Business Day
*SA cricket in the heart of whiteness */Some hacks didn't know who Russell Domingo was when he walked into the room with Donald and Kirsten /
*Telford Vice, Business Day, Johannesburg, 5 July 2011*AMONG the more interesting aspects of being white in SA is that some of the other pale people assume you are as racist as they are until you give them reason to assume otherwise. Doing so can lead to awkward silences around the braai fires in the fortified suburbs where whites tend to gather to pretend they live in the real world.
But, if you are willing to nod and smile when the hairs on the back of your neck are all but audibly urging you to spit and swear, you will learn plenty.
One of the lessons to be had from unreconstructed whites is that rugby and cricket belong to them, and that football belongs to blacks.
South African football, of course --- the real stuff is played in England and Europe.
Another tenet of the faith is that blacks who play rugby or cricket for SA are almost always "political" selections. As a mate of mine said the other night: "It is assumed that black players who are chosen are not good enough, just as it is assumed that white players who are chosen are good enough."
It follows that black players have to work much harder to earn the white public's approval.
They are also more likely to be dropped at the first sign of poor form. Anyone who disputes these truths does not live in the same country as I do.Now the uncomforting fact is emerging that each of SA's six cricket franchises will have a white coach at the helm this season. Russell Domingo's elevation from the Warriors to the Proteas as Gary Kirsten's assistant last month drained the last drop of colour from their ranks.
The less critical among us might wonder why this matters.Shouldn't we be encouraged by Domingo's promotion to the highest level? Isn't the number of black players in the national team more significant? The answers to those questions are more grey than black or white.
There can be little doubt that Domingo has earned his opportunity.The Warriors have won the Standard Bank Pro20 and the MTN40 under his guidance, he is the most senior coach on the franchise circuit, and he has served as coach for the SA "A" team at home and away.
Yet, when Domingo walked into the room along with Kirsten and Allan Donald to be presented as part of the Proteas' new coaching regime, people who should have known better asked out loud who he was.
So much for the perks of making it to the top.Black cricketers enjoy no such anonymity. If they succeed, the praise is muted. If they fail, the criticism blares.
These issues will only be resolved when big cricket takes itself out of the suburbs and inspires more black youngsters to take it seriously as a truly national game.
Why is it that, 20 years after unity in cricket and 17 years after we voted in our first general elections worthy of the name, we have yet to see a Test, a one-day international or a Twenty20 international involving the Proteas played in a township?
Rugby has managed to break its duck on this front, but cricket continues to refuse to take the highest level of the game to the people.
As long as they are the people who slip behind the protection of electrified fences to mutter conspiratorially around braai fires, you won't hear many complaints.
You see, cloistering the Proteas in stadiums like the Wanderers and Newlands cultivates a certain bearable whiteness of being in the crowd.
That is the heart of this darkness. *From: http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx?id=147606* ** ** -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
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