Professional sportsmen and women have regretted not “soaking in” the atmosphere and occasion of some of their finest hours. What should have been moments to savour for the rest of their lives disappear in the blink of an eye as they become wrapped up in the details of the competition and their own performance.
Many a debut has been described as a blur in the years afterwards and those same sportspeople tell the youngsters to “enjoy the moment” in the years after, but it seldom helps. You reach the top of your chosen sport by being focused and disciplined. It’s hard to suddenly start smelling the roses along the way and appreciating the crowd.
Playing in a cricket World Cup is a career highlight. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single dissenting voice among the 150 players from 10 countries who will start the tournament in October. Rohit Sharma may have won five Indian Premier League titles with the Mumbai Indians but even he says captaining his country at a World Cup trumps them. Perhaps he’ll change his mind if the hosts fail to reach the semifinals.
Despite a long and protracted departure from OR Tambo on Saturday night, the SA tour party was undeniably in good spirits as they finally boarded the plane to Dubai. And why wouldn’t they be? The first few days are the easiest. What’s not to like about an Emirates lie-flat bed and a 14-hour layover with your own room in the Dubai Marriott? Some even played golf.
The International Cricket Council’s primary role these days is to organise global events rather than administer the global game. And it does so superbly. Every one of those 150 players, as well as the coaches and backroom staff, will receive personalised gifts and other souvenirs, monogrammed towels and the like. It doesn’t matter how many of these events you’ve played in, that stuff still makes you feel “special”.
The squad will pull together even more in the coming days with a couple of warm-up matches against Afghanistan and New Zealand before the opening game between 2019 finalists, England and New Zealand, on October 5 and SA’s opener against Sri Lanka in Delhi two days later. Unless there is an outbreak of food-poisoning or a spate of injuries, Temba Bavuma and his team will be buzzing. “This is why we play the game,” they’ll be telling themselves and each other.
As they were tucking themselves into Business Class, two former Proteas were winning a different trophy on the other side of the world. The Guyana Amazon Warriors, captained by 44-year-old Imran Tahir, beat the Trinbago Knight Riders to win the Caribbean Premier League. Dwaine Pretorius took 4/26 in the final and was the tournament’s leading wicket-taker with 20 at an economy rate of 7.1. Tahir produced figures of 4-0-8-2 in the final and finished second behind Pretorius with 18 at a miserly economy rate of just 6.2.
Despite the pain of the results, Tahir was loath to give up the chance of another World Cup experience. Even after retiring from ODIs, he never actually called time on his T20 International career. He always hoped.
Pretorius is 10 years younger and still in the prime of his career. When he retired from all international cricket two years ago, he movingly described the turmoil of emotions with which the decision was made. It would be a surprise, now, if he did not look at the Proteas squad and wonder whether he could have been in it. He has a winner’s medal and was well paid for his work, but it wasn’t the same.
But that’s the way the game is heading. World Cups are what most players who go freelance will be giving up. The camaraderie of teamship in pursuit of the highest honour. Quinton de Kock will go the same way after 2024’s T20 World Cup in the US and Caribbean, focusing his time on maximising his earnings. He has always been something of an outlier and will no doubt cope with the itinerant lifestyle but the majority will miss the greatest occasions — emotionally as well as literally.
Without the safety of national contracts or the infrastructural support of a full-time base — training, physio, medical, etc — will the future see the world’s best cricketers travelling like the top golf and tennis players? When Novak Djokovic’s agent’s assistant makes arrangements for a tournament, they make 20+ bookings. He travels with a veritable entourage of coaches, masseurs, hitting partners and … a chef, apparently.
No need to worry about all that malarkey as part of a World Cup squad. Everything is provided, embroidered, freshly cut and rolled — with net bowlers and a free lunch. Free everything.
More cricketers will be unable to resist the lure of freelance cash in the years to come, but as the stark realities of life on your own — in a team sport — become obvious, I suspect many will have second thoughts and perhaps even attempt to reverse their decisions. It is all about the money. And it isn’t.
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