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SA binge habit stays in focus

Rob Houwing

The autobiography of former (we can safely assume that now, I think!) Proteas crowd-pleaser Herschelle Gibbs sets unsubtle new boundaries as a “bad boy tells all” in the South African sports arena.

Yes, even World Cup-winning Springbok Joost van der Westhuizen’s 2009 measured confessions of sex-and-drugs skulduggery in Joost: The Man in the Mirror, a biography by David Gemmell, will quickly pale in the likely overtaking slipstream of To the Point, with Steve Smith.

Cricket connoisseurs, if they read it, probably won’t slide it comfortably into the bookcase alongside the works of CLR James, Neville Cardus or, more recently, Gideon Haigh and Peter Roebuck.

In fairness, this work never really pretends to be of orthodox sporting profoundness (although when plain “cricket” belatedly enters the equation some of Gibbs’ insights at his bread-and-butter trade are more engrossing than given credit for).

Broadly, what you see is what you get … a crude, but unpretentious, unapologetic and at all times staggeringly honest Heat magazine between paperback covers, if you like.

It will surely strike chords, catering as it does for the modern, slightly baffling voraciousness among young people, in particular, for the warts ‘n all adventures of lucratively-paid celebrities.

The book is brave, too – either that or it will only crank up perceptions that hard-to-dislike Gibbs is prone to rank naivety – because it casts him, at times, in a frankly seedy light, a jack-the-lad a fraction too obsessed with beating his chest about opportunistic notches on the proverbial post.

There is just no stopping him: “gang-bangs”, groupies, strippers … he tallies ‘em up here as if measuring them alongside his sixes in a Proteas shirt (I counted: there have been 187 of those for the national cause, across all three codes).

Yawn, all this gets a bit much, and I couldn’t suppress a giggle when a friend quirkily texted me that a more apt title might have been Backward Point.

And yet, inadvertently or not, I feel Gibbs does us a favour by enhancing a well-rooted belief that our national cricket side remains not exactly top of the world pile for maturity and some judicious sense of “balance” in life.

There have been pooh-poohing protests from the Proteas camp and environs that many of Gibbs’s revelations in the book relate to incidents from a decade or more back.

That may be true to an extent, but you certainly get a powerful sense that, even with Gibbs the seemingly proud rogue-in-chief, he has had -- and quite possibly still boasts? -- partners or parallel customers in frequent skulduggery and legless benders from within the current national squad ranks.

Of course every cricket team has its occasional hell-raisers in various ways: until fairly recently Australia sported Shane Warne and Andrew Symonds and England Andrew Flintoff (and before him Ian Botham and Phil Tufnell), of course.

Yet a bit more of a “pattern” appears to be traceable with regard to the South African side.

I say this because, while editor of the South African edition of an international cricket magazine as recently as 2007, I ran impeccably-researched reports by Neil Manthorp on matters Gibbs devotes strong space to: the suggestion of a senior clique having a damaging grip on the team, and allegations of problematic levels of drinking.

Much of the probe revolved around the resignation of then-fitness trainer Adrian le Roux.

To quote writer Manthorp: “Le Roux’s resignation was a result of one of the game’s oldest and most common conflicts – alcohol use. Use is different to abuse ... and Le Roux felt there was a little too much of the latter.”

In a post-World Cup 2007 report, which referred to the cramping issue which afflicted some of the Proteas squad in the Caribbean, Le Roux had stated:  “In my opinion, the use of alcohol within the national team is a problem. This obviously does not include all the players but it does include players who play a vital role within the team.”

He had also suggested that “some players are simply not mature and responsible enough” to self-police the 72-hour ‘alcohol curfew’ imposed ahead of matches.

We know that more recently Gibbs, just ahead of his much-publicised stint in rehab, was sometimes drinking heavily the very night before international matches – and not exactly being discouraged by team-mates in the process, either.

He speaks in the book for instance, of his indulgent night before Shaun Pollock’s final ODI appearance at the Wanderers against West Indies in 2008, and adds that “the guys would egg me on to drink lots of wine and eat two steaks before every game so that I would get a big score”.

Clearly an ill-advised view existed even at that stage within the national camp that a fierce alcohol spree could somehow be a constructive device immediately ahead of international matches for which spectators often pay top-dollar in anticipation of optimal effort by their heroes.

If the book sharply sums up the life of a 36-year-old national cricketer who has never really grown up, there has been a particularly recent suggestion that at least one altogether more youthful component of the SA set-up has fallen prey, to some degree, to certain off-field vices.

Wayne Parnell, the gifted 21-year-old fast bowler, contended on television earlier this year that he had “turned over a new leaf”. It was confession in a slightly roundabout way that he had been down party alley too often for his various cricket employers’ liking.

You too may get a very strong suspicion, upon reading his book, that where there’s ample “smoke” from Gibbs there could also be a much broader, ongoing band of Proteas “fire” in terms of misuse of alcohol and other line-crossing, performance-threatening behavioural tendencies.

A phenomenon that died some 10 years ago? Who’s trying to fool who?

Rob is Sport24's chief writer

Disclaimer: Sport24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on Sport24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Sport24.
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