Captain stops at nothing for team

Graeme Smith speaks as much about "passion" today as he did when he took over the leadership of the national team in the fall-out from the disastrous World Cup campaign of four years ago. He remains as committed to South African cricket as he was four years ago and, fortunately, he is also in tremendous batting form at the moment. But that's not all.

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Ever since he was overlooked for Gauteng Schools - never mind the SA schools side for which he should have been selected back in the mid 1990s - Smith has been driven and motivated, in part, by anger. And some say that his red-blooded commitment to the cause and willingness to lead from the front is at its most productive when there is a little hostility thrown into the mix.

The good news now is that, after a year in which Smith himself admitted that he had "grown up a little bit" and "naturally matured", the smouldering side of the South African captain has returned.

That it has been inspired by the media, or his perception of the media, or even his perception of what he thinks the media may have been saying or writing about him, is neither here nor there. It doesn't matter what is fuelling Smith's fire, just as long as he is 'driven' to scoring runs, being the best captain he can be, and to winning.

No doubt there are people who could stir up a debate on the merits and demerits of using words like "crap" in press conferences televised into millions of homes, but personally I think that's comparable to raising the debate about the Springboks best flyhalf to that of global warming. Besides, 'crap' is simply a nickname for Thomas Crapper, the inventor of the flushing toilet. Frankly, the word 'toilet' is more insulting than 'crap'.

Anyway, Smith's perception is that people have accused his team of being 'divided' and he is very angry about it. It is not clear who said his team was divided, or in which organ of what medium, but it would appear reasonably clear from developments over here in Grenada that the column which preceded this one is among the 'guilty' pieces of writing.

As many times as I reread tha column, I cannot find the word "divided" anywhere. And although I never specifically said there were 'problems', I did suggest that not everybody was happy and I used words like 'whingeing' and 'sniping' and I suggested that some hard questions needed to be asked at the de-briefing sessions which have become such a successful part of the Arthur/Smith 'way'.

What I didn't make clear was that bitching, sniping and getting on each others nerves is as natural as using Mr Crapper's fine invention and sleeping badly when you've been away from home in the company of the same group of people, and in their company 12 hours a day, for six weeks. Especially when the last two of those weeks are spent in an unfamiliar environment with limited recreational options and incessant, unrelenting rain.

Oddly enough, and I'm sure this thought has barely ever occurred to Smith's players, the media here in the Caribbean are in a similar situation. Altogether, with photographers news crews and radio people, we number 17. We get on each other's nerves. The smallest little things, like a repetitive sniff, can leave you dreading the company of one of your colleagues, even for a couple of minutes. Never mind the professional jealousies.

We always try to solve or resolve issues before they become a problem, but if we do have a bust-up, we make sure we sort it out, whether it's over a beer in the evening or a coffee in the morning, or both. And that is all I was suggesting Smith's players did. And I asked if a couple of specific issues might, possibly, be on the agenda. Every one of those issues was suggested to me by members of the 'greater' Proteas squad. From time to time all players make the mistake of believing that journalists "make stuff up". If we did that, however, we would lose our jobs quicker than many of Smith's players would lose theirs after half dozen matches without a wicket or a run to show for their efforts.

This national captain is a national asset. Despite his instinctive tendency to rub fur the wrong way and to ruffle feathers, he still remains an instinctive and inspirational leader and absolutely the right man for the job. Nobody could remotely seriously question his status and his importance to the team and its fate.

No doubt there will be a few more days of media-resentment to come and, despite that making our job more difficult and therefore detracting from the quality of World Cup coverage our readers and listeners deserve, it doesn't matter a jot provided Smith remains focused and South Africa progress beyond the semifinals of this tournament.

And it mostly doesn't matter because Smith has never been a man to hold grudges and, sooner rather than later he will have a chuckle about Guyana and happily admit that his squad were severely pissed off (acceptable language courtesy of Thomas C.) The fact that they were not happy, combined with an embarrassing performance and humiliating defeat to Bangladesh, led me to suggest that they regroup - and quickly.

It really wasn't, and isn't, that big a deal.