It starts before the kettle has boiled. Somebody’s uncle, still in his gown, has a theory about the No 3 position, and he wants it heard. By the time you reach the taxi rank, the driver has a different theory, louder, with hand signals. At the office, the group chat has gone from birthday wishes to batting orders in under an hour, and someone has typed out an entire XI with a little cricket emoji next to each name.
Welcome to the Proteas selection fan debate, the week after a defeat. Australia won the first Test at Kingsmead by 214 runs, and in that moment South Africa did what South Africa does best. It became a nation of selectors. It runs from Musina to Muizenberg without a single coaching badge between us.
A country of honorary selectors
Here is the thing. Most of us could not tell you what a selection convenor does all day. We do not need to. We have watched enough cricket, from the couch, the pub and the grass embankment, to know who should play, and we have the receipts: that one cover drive in 2019, that spell on a green top, that catch we still talk about.
Football has its armchair coaches too, of course. Every Soweto Derby produces a few million of them. But cricket selection is a slower, richer argument. A Test lasts five days, so there is time to build a case. There are batting averages to quote, conditions to consider, a pitch report to misread. And there are only eleven places, which means every name you add is a name you must drop. That is where the friendships get tested.
The selectors’ real decisions only pour petrol on it. This week they named 17 for Gqeberha, left out Tristan Stubbs, called up Matthew Breetzke and handed Ryan Rickelton the wicketkeeping gloves, as we reported in this morning’s Fluit’s Five. Within minutes, every stoep in the country had a verdict.
From the taxi rank to the braai
Start with the taxi rank, the country’s most honest radio phone-in. The debate there is fast and unsentimental. Form is form. You got out cheaply, you sit. Reputation buys you nothing between Bree Street and Bara, and anyone who argues otherwise is invited to take the next taxi.
Then there is the braai, which works on a different clock. The fire takes an hour, the meat takes longer, and the selection debate fills every minute. The braai selector is a historian. He wants to know why we keep picking for the last series instead of the next one. He brings up a Test from years ago that nobody else remembers, and he is usually half right, which is the most dangerous kind of right.
The office group chat is the most organised of the lot. Spreadsheets appear. Somebody shares a strike rate they found online. Somebody else, who has said nothing about cricket since the World Cup, suddenly has very strong views about the wicketkeeper. The polls start. The polls are never conclusive.
And then there are the family chats, where the real power lies. Every family has one person who knows the game and one person who just enjoys winding the first person up. Their back and forth is the purest form of South African sports debate: passionate, unfair, very funny, and over by supper.
The beautiful part is what everybody is arguing about. After Kingsmead, the questions write themselves. Was the top order the problem, as we argued in Beyond the Score, or was it the way the innings collapsed at the end? Does a white-ball century earn a red-ball chance? Should a keeper be picked for his gloves or his runs? Is Kagiso Rabada, back in the squad after missing Durban, the answer to everything? Our One to Watch on Rabada makes the case for St George’s Park, where he once took 11 wickets in a Test.
Nobody agrees, and that is exactly the point.
Why the Proteas selection fan debate matters
It would be easy to roll your eyes at all of this. Millions of opinions, most of them shouted, almost none of them informed by a net session. But the selection debate is one of the great signs that a sport belongs to its people.
People only argue about things they love. When a country stops caring who bats at three, the game is in trouble. When the taxi driver, the braai historian and your auntie on the family chat all have a different XI, the game is alive. That noise is what fills St George’s Park on a Sunday morning, what keeps radios on in offices, what gets a kid in the Eastern Cape to pick up a bat because the whole town is talking about one player.
There is a kindness in it too, if you listen properly. The anger rarely sticks to any one player for long. Dropped batters become talking points, not villains, and the same people who wanted a player out on Tuesday will be the first to cheer his comeback hundred. That is the deal South African fans make with their teams: we will criticise you loudly, at length, at the braai, and we will never stop turning up.
And sometimes the selectors and the fans even agree. It does not happen often, but when it does, the whole country gets to feel clever at the same time. Sunday will tell us how clever we all are. The Kingsmead report is there if anyone needs reminding why the debate started, and our Kagiso Rabada page has his story.
The final word goes to the couch
So here is our advice for the weekend. Make your XI. Defend it with your life. Shout it at the television when play starts at 10:00 on Sunday. And if the Proteas level the series, take full credit, because you called it, obviously.
If they lose, well. It was the selectors’ fault. It always is. See you at the braai.