Can’t keep a good man down

November 10, 2002 by neil manthorp

Neil Man­thor­p  — 10/11/2002

For every offi­cial man-of-the-match award there is always an emo­tion­al one for the man that earns the great­est respect from the crowd and his team mates even if he did­n’t pro­duce the match-win­ning performance.

After South Africa’s three day vic­to­ry over Sri Lan­ka at the Wan­der­ers on Sun­day the sec­ond award was far tougher to adju­di­cate than the first.

Nobody could seri­ous­ly doubt Jacques Kallis’ mer­it as the offi­cial recip­i­ent of the title but there were three con­tenders for the “He’s the boy, give him a cig­ar” award. The out­sider was Graeme Smith, bull­ish, aggres­sive bat­ting that delight­ed the crowd on Sat­ur­day and four sting­ing catch­es in the slips. Good, but no cigar.

It’s just pos­si­ble that Andrew Hall has the biggest heart in South African crick­et and now that he does­n’t have the biggest waist­line he’s look­ing more and more like a gen­uine, inter­na­tion­al class crick­eter. “He cer­tain­ly knows his way around a plate of food,” Rod­ney Ontong joked dur­ing a radio com­men­tary stint, “but he’s worked incred­i­bly hard on his fit­ness and now his body is in prime con­di­tion. He can bowl all day if he needs to.”

Bat­ting at num­ber nine and oper­at­ing as the fifth mem­ber of a seam attack presents lim­it­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties to shine but ‘Hal­ly’ made the very, very best of the chances that came his way with an impor­tant innings of 31 and an aston­ish­ing match analy­sis of 5–20 includ­ing sec­ond innings fig­ures that read like a typ­ing error — 2–1‑1–3!

Selec­tion con­venor Omar Hen­ry admit­ted the East­erns all rounder had basi­cal­ly forced the selec­tors to pick him through sheer weight of per­for­mances that con­clud­ed with him being named Super­sport Series Play­er of the Year. The infa­mous mug­ging and shoot­ing inci­dent which he sur­vived a cou­ple of years ago has made every match he plays that much more appre­ci­at­ed by his sup­port­ers. Good Hall, very good. But the cig­ar goes elsewhere.

Before this sea­son began 37-year-old Steve Elwor­thy spoke to nation­al selec­tor Pat Sym­cox about his fierce deter­mi­na­tion to prove that his advanced years meant noth­ing in terms of per­for­mance. Sym­mo, who was also play­ing Test crick­et at the age of 37, sim­ply smiled. “You’re talk­ing to the wrong man if you’re wor­ried about age. And the selec­tion con­venor made his Test debut aged 40!” Sym­cox laughed.

Ever since then Elwor­thy has played his crick­et with a clear mind, safe and reas­sured in the knowl­edge that he will be judged on per­for­mance and per­for­mance alone. Three years after the last of his two Tests, he was back in SA’s pre­mier XI.

At the begin­ning of the 1999 World Cup a 33-year-old Elwor­thy told me he was going to “live and breath every moment because I’m not going to play in anoth­er World Cup!” Now there are just three months to go and Elwor­thy is close — very close.

The Wan­der­ers ‘cig­ar award’ there­fore goes to him, but if he makes the World Cup squad of 15 I’ll per­son­al­ly buy him an entire box of Cuba’s finest.