucky socks, routines for getting kitted up, set routes for driving to the ground. But I do not so much care what the players do. The players are but pawns, cyphers at the mercy of more powerful force fields. And those force fields are directed by you and me at home. Well, me, anyway.

I only appreciated the full weight of my responsibility after South Africa's readmission to world sport. The 1992 Cricket World Cup, to be precise. Every match I watched at my friend Mark the Shark's house – those long dark hours of coffee and cigarettes – we won. Every match I watched at our friend Doctor Teddy's house – a charming experience, with plenty of finger snacks and liquor and chops on the Weber for breakfast – we lost. And not to teams that should have beaten us, either: New Zealand and Sri Lanka and, of all things, England.

That troubled me, but it was only a year or so later, sitting on Doctor Teddy's couch watching Theo van Rensburg, the biggest choker since Isadora Duncan's scarf, slicing a last-minute penalty at Ellis Park that would have beaten the French, that I suddenly realised what I was doing to the country I love. Luck follows inscrutable rules and apparently I was breaking one of them. Came the 1995 Rugby World Cup, I avoided Doctor Teddy's home like the very plague. I do not think I need remind you of the result.

I am used to winning test matches for my nation, and I am resigned to receiving no credit. There is a chair I sit in when we need a wicket, a shirt I wear for matches against the All Blacks, another for matches against anyone else. But even I am not as passionate as a certain friend of mine in Cape Town.

A caution: The following anecdote will illustrate the reach and stamina of one fan's superstition, but it is not for small children or ladies of delicate sensibility. If you fall into either category, kindly avert your gaze for the next 200 words. Very well: it was the early 1990s, and it was cricket season. In the pub after a one-day international, I ran into a fellow named Jeremy, who looked unusually gaunt and hollow-eyed. “Tired?” I asked.

He sighed weakly. “Tim Shaw,” he said.

The story was gruesome. Lanky left-arm spinner Tim Shaw was enjoying a rare appearance in the SA team. Jeremy, with one eye on the game, was relaxing at home and had taken to – there is no more polite way of saying this – pleasuring himself. It was a tense match, SA had posted a low score, the opposition were scoring freely. Then Tim Shaw came on, and immediately bowled a maiden. Jeremy stopped pleasuring himself. Shaw's next delivery was pulled for four. Jeremy started again. Dot ball. Jeremy realised what he had to do.

“I didn't stop till he stopped,” said Jeremy. “He bowled all 10 overs on the trot. With a drinks break in between.”

“And from the other end?” I asked.

Jeremy shuddered. “Fanie de Villiers. I don't want to talk about it.”

Nor did I. And you have my word, I never will again.

The day after Hansie was accused

BUSINESS DAY, 13 APRIL 2000

I
F HANSIE CRONJÉ
is guilty, we might as well all go home, tell our children there is no Father Christmas and start watching WWF wrestling. If Hansie Cronjé is guilty, I might as well be a lawyer.

In 1992 the SA cricket team were playing in the World Cup in Australia. The matches started shortly before midnight and carried on till the pearly half-light of coffee and alarm clocks. At the same time I was writing final law exams. On the morning SA were to play England in the semi-finals, I was scheduled to write a four-hour law exam. If the match ended on time, I would be able to make it from my friend Mark the Shark's house to campus (by taxi and on foot) to start writing.

I need scarcely remind you what happened that day. SA were batting second. First there was one rain delay, then there was another. “If you leave now,” said Mark the Shark, “you can make it for the exam.”

On the screen, Dave Richardson and Brian McMillan were squinting at the skies, willing it to stop raining. Peter Kirsten chewed his nails. In the background Hansie loomed darkly, his eyebrows knitted like cumulonimbus. I stayed.

We lost the match but I never regretted my decision. If I had left, I would not have deserved to feel a part of the team. I would not have been able to say, for the next eight years, “
We're
playing Australia tomorrow”, rather than “
They're
playing Australia tomorrow”.

During the eight years that have passed since – years I have spent happily not being a lawyer – Hansie has come to represent all that was good about feeling a part of South African cricket. As much as Fanie de Villers in the Sydney test of 1992, it was Hansie's miraculous pick-up, turn and throw from the boundary to run out Alan Border returning for a third that set up the SA win. It was the birth of Hansie's slog-sweep against Shane Warne in 1993 and 1994 that made us realise the fat boy did not walk on water. It was Hansie's bludgeoned 80-odd on the last day of the 1998 Centurion test match against Muralitheran and Sri Lanka that showed us how to win, and win well.

In my household, Hansie has become an untouchable: not in the Indian sense, but in the Elliot Ness, crime-busting incorruptible sense. If the other three are guilty it will be a source of shame; if Hansie is guilty, it will be a source of unimaginable pain. As I write this, we have had no further news. There is a news conference scheduled for tomorrow. If Hansie is guilty, neither South African sport nor the game of cricket will ever be quite the same again. Please, Hansie, say it isn't so.

Olympics 2000: A lesson from chess

BUSINESS DAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2000

T
HE SUPERSTARS OF
the athletics world jetted in to Sydney this week, flexing their contracts and sponsorships, slipping on their zillion-rand running shoes, specially designed by evil-genius bio-nuclear technicians in top-secret subterranean lairs hidden inside the hollowed-out slopes of a Swiss Alp. Meanwhile, I sat on an aeroplane beside a young sportsman who will probably never make a cent from his sport, but who trembled with the kind of enthusiasm that burns like a torch.

I was flying from Lusaka to Johannesburg, and I had the privilege of being seated beside the Zambian youth chess champion, a handsome boy of 14 who stared at the clouds with wide eyes and saved his pine-scented moist towelette to take home to show his mother. He was in transit to a tournament in Uruguay, of all places, and he was so excited at being in an aeroplane that he could scarcely concentrate on the games. I insisted we play on a small magnetic chess set. With one eye and most of his mind directed out the window, he beat me two out of three games. The third ended in stalemate, largely because I swopped the pieces around while he was in the bathroom.

He was reading a thin pamphlet, handwritten and photocopied and stapled together. It was titled
Chess Etiquette
, and it gave instruction on how to be a courteous player: to shake hands before the game, to smile and congratulate your opponent if you lose, to thank him if you win. “Do not shout or cry,” it commanded sternly. He sat with his eyes closed, repeating the words softly to himself, determined to forget nothing.

I told him he seemed an extremely polite young man, and that I did not think he had anything to worry about. He looked at me seriously and replied that no member of his family had ever travelled out of Zambia. He said: “My mother is proud that I am playing chess. But she says she will only be truly proud when I have returned and my coach tells her I have behaved myself well.”

“Do you think you'll win?” I asked him. He just looked at me blankly and shrugged, as though the question had never cropped up before.

Over the next two weeks my hopes and thoughts will be with the South African team in Sydney, and I shall be rooting for gold with the loudest of them, but a large part of my heart will be with a small boy in Uruguay who still believes that honour weighs more than gold.

Of course, there will be no chess players at the Olympics. Nor will there be bridge players or snooker teams, despite impassioned representations by both codes. They have been rebuffed as not sufficiently Olympian. It seems at first glance to make sense – the Olympics are a celebration of physical achievement and excellence.
Higher
,
faster
,
stronger
, says the motto, not “Slower, and more thoughtful”. It is not for nothing that there are no ancient Greek statues of naked men playing cards. Still, it is hard to tell quite what the qualifications for sporting status may be. What in the world makes synchronised swimming a sport? Why was tug-o-war considered a sport worthy of the Olympics between 1900 and 1920, and then not any more?

Once you start such questions, it is hard to stop. Why was cricket sufficiently Olympian to be played in the Paris games of 1900 (the Frenchies walking away with a proud silver medal), and not in the 100 years since? Ditto croquet, for that matter. Even golf had but two brief Olympic appearances, in 1900 and 1904, and now languishes in dignified Olympic isolation. It is all very peculiar.

But among all the great mysteries of sport qualification, there are some that defy all attempts at explanation. How did the Olympic organisers come to choose Town Planning as an Olympic event, between 1912 and 1948? Who thought it would be a good idea to include Musical Composition in 1928, 1936 and 1948? And if you were at the Athens games in 1896, please write and tell me: What in the world is the 100m Freestyle for Sailors?

Olympics 2000: Perspective down under

BUSINESS DAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 2000

T
HERE IS SOMETHING
soothing about watching the Olympic Games. It is disappointing, of course, that SA is taking such a caning on the medals table, but it is a gentle regret that I experience, not the agonies of personal investment. The psychic well-being of the nation is not on the line with each fresh event, and that is both an unfamiliar and a weirdly relaxing feeling.

That is not simply because most of our top athletes are trained and based overseas. (The drama of Penny Heyns failing to repeat her Atlanta double is really a showdown between her current training regime in Canada and her previous training regime in the USA. All we contributed was the flag.) Part of it is because the vastness of it all puts things in perspective. The stage is so big and there are so many players – rich ones like America and Australia, poor ones like Poland or Pakistan or us – that one's emotions take their proper places. It is right and proper that the joy of winning should be many times more intense than the disappointment of not winning. I imagine that this is what watching sport might once have felt like, before money and television and the manic compulsions of defensive nationalism.

All in all, Sydney is putting on a pretty good show. The opening ceremony was impressive and even entertaining, if you enjoy watching gangs of sexually ambiguous construction workers tap-dancing. As it happens, we do not, down at the Chalk 'n Cue, but we were kept happy by Keith Quinn and John MacBeth, the two Australian commentators. Keith and Johnno should be compulsory listening for every South African tempted to grumble about Quirk or Bladen.

“Those are construction workers,” said Keith during an especially vigorous outbreak of dancing, “you can see their hard hats.”

“That's right, Keith,” agreed John, “construction workers built a lot in this country. They built the roads and the bridges.”

Keith was not about to leave it at that. “They also built the buildings, John,” he chipped in.

“That's right, Keith, they did,” agreed John generously.

The ceremony had started with several dozen Australians on horseback. It was a time of strong emotions. How we laughed when Keith declared: “It is so appropriate that the ceremony should start with the sound of hoofs.” How we cheered when the riders formed four perfect Olympic rings and one squiggly Olympic amoeba that wriggled and undulated before finally resolving itself into a kind of Olympic oval. How we nodded in grave agreement when John reminded us: “Horses were very important in the early days. They enabled people to travel further than if they were without horses.”

I don't know if Keith and Johnno were the swimming commentators, but the best entertainment of the first week was waiting for the reaction as it became increasingly evident that Ian Thorpe was losing the 200m freestyle final. I have nothing against Ian Thorpe, who seems a nice enough lad, if a little big in the foot area. It was the Aussie triumphalism that was difficult to stomach. “He's the greatest thing in the water!” the commentators bellowed. “The Carl Lewis of the pool! No, faster than Carl Lewis! And such a humble boy!”

As he was beaten into silver by Pieter Hoogenband, I leaned closer to my screen. Would they lapse into silence? Would they apologise? They barely broke stride. “And Thorpie's the first to congratulate the Dutch swimmer! What a gentleman!”

Olympics 2000: God needs an off-season too

BUSINESS DAY, 28 SEPTEMBER 2000

E
VERY TIME A
large aeroplane plunges into the sea or accidentally reverses into a tall building, someone pops up a few days later, eager to tell a reporter they were booked on that flight, and that only a nudge from the hand of a merciful and inscrutable God saved them from the big plunge.

“God put that traffic jam on the way to the airport to stop me catching that flight,” they say, or: “If God hadn't given me a heart attack on Wednesday morning, I would have been flying on Wednesday evening.”

I have a relative who flies frequently, and through a combination of bad timing and alcohol abuse, misses at least three out of every five flights. “God is keeping me from dying on those flights,” she says.

“But those flights have all landed perfectly safely and on time,” we point out.

“Yes, but one day they won't, and I'll have been saved,” she insists, reaching for a miniature bottle of rum.

There is a family friend who each morning prays that the traffic lights on the way to work will all be green. “But what about people in the cross traffic?” I once asked. “Are they all sinners?”

She eyed me sternly. “One shouldn't presume to understand God's plans,” she said.

I mention all this to illustrate in some small way my sense of wonder at the boundless capacity of certain individuals to persuade themselves that their god arranges the minute details of the universe to suit them. It is a form of humbleness that conceals a staggering vanity. “God's plan was that I swim this heat for Him today,” said Penny Heyns after suffering the equivalent of a Concorde engine failure during the 200m breaststroke last week.

In His infinite subtlety, Penny was suggesting, God had woven a plan that required her to finish 20th in the qualifying rounds. After winning gold four years ago, rather less subtly, she declared God made her swim for His greater glory. Perhaps this time God made her swim just to show He knew how to lose gracefully.

My position, if I have not made it clear, is that I no more want to know details of an athlete's faith than I want to know who he or she votes for, or what movies they like watching. International sport is fraught enough without making it an arena for a kind of muscular jihad in which various denominations battle out a theology that seems to imply Jesus Christ is a swimmer and rugby player, the Prophet Mohammed plays squash and hockey, and the Buddha favours table tennis.

According to Joost van der Westhuizen's cosmogeny, his god was sufficiently exercised by his rugby career to make sure he won the Currie Cup, but only gave him third in the World Cup. More baffling, at least two SA athletes gave thanks to their god this week for allowing them to honour Him by finishing sixth and ninth respectively. Werner Botha – 800m – was perhaps the most puzzling: “I'm not disappointed,” he beamed. “God willing, it wasn't my day.”

Silver-medal swimmer Terence Parkin, by contrast, perhaps working on the principle that God helps those who help themselves to lucrative endorsement contracts, was rather more swift to talk about the motivating powers of his pre-race McDonald's burger. Maurice Greene spread his glory evenly and sometimes interchangeably between God and Nike.

It all makes me a little anxious. I begin to see evangelists everywhere. What was the deeper significance of Cathy Freeman's hooded bodysuit? Is she really an Amish sprinter, the hood a kind of aerodynamic bonnet? I suppose, though, that the Olympics are, of all athletic occasions, the right place for declarations of religious fervour. The original games, after all, had athletes competing for the glorification of the great god Zeus. That, plus the gold for winning, of course.