At the FPA Africa Blog

In the long process of restoring normalcy to my parambulating life I am back to regular posting at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa blog. Today I put up two posts. One on the passing of South African cricket legend Basil D'Oliviera, the other on the elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I thank you for checking them both out.

The Sporting Closet

A prominent English cricket player, Steven Davies, recently announced that he is gay. Davies is 24 and is likely to be a prominent player at both the county and the national level for years to come, so this is a really important step. He follows Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas, who came out in the last couple of years.

The question remains: when will an active male in a major team sport in the United States follow suit? Note that the question is not "when will there be a gay male athlete in a major team sport in the United States?" There is absolutely no doubt that there has been and that there are closeted gay men in the Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, and MLS. But that step is a huge one, and while we can hope that today's athletes would handle it, it would only take one or two not to for the situation to become virtually untenable in a machismo-laden locker room.

I asked my students about this in my Global Sports History class this semester and they made the sage point that whoever did it would have to be a very, very good player. The 53rd guy on and NFL roster or the mop-up guy in the bullpen almost certainly could not do it. I'd like to think we are ready for it. But I fear that we are not. Still, Steven Davies and Gareth Thomas provide hope.

The best hope is that someday gay athletes will not be a big deal. But we are not there yet.

Raising the Ashes

Kudos to England's cricketers, who wrested The Ashes Urn from the dastardly Aussies. I was in Oxford for the start of the semi-annual clash in 2005, which England took in historic fashion, inasmuch as they had gone nearly two decades between Ashes wins. They then pissed it away the next time the two sides met the next year, getting humiliated by losing all five tests to the hosts. But this time they held firm, setting a nasty standard of 546 for the Aussies to chase. The visitors fell short by 197 runs and England rejoiced.

The Ashes

In honor of the ongoing Ashes, the semi-annual series of test matches pitting Australia against England (I compare it to Springbok-All Black rugby clashes -- in any given year there might be bigger or more important matches, but rarely, and the intensity and history is incomparable) the Times Literary Supplement looks back at a 1951 review of four books on the 1950-1951 Ashes series, which Australia won 4-1.

This year England is up 1-0 (the first test in Cardiff ended in a draw, a result that would be perplexing to most Americans, but that simply ratchets up the tension in a test series) heading into the third test at Edgbaston in Birmingham. I was in England in 2005 for the bulk of the historic Ashes in which England ultimately prevailed. An England win in the Ashes is pretty rare, yet it looks as if the hosts might be in position to pull off a second one in the quadrennium.

At the FPA Africa Blog (Self Indulgence Alert)

After something of a lull after my trip to South Africa, I am back up and running at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog where I have addressed issues ranging from Nelson Mandela's birthday (and the burgeoning Mandela industry surrounding the great man) to corruption in Kenya, political division in Mauritania, crackdowns on free speech in Gambia, questioning a particular criticism of South Africa's approach to AIDS, the enormous balls on the despots in Khartoum, the start of the Tri Nations, and perhaps my favorite, great cricket insults. Here is a sample of the last:

Eddo Brandes, the chicken farmer who batted at 11 for Zimbabwe, was surviving in entirely haphazard fashion.

The exasperated bowler wandered down the pitch and drolly asked: “Eddo, why are you so fat?” Brandes promptly replied: “Because every time I make love to your wife, she gives me a biscuit.” [My guess is that this one has been cleaned up for public consumption!]

and:

Ian Botham could always give as good as he got. When he came to the crease Aussie wicketkeeper Rod Marsh said cheerfully: “How’s your wife and my kids?”

Botham is said to have replied: “The wife’s fine. The kids are retarded.”

As I wrote to conclude that post, "Hey, it doesn’t all have to be coups and corruption and politics."

Please go check it all out.

Cricket Chirping in the US

Over the years I've really come to like cricket. I don't claim to understand the game anywhere near as well as I do, say, rugby, a game I played in South Africa and that I feel I have a pretty good grasp on both in terms of the play on the pitch and also understanding teams and the international game (especially from the the professional and international vantage point of South Africa). Cricket is extraordinarily complex, the scoring system is far from straightforward, and any game that can take five days to play (in its most traditional, purist version) inevitably has its share of nuances.

I am nonetheless skeptical of (though also pleased with) the attempts to bring the game to the United States. Ours is a country of sporting xenophobia. Americans don't understand cricket or rugby, and so tend to mock it, even though they are among the most played team sports in the world -- cricket is probably the second-most popular team sport across the globe behind soccer and rugby cannot be too far behind, though baseball and basketball also have a substantial global footprint. When these international sports -- and I include what most of the rest of the world calls football -- garners any attention on Sports Center, for example, the odds are good that the mention will be both fleeting and mocking. Cricket and rugby almost certainly will never make enormous strides in part because of this sporting xenophobia, and in part because rugby is too much like American football, cricket too akin to baseball.

Still, there are some signs that cricket may well at least enter the fringe in the United States. There is an active and growing cricket community at American colleges that hopes to grow the sport here. USA Cricket is active and is growing. Manny Ramirez even took a few swings from a bowler in an effort to promote DirecTV's new cricket coverage. And a new version of the game, 20-20, represents at least in part an effort to bring a faster-paced version of the game to American audiences (despite the unfortunate Mark Saranford connections).

I'll be happy if someday I can catch international test cricket on my cable. Cricket is a very difficult game to follow in the United States, and I'd be happier if I could just watch the occasional mach (and if I could catch rugby even more regularly).

World Cup Cricket: South Africa v. England

As I type South Africa is running down England in their World Cup Cricket Super Eight match. This is the game I have been waiting for since the Super Eight fixtures were announced, and as the weeks have passed it grew more and more clear that the South Africa-England competition would be huge and probably would decide the last spot in the Championship round of four. Given my affiliation with both South Africa and England, these are the two teams for which I root in international cricket, but my heart is always with South Africa, especially in cricket, soccer, and rugby.

England won the toss, chose to bat first, and from the outset were in trouble. To make a not-so-long story short, the South Africa bowling attack overwhelmed the hapless Brits, and South Africa put England all out at a pathetic 155. Now South Africa is at-bat and their attack, which has been lethargic for nearly the whole tournament, is clearly energized by the blood in the tank. They currently stand at 108-1 after 13 overs, which is, for you neophytes, an absolute ass-kicking. They could, at their current pace, win this before the 20th over and almost certainly will have it by the 25th, which is the halfway point for an at-bat in a One Day International, and with several, possibly 7 or 8, wickets to spare. I have to assume that this will go down as a historically embarrassing loss for the English.

If you act quickly you might be able to catch the remaining over-by-over coverage here.

Update: South Africa indeed did get it done with a whopping 29.3 overs to spare, winning by nine wickets in a thrashing. Australia looms for the Saffies, but if they play a complete match like they did today they will be a threat to nay team in the world. And for the record, I think South Africans and Brits are united in their loathing of the Aussies.

Cricket: Semi-Live

The Cricket World Cup is into their Elite Eight phase. As I type this Sri Lanka is batting against South Africa. The Guardian is providing virtually live over-by-over coverage, pretty much live blogging. Sri Lanka is currently at 162-5.

Here is Andy Bull's preview for the match:

It's time to pick a side, to decide how you like your cricket. Here's the choice: on the one hand you've got the brutal, bullying and clinically efficient South Africans. They're all muscular fast bowlers and straight-batted big-hitters, staring you down or knocking you out of the way. Or, you've got the Lankans: a craftier team, with more guile and more joy about their game, they may irritate you with their incessant on-field enthusiasm, but they'll charm you too. Brawns or brain folks?

The thing is this match dosn't have an underdog. These two teams have played each other 44 times, and won 21 each. In World Cups they've met three times, won one each and had one tie. On neutral venues? 8 times, four wins each. For all that, they couldn't be more different.

Statistics aside - I never was much of a one for stats - there is a lot of bad blood between these two teams. South Africa cost the Sri Lankan cricket board $12m last year when they pulled out of a three-match series in Colombo because of the security threat. South Africa themselves will still be scarred by Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara's stand of 624, a record in first-class cricket, set just last year.

South Africa is almost inarguably the greatest side never to have won a World Cup and this year provides perhaps their best opportunity yet.

You can also check out what could be an exhilerating finish as the West Indies pursue Australia's run total of 323 here.

Update: What a peculiar match so far. Sri Lanka was rolling, with a national one-day record after 6 wickets, and then in their last overs they gave up 4 wickets on 8 balls, finishing at 209. South Africa is on to bat after the break and after scoring one run, give up a wicket themselves. South Africa needs a reachable (assuming they protect their wickets a little better than they have at the beginning of their time in the stump) 210 to win. As of right now they are 5-1 and need 203 from 47 overs.

Update Part Deux: Holy boerewors! In one of the truly great finishes, South Africa barely ekes out a 210-9 to win by the slimmest of margins. Epic. South Africa shows it can close out a tight game and Sri Lanka shows that after putting up 209 it can almost hold off one of the best teams in the world.

South African Cricket Answers the Race Question

One of the myriad arenas in which South Africa has had to reconcile its apartheid past with its multi-racial present is in the realm of sport. Though under normal circumstances sports represent the ultimate meritocracy, for so long African athletes had no chance to compete or develop at the highest levels that some form of affirmative action program was necessary and just. As the Proteas head to the West Indies for the cricket World Cup, a competition for which South Africans are optimistic, SAPA reports that the program is showing progress to the point where targets for nonwhite playersd will no longer be necessary in the near future. The Proteas have seen the emergence of a legitimate black star in the form of bowler Makhaya Ntini and the leadership at Cricket South Africa (CSA) seem genuinely pleased with the program's progress.

Commenting on the announcement on Thursday of the 15-man squad selected for the ICC Cricket World Cup, Cricket South Africa (CSA) chief executive Gerald Majola said he believed the spadework had been done.

“The restructuring of competitions, the fast-tracking of certain black players, are starting to show dividends, and we are now beginning to concentrate on quality rather than numbers,” said Majola. “There are enough players coming into the pool, and so I am comfortable that the system is achieving what we set out to achieve.“I’m happy to hear from the selectors that they did not have any difficulty achieving the target, and I’m also happy to hear that the players who missed out on selection included some black players. We never put pressure on the selectors, and although they had the option to approach the board and say they could not meet the target, they did not find this necessary.” Majola said there was no intention to raise the target for the World Cup in 2011.

“We review our targets annually, and the ultimate is to go for merit selection. I believe we are very close to that. I think at the end of this season, the board will meet again, and review our targets and decide whether it is necessary to continue with the target.”

Sport provides a pretty solid cultural thermometer in South Africa. There is still ample racism within the sporting community, but the case of South African cricket also shows that there are signs of progress.