CATCH-UP CRICKET
This essay is a photographic journey into the heart of cricket in South Africa which just more than three decades ago was considered the sole preserve of “whites”. I engaged with the culture of cricket in a transforming society. One-time white established clubs are now open. Schools who had previously emulated the essence of colonialism now have Black, Indian and Coloured cricketers who hold the school spirit, high. In the townships it has also taken off. Some of the oldest cricket clubs in the country are based in the Eastern Cape where cattle and sheep mow the grass and the pitch is decidedly dangerous. Mkaya Ntini, one of young emergent talents, hails from such a place.This is something of a personal vignette into a culture of a country that is more than sport mad. Sport is the barometer of our relationship to the rest of the world. When we win we are a great country, when we lose we drop into a deep state of national depression in search of unending answers. Somewhere between these two peaks and troughs we pick ourselves up again and the game goes on.