In praise of quotas

“That’s why it’s the best game in the world.” So texted my best pal after last Sunday’s Wimbledon epic between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, which had made me forget for the best part of five hours that tennis has left me cold ever since John McEnroe threw off his Superbrat cape a couple of decades ago. “Best individual game, yes,” I texted back, still dizzy at the rediscovery of a lost love but not so dazed that my faculties had fled in their limited entirety. Yesterday’s fare at Lord’s underlined why I still feel fully entitled to make the distinction.

This is supposed to be the moment in cricket history when virtually every conversation and headline concerns the Twenty20 golden goose. (If the ICC wasn’t supremely confident about the lasting impact of this particular revolution, why else would Haroon Lorgat’s first action as the new Malcolm Speed have been to announce that the best part of US$300 million will be lavished over the next seven years on spreading the gospel?) The quality of the first episode of the first five-day play for more than three weeks came, therefore, as a blessed relief. It was also a glowing reaffirmation of why team sports in general, and Test cricket in particular, beat all that selfish individualistic stuff.

Let’s, for the moment at least, dispense with nationalities and loyalties. Here was a day richly symphonic in form and content. Slow but fascinating overture as the hosts take 21 overs to reach 50, vaunted quicks mislay their radar on an unreceptive pitch and openers shift almost imperceptibly from wary strokelessness to quiet assertiveness; sudden and dramatic exposition as openers and home skipper are blown away in quick succession by vaunted quicks and over-anxious King Pantomimer does his level best to run himself out before being felled; wholly unexpected development as shy resident of Last-Chance Saloon throws caution to the afternoon breeze and imposes himself against a top-class attack as never before; riveting recapitulation as King Pantomimer relocates the undiluted arrogance he exuded when he first played against the men he allegedly betrayed; crescendo as King Pantomimer marches on to another century and hosts spurt from 200 to 300 in 24 overs. Bar some spin bowling [oh, was that what Mr Harris was serving up?], who could ask for anything more? Well, since you asked …

Last month, while stressing that the current "targets" should continue until at least 2010, the South African board recommended that the ultimate responsibility for selecting the national XI should lie with the coach and convenor of selectors, that the selectors should be solely responsible for squad selections, and that the board president should no longer be empowered to wield a veto. Many interpreted this as confirmation that the end of quotas was nigh. However misplaced, the applause was global, the mourning inaudible.

Yet to scan Thomas Lord’s patch was to see the fruits of that prickly, divisive policy, and remind oneself why it was necessary. Forty years ago, Basil D’Oliveira, another non-white cricketing child of that troubled land, the man in whose honour England and South Africa now compete, brought the iniquities and crimes of apartheid to the attention of the ignorant and the blinkered, courtesy, ironically, of the MCC mandarins who did their level best to keep his oppressors sweet by not selecting him to tour his homeland. Yet here, now, a triumphant triumvirate of coloured men was taking the field beneath the committee room where that selection meeting took place.

You had to pinch yourself pretty hard. Or, if you didn’t, it says a lot for society’s development over the past four decades because you probably didn’t even notice. There were Hashim Amla, Makhaya Ntini and Ashwell Prince clopping down those ancient pavilion steps, wearing those dark green, defiantly unbaggy caps, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Afrikaaners, 153 Tests between them already, 345 wickets, 17 five-fors, 4598 runs and 11 centuries safely deposited in their joint account. For a few moments, as this realisation dawned, the lump in my throat had all the makings of a second Gibraltar.

All of which posed a question to those who had long protested against the justice and worth of quotas: without them, would one of the most successful fast bowlers of all time have ever scaled such heights, paving the way for a Cape Coloured and a grandson of Indians to follow? To me there can only be one answer, and it does not contain the letters y, e or s. In seeking to help transform societies and correct despicable historical injustices based on gender, race and physical well-being, quotas in sport have their place, serving the same purpose as those in the wider world of work.

Yes, the time for quotas at the highest level has passed. But that’s only because they’ve fulfilled their prime function: to remove the obstacles of prejudice and inspire a generation. One might also argue - and heaven knows King Pantomimer himself has done so ad nauseam - that they have turned a disgruntled South African offspinner into England’s finest batsman for a couple of generations. But then that might sound suspiciously like the words of a smug Pom.