SA Rocks

This is absolutely incredible. So much for those baseball players needed massive gloves to catch flyers.

Hat tip to @CraigRodney for the link.

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RUGBY

CRICKET

What a fantastic achievement. South Africa is currently the number one country in Test Cricket Ranking and the Rugby Union Rankings. What a sight! What an achievement and what a time to do it.

Coupled with Caster Semenya’s victory and the 2010 World Cup coming to SA, the Gautrain and tourism pumping, South Africa is looking good right now I’d say!

As of Monday 24 August, South Africa is top of the world Test cricket rankings (by virtue of England beating Australia). Not only that, we’re also top of the world One-Day International cricket ranking as well as being the number one ranked Rugby Union country in the world. So we are top of both the cricket and rugby rankings at the same time!

I cannot remember when any country last managed this feat. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that it MAY have been Australia in 1999, because they won the Rugby World Cup that year and have been top of the cricket rankings for about the last 15 years or so. England topped the rugby rankings briefly in 2003 but they’ve not been number one at cricket for many years now. New Zealand have regularly been rugby’s number one, but never in history have they enjoyed this status at cricket. Even Australia’s feat in 1999 may not match what we’ve done, because winning the Rugby World Cup does not automatically make you the number one team (although it obviously helps a lot).

All we need now is for Soccer to follow suit …

Thanks to Paul for his nudge, reminder and research! Good work.

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It’s been a relatively good weekend for South African sports.

Bafana Bafana played great football on Saturday but sadly lost to Spain 2-0. In spite of the final score I felt that the lads played one helluva game and improved their football tenfold from their first performance in the Confederations Cup.

Now, lets just hope that Bafana can hold a MASSIVE upset and defeat Brazil in the semi-final. Surprisingly Egypt did not make it through to the semi’s. I think after their historic victory over World Champions Italy, they deserved to pip the USA and go through. Alas it was not to be.

And the Bokke pulled off a lucky victory against the British and Irish Lions on Saturday. I say lucky because we technically received a thumping in the second half of the match. A great performance in the first half put us up by a fair amount. The Beast had a ripper of a game and destroyed the scrums for the Lions. When he was replaced. Things went bad.

I am impressed with Mr Peter de Villiers and his response. He took blame for making substitutions too early in the game. This most definitely put us in a tricky slot. We handled it well and luckily came away with a win.

Finally, yes in case you had forgotten, we still lost the T20 semi-final. Pakistan however, ended up winning the tournament. Congratulations to them!

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It seems as though a major event being held in SA is finally making use of the massive potential of mobile phones.

With mobile penetration in Africa and South Africa more specifically being huge (some say 97% of our population have cellphones) it is a wonder that it has taken this long to use Cellphones for live updates, live info, live streaming and viewing of events that they can’t get to.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament being hosted in SA and has decided to make use of migg33 to give cricket fans mobile chats with players, let them meet players and cheerleaders, chat with other cricket fans live during matches, stay up-to-date on the latest news from the­ir favourite teams and get live ball–by-ball commentary and scores.

I am sure that if this is publicised correctly and activated in the correct way it will be well received, as long as the execution of the features is up to scratch this could be a very exciting initiative for sports fans and followers the world over.

Initial live chat schedule so far:

Many, many more to come –Schedule being finalized with teams in South Africa

South Africans can get in on the IPL excitement by texting “cricket” to 31273, or by logging onto m.mig33.com/cricket on their cell phone.

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When I’m an old woman, grey, frail and allowed to be cantankerous, I’ll gather my grandkids about me, puff on something seemly for my age and station, and launch into a tale about the many, many Aussie whippings that I watched dished out to us. The spectre of the Waugh brothers at the Wanderers crease, the world cup agonies, the humbling series defeats, the glimmers of hope that were so cruelly bowled over by Messrs Warne, McGrath and Co…. And my grandkids will nudge each other impatiently wondering what the point of my tirade is. And then I’ll get to the tour of OZ in 08/09 and everything will be much clearer.

The twin victories in the test and ODI series are massive to South African cricket, South African sport but even beyond sport- It is a triumph over the ugly politics, the discontent over the board’s commitment to play a team that is reflective of the country it represents, the emigrations en masse ala Pieterson- these victories speak of a nation that is prepared to roll up its sleeves and fight through the night.

When Graeme Smith was dressed by Morne Morkel in Jacques Kallis’ shirt and Paul Harris’ stained pullover and faced ten gut wrenching balls with a plastered forearm, that fighting spirit was exemplified. The series was already won, we could have gone easily into the good night, it was a dead rubber, it really wouldn’t have mattered that much, but Captain, Hero, you call him what you like so long as it is sufficiently adulatory, he showed what it meant to be a Captain of a South African team. It’s little wonder Kevin Pieterson resigned the England captaincy soon thereafter, he probably realised this captaincy business had been set standards he wasn’t likely to scratch up to.

We may be accused of dishing out an unfair portion of our glee to Mr Pieterson, but you see these victories have justified in the most everything that KP has so publicly and liberally criticised about SA cricket. Among the stars of the test series were JP Duminy and Hashim Amla, players whose place in the team would previously be labelled spots of affirmative action, they flouted the misconceptions and silenced the detractors with every stroke of the ball while playing among the other rising stars, the Morkels, Steyn and within a team united in purpose and spirit.

And the spirit in which the Proteas approached the tour is in itself something to be proud of. Far from the maddening controversies that mired India’s tour down under, the Proteas, led admirably by Captain Fantastic, were not duped into engaging in wars of words. Even in the immediate aftermath of the ODI series victory, Johan Botha, called on the team to be humble. Truly signs of a great team.

With bat and ball they played, with bat and ball history has been made. Rock on SA!

This post is a contribution from http://kayenchantey.blogspot.com/

Images contributed by my friends Courtenay and Tam who, for the moment, live in Aus and attended the great ass-whipping of ’09!

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Finally the Bokke have managed to win in NZ’s house of pain. Bloody fantastic news. Not only are we world champions, but we are #1 on the log and our new coach Peter de Villiers gets a win to boost his campaign.

All in all, great news. Oh and apparently there is a chance we could “secure” a draw in the cricket.

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In my previous entry I wrote about moments I consider pivotal in South Africa’s history.  With our rich history, there are a number of other interesting moments  worth mentioning (and I will not even begin to pretend that this list is conclusive):

Handled the ball

People make it into history books for different reasons.  On the 5th January 1957, in a test cricket match between South Africa and England, Russell Endean made history by becoming the first batsman to be out “handled the ball”.

Master of the universe

In 1961 Gary Player became the first non-American to win the US Masters, and followed this up with further victories in 1974 and 1978.  South Africa had to wait a further 30 years for Trevor Immelman to post its next victory in 2008.

Beatles are unbanned

On the 3rd March 1971 the SABC (for once showing some sense) unbanned the Beatles.  The original ban had been imposed after Lennon had claimed that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”.  Presumably, the SABC had been convinced of the matter.

Wimpy

In 1967 the first South African Wimpy opened (in Durban), forever changing the country’s gastronomic landscape.  Back then a Wimpy Burger with chips and coke would set you back 60c.

4  :  0

South Africa’s greatest ever cricket series victory over Australia, winning all four tests played (the closest Australia came was losing by 170 runs at Newlands).  The victory was so emphatic that Australia refused to play South Africa for over 20 years.

15 : 12

On the 24th June 1995, the South African Springboks led by Francois Pienaar beat New Zealand’s All Blacks 15-12 to win the William Web-Ellis trophy.  The All Blacks explain their defeat as being due to a waitress called Suzie having poisoned them.

Kyoto protocol

On the 31st July 2003 South Africa signed the Kyoto Protocol.  Little did we know how well Eskom would (unintentionally) enforce it.

Gay marriage

On the 1st December 2006 Vernon Gibbs (38) and Tony Halls (52) make history by being the first gay couple to legally tie in the knot in South Africa.  The couple get married at the home affairs offices in George (Western Cape province of South Africa). Even if being gay (in the homosexual sense) is not your thing, it’s liberating that we live in a country where it is tolerated.

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This is not going to be a long post at all. I’ve been busy and unfortunately missed the boat on this one.

Shaun Pollock waves goodbye at the Wanderers, 5th ODI, Johannesburg, February 3, 2008 – source

© AFP

But nonetheless Shaun Pollock deserves a special mention on SA Rocks. The guy is incredible and managed to get through his career without a Hansie-like incident. This in itself should be applauded. Pollock has never found himself in a questionable position in the international cricket sphere.

His stats speak for themselves and I am sure he will be sadly missed by his country and teammates.

In his final test on his homeground he managed to hit the winning boundary. What a way to go. Pollock captained the team, was at the helm of many victories and stood tall throughout the rough times in SA cricket. The man is a hero to many young South Africans and an ambassador for the game of cricket world wide.

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Popular YFM DJ Sanza da Fanatik puts it all on the line in an interview with Carly Wiendberg from The Times. He says that he is all for development but rugby and cricket are terrible when it comes to politics.

Here’s the video:

It seems to me that Sanza is all for politicising sports. I am not so sure if Sanza has hit the spot here.

He states that rugby is all about “boerewors and Klipdrift”. Is this dude blind, deaf or just plain dumb? Can he read or has just chosen to ignore all the talk, debate, discussion on the topic of affirmative action in sports?

Sanza claims that he is a man of principles and that even when he loses he wins. But this dude has missed the point. I believe that AA in sports is much like AA in business, if it is done right then it will work for a period of time. If you are placing worse players or business people in a position for their colour then you have missed the point. The best players and business people need to get the job, Simple.

And on the point of representation, I am interested to know if Soccer is being fairly represented according to our demographics in SA and if white players are being placed in positions for the colour of their skin?

What do you think? Is rugby all Wors and Klippies?

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