Cricket: The poor sods just can’t catch a break

When it rains, it pours, and when it rains on a relayed Kingsmead outfield, it’s sodding wet. The word “sod” might be offensive to some, but we are talking about the soil beneath, held together by the roots, or a piece of thin material, more commonly known as turf.

On Friday, the Proteas took what should have been their first steps in their journey to redemption. Instead, they got a damp squib. After rain interrupted day two, we had two consecutive days of play abandoned without a ball being bowled due to a wet outfield, despite clear skies overhead. “Try explaining that to an American,” the saying goes.

What a great shame it has been that we’ve had so little play. While South Africa’s batsmen looked as rusty as the screws that hold the advertising boards in place at Kingsmead, their bowlers showed glimpses of how everyone remembers them. Dale Steyn and Vernon Philander steaming in at full tilt under cloudy skies is a sight to behold, but we got precisely 12 overs from across four days. Kagiso Rabada, the prodigy who made a clean sweep at the Cricket SA awards, had not even had a crack yet.

Many fingers will be pointed and scapegoats herded. Chief among them will be the schedulers who thought playing cricket in winter was a good idea. But, here’s the thing: it’s not supposed to rain in winter in Durban. Famed for being the “hottest place in winter”, you are far more likely to have Boxing Day Test completely rained out than one held smack bang in the middle of winter. But it’s not endless amounts of rain that caused the disaster that unfolded at Kingsmead, it’s the outfield.

One little storm, a rather puny one by Durban’s summer standards, resulted in the outfield being completely soaked through and, seemingly, grass washing away in places. How did this happen? The likely culprit is the relaying of the outfield.

The turf was relayed this year after complaints of it being “too hard” surfaced during an ODI fixture between the same two teams last year. The relaying was completed in July and was apparently not without problems, with ESPNCricinfo quoting an unnamed sources as saying the digging was “too deep”. To compound the problems, an unprecedented amount of rain hit Durban in July, meaning the drying out has been damn near impossible. The fixtures for this series had been announced in May, so it is unlikely that the flooding disaster or shoddy workmanship that loomed could have been foreseen.

The question that many have been asking is: could something have been done to prevent this unpredictable calamity or manage it better? In the immediate aftermath, the answer is no. Even if the ground staff went at the wet turf with hair dryers on full blast, it would not have dried out and even if there is play on day five, it will be largely pointless.

But there was one way to ensure that whatever minuscule chance of rain there was did not result in this farce, as former Sri Lankan cricketer Mahela Jayawardene Tweeted: cover the entire ground. However, covers of this sort cost close to R500,000 and that kind of money is better spent elsewhere.

For now, perhaps it’s best to accept that it just wasn’t supposed to be like this. Just as South Africa wasn’t supposed to be the number one ranked Test team in the world either. But that’s sod’s law.

And if you want to tempt Mother Nature into doing something she is not supposed to do, just go and schedule a cricket match. Who knows, it might even be the solution to South Africa’s drought crises. DM

Photo by Jan Klívar via Flickr.