T Chesterfield: The Game Of Insects Spawning A New Culture (2 Feb 1997)

2 February 1997

The Game of Insects Spawning a New Culture - Spinner`s Tales

Trevor Chesterfield

South Africa`s colourful society with its multitude of languages and cultures presents a new challenge to the unsuspecting modern traveller. Especially those who will be soon be arriving on tour from Oz hoping to switch into a commentary from the Wanderers and understand what is going on.

No longer: The summer game is sprouting as many new tongues and microphones as there are mushrooms after rain. In pre-isolation days English, Afrikaans and Xhosa were the lingua franca of the cricket airwaves. But since the doors have been opened you can now hear a lbw decision being described in eight languages. And, according to the SABC radio producer Daan van den Berg, there are other languages lining up to get their voice on the air to describe how White Lightening is about to decapitate Steve Waugh as he attempts an audacious hook.

Joining the traditional three are Swazi, Tswana, Sotho, N`Debele and North Sotho. There are others in the queue, but that takes time - just as has the training of the other announcers in the sport that has long been a mystery. WHy even the name conjures up an indepth study of entomology and brings back memories of the 1992 World Cup when a young musician asked, in all innocence, why the sudden craze involving an insect?

As the game has grown and spread in the high density outlying suburbs around the country, with development roots taking a firm hold, the need for new languages to get involved became an important part of SABC`s own drive to educate the untutored. It was Van den Berg who explained how important it was to break new ground and spread a growing listnership. There was an audience out there that wanted to know know how a Makaya Ntini was doing in Border`s game against the Transvaal. It was only a matter of time before the uncles, aunts, cousins and other relatives of those exposed to the development programme wanted to hear more.

As South Africans they wanted to know how their side was doing and for years battled with English and Afrikaans. No longer. But an education programme was first needed to teach the complexities of the sport and its laws. The next step was to develop a vocabulary of a game that, as in Maori would have five variations of a simple dismissal such as a catch.

Solomon Halele, on the air to Lesedi FM listeners at Centurion Park on Saturday night, talked of the growing importance of the game as the development programme gained new devotees. It is far wider, he claims, than figures suggest.

So, since the start of the season, cricket is a sport that has not only developed a new, unseen audience, but next to soccer, has the largest group of languages commentating on the airwaves. But at least describing a lbw decision in Sotho, Swazi or Tswana is far simpler than it is in Italian, where apparently a five to six word sentence is needed to explain it all.