In the beginning God created Apartheid.

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t his idea but growing up in Johannesburg in the 80’s, there were certain facts of life that were as self evident and as obvious as blue skies, green grass, and summer holidays in Cape Town. For one there was the racial segregation. Growing up it was just normal. The other was almost complete sporting isolation. Apparently they were related.

In an age before the ubiquitous satellite TV, with it’s 24 hr sports saturation, we were vaguely aware that other countries got to do fun things like play cricket and rugby against each other.

It wasn’t really an ‘in your face’ isolation, like a group of school kids teasing the class loser for forgetting his lunch again, or not doing his homework for the hundredth time, things I’d know nothing about. Rather we seemed to just exist in a parallel universe.

Ours was a special world, where the old Transvaal mean machine ruled supreme in the 1980s. Clive Rice, may he rest in peace, was our cricketing God, and who needed Ian Botham or Jeff Thompson, when you had Graeme Pollock or Mike Procter? Who needed the Ashes when we had our own annual new year’s test match at Newlands as Western Province hosted Transvaal every January in the Currie Cup? The crowd, mostly Transvaalers, took it quite seriously, and I distinctly recall one chubby coloured guy who would stand on the boundary for four days straight hurling all sort of abuse at Clive Rice. Not nice.

Despite what people say, I think we were happy in our own little sporting world where nothing challenged us. We knew we had the best cricketers in the world, and if the All Blacks would ever play the Boks again, they’d take to the field knowing they were second best.

Then Mandela and de Klerk ruined it all.

It’s never easy being shaken from your delusions. Losing to India in our first games after readmission was not on the agenda. But never-mind, it could be explained away. The real action was still to come. The 1992 World Cup was closing in.

By the time the tournament began in Australia, the selectors had dumped Clive Rice for Kepler Wessels (not nice) and the country was in a frenzy. Having had a taste of real international cricket in India we were ready to finally show what we were capable of.

We were all so geared up for it. It was a crazy tournament. In typical cricket world cup fashion, the organizers devised a tournament format no one really understood, so we just tuned in every other evening to sit up all night and hope for the best. The next day at school, we were all experts as we dissected every aspect of the game.

When the scheduling meant that a game would be played during the day time in South Africa, I remember me and a mate hiding a radio at the back of the class and trying to find just the right volume so that the teacher couldn’t hear us tuning in to the updates every 5 minutes on Highveld stereo, who crossed live to their reporter at the game after every song.

We were consumed with whether Kepler was the right man to lead the side. He had, after all committed the worst crime possible for a South African. He had emigrated to Australia and played some 20-odd tests for the yellow scumbags before fate had somehow conspired to see him back playing for the country of his birth.

In truth, and I’m sure most would agree, his absolute worst crime was that he seemed to never really understand what us armchair experts knew so intuitively. That an ODI requires a slightly faster scoring rate than it’s longer version.

I can’t have been the only one shouting at my TV at 3am with SA on just 55 on the board after 15 overs, “FOR F****SAKES KEPLER THIS IS NOT A TEST MATCH!”

It is absolutely true that the 1992 cricket world cup was the first time I swore aloud.

But Kepler’s tactical limitations were not the standout negative memories of the tournament for me. They say pain leads to growth, and so two incidents in particular  left us much stronger than before, apparently.

The first came in the opening game against the yellow scumbags. In fact, it was the first ball. The legend that is Alan Donald had Geoff Marsh clearly caught behind, but the umpire, having a Ray Charles moment, didn’t give it.

The signs weren’t good.

We somehow made it to the semi-finals and experienced something we had never before. We didn’t know what it was at the time, but science has since defined it as the “World Cup Knock-out Cock-up” and it repeats itself most world cups. Most knockout tournaments in fact.

Chasing England’s 252, we went off for rain with the score on 231/6 with Brian McMillan and Dave Richardson looking good. There were 13 balls left. 22 runs to win. Gettable. But we got screwed with the score readjustment due to lost overs, and when the teams came out the target was changed to 22 off 1 ball.

It was sick. Just sick. I can handle losing if the other team plays better (actually, no, I can’t), but after being up all night watching this, it was just a kick in the teeth. I punched the couch and broke the wood in the armrest (sorry dad – it was me. I never confessed but now you know).

The truth though is that those early years of readmission were a very special time. It was almost romantic. It’s some kind of luck that we were a generation just coming into adulthood at the same time the whole country was being reborn. There was a unique confluence of energies that was the genesis of passions, experiences, and memories that would nurture our nostalgia for years.

Historians will say that this romantic period ended with the 1999 edition of the world cup cock-up. An event so traumatic I still wake up every now and again in a cold sweat screaming, “RUN, DONALD RUN!!!!”

But he never does.

By then, we had experienced the whole gamut of sporting emotions, like dancing with my mates in my lounge at 2am at a surprise test win against the yellow bastards in Sydney, or staring blankly at the screen after a ridiculous batting collapse against the West Indies in Barbados that denied us victory in our first test back. Beating England at Lords only for Devon Malcolm to put the fear of God in our batting line-up with his 9/57 as the poms sorted us out good and proper in the next test.

So by the 2003 world cup cock-up, and Shaun Pollock’s inability to do basic arithmetic, I was hooked. Addicted. Stuck.

I’m now 40 years old and I no longer live in South Africa. I haven’t for over 15 years and I have no plans to ever again. My life direction took me somewhere else and I’m happy. There is a part of everyone I think though, that always craves to go back. Not in a physical sense, but to relive what was important to us as kids.

I miss following cricket in South Africa. I miss walking the 20 minutes from my house to the Wanderers, walking through the ground to my seats, past the pub and seeing about 40 drunk English fans singing to something or the other on the TV, as England were sliding to defeat. They had no idea that Jack Russel and  Mike Atherton were about to embark on a mammoth blockathon and save the test. Atherton finished on 185 not out and my day totally sucked.

I miss the rugby too. I miss Ellis Park and Gerrie, Piet, and Koos sucking brandy out their naartjies, shouting at the ref telling him he’s missing a good game.

I don’t miss Bafana.

So why do I still care, even after all these years?

I was chatting to an old friend in Johannesburg today. I asked him what his prediction was for the upcoming series against England. He told me that he predicted that no matter how hard he tried not to give a damn, he probably would.

And there’s the answer.  There’s no logic why 11 men I don’t personally know, playing a sport I’m actually quite crap at, representing a country I no longer live in should stress me out. But it does. I accept it and embrace it.

So then here we are, on the cusp of another 4 test series against England. I may be thousands of kilometers away, but I’m ready. I’ve even got my sick days planned (I reckon I can safely have 2 shocking headaches over the course of this series before my boss gets suspicious.) Thank God for illegal internet streaming.

I’ve also warned my pregnant English wife not to expect too much emotional support from me for the next few weeks.

Let’s go find out.

GPF