Few supporters for Waugh in Kenya

October 9, 2000 by neil manthorp

Neil Man­thorp ‑  09/10/2000

Apart from the deli­cious ten­sion cre­at­ed by the sud­den-death for­mat of the ICC Knock­out tour­na­ment in Nairo­bi, it has been the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet and chat with friends and col­leagues from around the crick­et­ing world that has made it spe­cial so far.

On the sub­ject of the crick­et inci­den­tal­ly, I do not wish to gloat but I feel duty-bound to report the atmos­phere amongst the inter­na­tion­al media dur­ing the India/Australia match.

There were five Aus­tralian media rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the enor­mous and impres­sive media cen­tre, includ­ing The Aus­tralian’s crick­et cor­re­spon­dent Mal­colm Conn (well known to SA crick­et fol­low­ers by now, I think) and for­mer Test play­er David Hookes. Those five men, I assure you, were absolute­ly alone in their sup­port for Steve Waugh­’s team as they slow­ly but sure­ly slid to defeat.

And the rea­son was Steve Waugh him­self. South Africans may be under the impres­sion that Waugh­’s “chok­er” attacks have been aimed over the years at SA teams alone, but that is not the case. He has been fond of remind­ing oppo­si­tion all over the world that “Aus­tralia ris­es to the occa­sion” and “the big match­es are the ones that count.”

Well, not this time. Every­one watch­ing agreed, with­out argu­ment, that he is one of the great­est play­ers of his gen­er­a­tion but an impres­sive col­lec­tion of for­mer Test play­ers were amongst those ask­ing: “So where’s your famous Aus­tralian ‘bot­tle’ now, Steve?”

Sad­ly but not sur­pris­ing­ly much of the talk between crick­et has been — obvi­ous­ly — about cor­rup­tion in the game. Indi­a’s jour­nal­is­tic con­tin­gent is always amongst the friend­liest in the world, and it has been a delight to catch up with them again.

News from that part of the world is that four inter­na­tion­al play­ers are about to be named as hav­ing ‘wealth dis­pro­por­tion­ate to their income’ after the recent tax inves­ti­ga­tions and the inves­ti­ga­tion will then be tak­en from there.

One ques­tion they had for me was: why on earth would the great and ven­er­a­ble Nel­son Man­dela com­ply with Cron­je’s request for a meet­ing at Fancourt?

As I men­tioned in this col­umn a few days ago, my belief is that a major part of Cron­je’s plans for reha­bil­i­ta­tion into South African soci­ety is to make a mas­sive con­tri­bu­tion towards the wel­fare of the less dis­ad­van­taged mem­bers of our country.

Man­de­la’s Chil­dren’s Fund is, I under­stand, a shin­ing exam­ple of how char­i­ty can work effi­cient­ly in SA and Han­sie Cron­je has plen­ty to con­tribute. In every way.