Sharks can bring consolation for Mickey

Proof that the cricket has intruded into the sub-conscious of those of us who write about rugby was provided in a column run on SuperSport Zone earlier in the week.

A sharp-eyed content controller picked it up, and it was changed with the sort of alacrity that the Australians dealt with the Proteas challenge in Johannesburg and Durban. To have Steve Waugh playing on the flank for the Superwrap XV, and not Phil Waugh, would have been enough to drive some of us to drink.

I can completely understand how it happened. A couple of weeks ago someone called Johan Botha sneaked into one of my stories about the Sharks. There was an Andre Botha who captained Natal in the late 1980s and played in the 1990 Currie Cup-winning side, but this was surely not who I was confusing Johann Muller with. Maybe it was understandable though that the spinner and ODI captain made it into my Sharks team, for at the time the other proven leader in the Sharks team, Graeme Smit, had moved onto the bench...

But I digress, which is perhaps unsurprising, for ten of the last 14 days of my life have been spent inert on the couch in a condition that can probably best be described as paralysis. Given this, it was maybe understandable that for much of Tuesday, as the last rites were being administered at Kingsmead, I went into a delusional state.

This entailed sending SMS messages imploring fellow sufferers to remember the late Charles Fortune’s comment, uttered when Adrian Kuiper was unluckily run out in a one day game at the Wanderers two decades ago, that nothing that happens in sport can properly be deemed a tragedy.

I also drew on the former doyen of cricket commentator’s response to an introduction from a studio announcer who, in crossing to him late on the final day of a first class game, expressed the view that the match “looks like it is heading for a boring draw”.

“Oh, I don’t know,” responded Charles, “I wouldn’t call this boring, for what could be finer than being alive and well on such a lovely, clear afternoon and watching cricket...”

Neil Manthorp is the man who writes the cricket columns here, and this is eventually going to get to rugby, but in passing let me say that I always had a horrible feeling that the Proteas’ penchant for doubling the first test of a home series as their warm-up game would finally catch up with them.

You get away with that sort of thing against Pakistan, India and West Indies, and we nearly did against England in 2005, but you are asking for it when you try it at the start of a three test series against Australia.

As Geoff Boycott has often said, the best way for bowlers to get their form is to bowl. With that in mind it concerns me that next Thursday at Newlands is the start of what is effectively the only warm-up match to the series against England in December. There are only limited overs games scheduled for the intervening months.

So to the rugby, and let me not dwell too long on the SMS I sent to a friend early on Saturday morning, when John Smit left the field with blood pouring down his face in Auckland. It went something like this: “Oh dear, there goes Barney. Someone should warn Biff not to bat this afternoon, he is sure to get injured.” Ouch! If I am going to be Nostradamus, I don’t want to have to foretell events such as that one.

Talking of Biff, it was him who said after the triumph in Australia just two months ago that it was the equivalent of the Boks winning the World Cup. Which brings me to my point: If the 1995 Boks, two months after winning the World Cup, had been asked to do it all again, where would they have ended up?

I remember what state most of them were in after that triumph. Few of them played decent Currie Cup rugby again that season, some of them never played decent rugby again, and the Transvaal team, dominated by World Cup players, fell off the planet.

So Tony Greig may have it right: If we are going to have these back-on-back series, turn it into one six match series. In that way everyone stays focused, and it is easier to identify the different smaller battles as a part of the larger war.

Proteas coach Mickey Arthur is an ardent Sharks fan, and maybe he can be cheered by the promise shown by the Sharks over the past few weeks.

My money says that they will make history over the next two weeks by winning both games in Australia.

When they return, they should continue to win, for they will know that when they are playing in Durban they are competing in the same competition they were playing in overseas.

Even in dark times there is usually some consolation somewhere.