The cricket world cup is over

The 2011 Cricket World Cup has officially come to an end. Well, at least it has ended in Cape Town, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Limpopo, Langebaan or any other city, dwelling or mud hut that finds itself within South Africa’s 2798km coastline.

Yes, we lost an absolute heartbreaker of a match in the quarterfinals of the 2011 world cup against a team that - on paper and on grass – was said to be no match for the Proteas. However, the combination of a South African batting collapse and a motivated New Zealand saw us crashing out of yet another world cup, in yet another knockout match, by a 49 run deficit. While all of this did little to lift the choker tag associated with the Proteas, it again highlighted the incredibly emotional nature of sport and how it either unites or tears apart families, friends and enemies in the most hilarious fashion.

Midway through the match, I arrived home to find my mother calmly watching something green – only it wasn’t the green of the cricket field I was expecting but the green of a piece of broccoli. Yes, she was watching the cooking channel. This would have been ordinary on virtually any other day but not when the cricket was on and certainly not when South Africa was competing in a world cup quarterfinal match. A manic, exasperated glint in her eye did provide a clue as to what she was trying to avoid, however.

I then immediately turned on the TV in my room to find that five of our wickets had fallen. And it was there and then that I heard the commentator say “108/2” for the first of two billion times: this was apparently the last score at which we were comfortable and it was also the beginning of our collapse. Judging by the last few days, 108 / 2 will become the new 9 /11: say it out aloud in any room with any amount of ambient noise and everyone will look to the floor in silence, a mood of absolute gloom having overcome them. Back to the match, the next two hours saw some previously diehard fans on Twitter screaming what appeared to be death threats at the Proteas. My mother still refused to turn off the cooking channel (not that I ever expected whatever was being made to be replicated in our kitchen…), my dad uttered his typically grim narrative, my brother was silently locked away in his room (perhaps loading a rifle or two) and status updates on Facebook went from regular letters to FULL CAPS with each passing wicket as fans tried to outdo each other with varying degrees of dismay and disgust.

(It was around this time that I learnt a brand new acronym which, despite my initial assumption, has nothing to do with Golden Arrow buses. I speak of BMT and I also learnt that our favourite flower has none of it).

Anyway, the chaos at my own home paled in comparison to others. A friend told me about the unrepeatable cursing that escaped his mouth as he watched the drama unfold – some of these phrases were entirely new to me. His mother, also a cricket fan, instead chose to hang up some laundry. I suppose she decided that while her eyes may not be dry in two hours’ time, at least the washing will be… My colleague at work mourned with her family in the TV room – when I say mourned, I actually mean it. There were tears and arguments and what started out as a happy family gathering with snacks and smiles turned into just another South African morgue posing as a normal house.

Some good news amidst all the drama was therefore welcome – it turns out my brother was alive after all. Actually, he was more alive than a gazelle escaping a cheetah. When the eighth wicket fell, he came tearing out of his room, screamed at my dad about reckless batsmen for a few seconds (getting no response) and then galloped back up the passage like a madman. Minutes later, a crestfallen Graeme Smith then delivered The Proteas’ eulogy in what must have been the most painful speech of his career.

At the end of it all, not even Kass Naidoo’s new and improved hairdo could salvage the remains of a deeply hurt nation. It must have been at around this point that the fewest ever South African televisions were actually in use as fans retreated to beds, fridges, beer bottles, nooses, cigarettes or simply just a damp corner of the house where they could assume the position they did at the age of 25 weeks.

Yes, I was also genuinely disappointed by the loss. But one could never fail to appreciate the pandemonium and hilarity that ensues at the pinnacle of sporting competition and especially during a giant loss such as this one. So in this time of despair, let’s draw some strength from South Africa’s own political past – victory is appreciated far more once it has been preceded by a struggle. And since it has been almost two decades since the world cup rot began, SA cricket is in a big balls-up of a struggle right now.

The Funny Side of Tennis

So, I have spent much of the past five years desperately defending my favourite sport, tennis. It has been regularly castigated by soccer fans, boring people, unimaginative souls and those with a distinct lack of hand-eye coordination.
However, besides some of the most charismatic and alluring sporting personalities (the bulging Rafael Nadal, the meticulous Roger Federer, the intimidating Williams sisters, the shrieking Maria Sharapova) and the visual beauty of a winning forehand, a backhand slice volley or a slide on clay, tennis offers much in the form of point and laugh entertainment.

Like Saturday, for example. My club (Plumstead Tennis Club) played league matches against Edgemead’s Tennis Club. After completing my first match (and winning convincingly, I might add), I watched these two girls play one another.
The Edgemead girl, although an okay player, served double faults so vast in size that I was forced to gasp and laugh on a few occasions. Some of her serves almost flew into adjacent courts – such a display one will never get to witness on the pro tennis circuit.

However, I am not without my “moments” on the court. During my doubles match, I decided in advance on one point that I was going to hit the hardest, most stunning forehand winner I could muster once my opponent had served. My plan went awry, however, as the ball stunningly careened into the fence surrounding the court - without it even bouncing. The muffled giggles from the three other guys on the court only added to my embarrassment.

Minutes later, I screamed “shit” more loudly than ever before after I played a long rally, hitting about five perfect shots, before the sixth shot hit the ozone layer. Tennis is a quiet sport, and the few screams elicited from players are doubly amplified and heard by everyone in the surrounded kilometre – all you can do after involuntarily extending your vocal chords is to hang your head in shame, and possibly apologise to your opponent depending on the ugliness of your expletive (talking about expletives, most memorable amongst the pros was Serena Williams' rant against a small Asian linesperson in 2009: "I swear to God I'm going to take this f*cking ball and shove it down your f*cking throat")... Perhaps that's taking things a tad too far.

Other tennis funnies include 60+ grandmas who admirably refuse to stop playing the game, but look like they’re playing in extreme slow-mo; one of their rallies takes an eternity. The contrast between these grannies and the beasts (basically any guy under 35) is made clear in-between matches; whereas the grannies sip on tea and discuss how the breeze today is hastier than it was last week, the beasts wolf down Energades and begin eyeing their next opponents, strategising upon how they will expose their weaknesses.

At the end of the league day, club members huddle around to check out one another’s results. At least one shockingly lopsided loss usually occurs on any given day and it all turns into a mini counselling session rather quickly: “what happened to you?!” “You didn’t win a set?!” “You were leading by HOW MUCH?!” “My game is just not where it was…”

So there you have it – club tennis certainly has loads to keep one entertained. The same goes for the pro circuit, be it watching Sharapova screaming, the fan who shouted “you can do it Williams!” during a Serena vs Venus match, or the players sliding across the clay at the French Open.
And if you still think the game of tennis is one big bore with all the entertainment value of watching a rock age, then please do refer to the second sentence of this blog post.

"If you believe that [Anna Kournikova's claim that she is a virgin], I've never questioned a call in my life.” - John McEnroe


The primary conception of tennis is to get the ball over the net and at the same time to keep it within the bounds of the court; failing this, within the borders of the neighborhood. Elliot Chaze

Top 10 most embarrassing life moments of my younger days…

1. Being blown into my classroom in Grade 3 when a gust accompanied me opening the door. I weighed about 25kg at the time.
2. Attempting to perform a trick with my bicycle and ending up in a messy heap in the middle of a four-way stop.
3. Failing an unprepared Afrikaans oral in Grade 11. And watching my teacher telling the class as much.
4. Reversing into a palm tree in front of two college buddies.
5. Being called “Harry Potter! Harry Potter!” by a group of kids as I walked past them in the street. I was an awkward, bespectacled teenager at the time.
6. Crying in Grade 1 after nonchalantly being reprimanded for thinking it was okay to whip out my juice bottle and have a drink.
7. Showing up at pre-school dressed in costume… for a play that we were only meant to prepare for later that afternoon.
8. Running away from a soccer ball during PT lesson at school.
9. Laughing uncontrollably as I played the recorder at a primary school concert.
10. Taping myself singing “backstreet boys” (a dare) and having my friends lock me out of my own room, put the tape into the player and repeat it over and over at maximum volume, whilst screaming with laughter.

Robot + Loud Music = Fail

I’m not one to shy away from and deny those aspects of me that are – how should I put this? – not worthy of being spoken about without double and triple-checking my surroundings, or surveying the type of people in the same room as I am.
For that reason, I tend to keep my intense love of tennis a secret when I meet a group of beer-drinking guys at a braai. I’d rather not mention how much I love Miss Congeniality (parts 1 and 2) when everyone else is throwing great heaps of praise upon the action-packed Inception and I will certainly not bring along my collection of Mariah, Whitney and Celine Dion CD’s to a friend’s house party.
It is that last point that is the topic of this, my first post. While I usually – subconsciously – turn up my car’s windows when stopping at a robot to avoid being judged or possibly laughed at for my apparently “boring, mainstream, old-school” taste in music, on one particular morning last week, I got so caught up in the moment that I didn’t see or hear the biker roaring to a stop alongside me.
When I did reach down to turn down the volume (while trying to stop singing at the same time), it was too little, too late. Yes, he caught me right in the middle of the last third of We Belong Together. It was made all the more humiliating that this part of the song featured an octave raise of epic proportions.

Still, I casually turned down the volume and pretended all was perfectly and acceptably normal in the world. I did catch a peripheral view of a helmet being turned slowly and resentfully in my direction, however, which proved that the cool, macho biker was very unimpressed.
After what seemed like the same amount of time it takes for a learner drive to commence the checking of his or her blindspots, the robot turned green. To say that the biker angrily stormed off and crashed into the horizon is an understatement.

His disgust was later my amusement as I laughed at my little mishap, volume back at its usual coloured level of intensity; known in some circles as “KAK mooi” and in others as “an utter disgrace”…
Let’s just say – I’ll be using the air-conditioner from now on whenever I feel that insane desire to break into song.

“we belong togeeetheeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”