2000 and beyond: SA focus of the future in the millenium

Centurion: In global terms it was a small event which attracted some local attention yet in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and far off Papua-New Guinea interest was the sort of high profile you would expect from a major event.

It was the second Youth World Cup and held in South Africa to emphasise the United Cricket Board?s strong transformation policy which plans to embrace all races, creeds and cultures and turn the game into a unifying force in the millennium.

What a cross-section that 1998 South African under19 side was: from Victor Mpitsang to John Kent, Goolam Bodi to Robin Peterson, Johan Myburgh, Jacques Rudolph and Morne van Wyk; development and Asian education systems, English private schools and Afrikaans, young men whose demographic background blended this side into team which proudly represented the rainbow nation.

Most have gone on to start a first-class career, others still have a role to play at under19 level for one last summer. Yet, as the guidelines grow the UCB?s policy, as outlined in the board?s first report of the Transformation Monitoring Committee, indicate the role the sport has to play in uniting the people of the nation.

The UCB?s transformation charter and the ``pledge to the nation'' is just a small part of how the game is likely to grow into the new century as South Africa work to see an identity which allows all to be part of the system.

To become the sport of the people, however, needs the growth of a culture as they have in the West Indies where what they called ``beach cricket'' started a trend in the early years of this century. To see whether this culture is growing needs a voyage of discovery of the predominantly black dormitory town of Soshanguve.

About 30 minutes north of Centurion Park, it is the sort of area with its development and transformation programme where such a venue belongs in the modern South Africa. Soshanguve is no leafy tribute to the game but there are bare patches of open ground outside a cricket school which carries the name ``Fanie de Villiers Oval''.

Kashane is one of several schools within half an hour?s drive of Centurion, established by Northerns Cricket Union with support from Transnet, to improve skills and excellence in the Reach for the Star project. It is all so different now as the young disadvantage get a chance to win a bursary to a high school: better education opportunities through cricket. All part of the long-term hegemony advantages for those involved.

At Kashane they show the same sort of interest you discover in the streets of any country on the Asian sub-continent.

One of the joys when travelling through Sosh on any given weekend is counting the number of games children play and seeing a larger involvement in street cricket than other sports. Boys, girls, even young adults join in. Every patch of ground is used.

Soshanguve Oval with a pavilion and spacious dressing rooms, net facilities and two concrete strips and a small stand are part of the modern scene. The ground is the envy of many and part of the development project. It is a place of fun and laughter and where a new generation is learning there is more to the game than batting, bowling and fielding skills.

Development, however, is not just about Herschelle Gibbs or Paul Adams or even Makhaya Ntini. Its scope is far broader: encompassing as it does the old and the new. The old Cape regions have a carefully developed cricket culture dating back more than 100 years.

One area where the culture of the game is going to take its own time to evolve is within those black communities where there are new converts: the high density suburbs often overflowing with good humour, where young exuberant neophytes brandish bats in dusty streets indulging in a game of tip and run. It is neither Brian Lara nor Sachin Tendulkar who inhabit their probing imagination when they play their street games.

Their heroes are home-grown: Jonty Rhodes, Gary Kirsten, Fanie de Villiers, Jacques Kallis, Lance Klusener, Hansie Cronje and other members of the South African squad. Although exposure has also helped heal some lacerations, the scabs from generations of cruel deprivation are still visible among the adults.

Before the early 1970s there had been little or no encouragement to play the game. No wonder baffled parents asked, in all earnestness, why their sons, dressed in smart whites, stood in the same place under a hot sun, and only now and then chased a ball hit by a club-wielding youngster.

What this tells us, however, is that in time, as with its growth among the Afrikaners, the game is going to be dominated by the Afrikaner and the African.

In some former rugby dominated schools in Free State, Gauteng and even the North West there is a trend which shows there are now more cricket teams than those for rugby and schools honours lists are starting to reflect this growth.

The game has also moved along in other levels, particularly among the schoolgirls (black and white) with Afrikaans children again being playing a dominant role.

Wally Nel and Johan Rudolph, development officers at the Northerns Youth Cricket office, talk of the ``explosion of the game among the school girls'' which has caused a problem, as there are at present a lack of facilities to accommodate such children their chance to play. More importantly though, as future mothers the culture of development has already started. The programme which has been an influencing role has been the mini Bakers concept where its longevity has seen the second generation being filtered into the system.

Children, aged between eight and 10 and whose mothers or fathers who took part in the initial season of 1982 have already become involved in the programme; some have also been selected for under-11 teams, citing their parents? help to enjoying the game at a more competitive level. As with the development of the game in the West Indies during the first 70 years of this century, the need for an identity has become as important to the young South Africans interviewed as it was to the West Indian children.

Asian, black, coloured white: boys and girls: mums and dads, too; for them it was always a sense of belonging, a taste of recognition. Later would come the glory.

It is not too far fetched to suggest that in time, as was the case with West Indies success under the leadership of the great Sir Gary Sobers, South Africa will also eventually find a player who is capable of completing the homogeneous process of a unique West Indianisation of the sport in this country where Afrikaner and black share a common identity through a unity process not thought of 100 years ago.