By Barmy Kev
February 13 2003

I was now hooked on following England abroad, so i had to go to South Africa. However I was nearly put off by the fact that after losing to New Zealand, England were only ahead of Zimbabwe in the test ratings whilst South Africa were top and that Johannesburg is at the top of the world crime league. I arrived in J'borg on the morning of the first day of the first test. I turned up 15 minutes late and we were already 9-4 a recovery from 2-4. Vaughan and Adams were batting on their debuts. It was cloudy, windy and the pitch was doing all sorts for Donald and Pollock. It was basically unplayable. I was in my shorts thinking it would warm up- I felt frozen. A guy from Manchester was commenting on how
much at home he felt. We recovered a touch, with Vaughan showing his potential and we just sneaked over 100 with a Mullally six-top edge off Donald that went flying into the stands. Miraculously when SA came out to bat the sun shone and the conditions were perfect. Our total was overtaken for the loss of 1 wicket.

The following morning conditions were worse than previous day, yet the umpires decided not to bring the players on. Of course when the sun shone, they were on in a flash. We lost the match after 1 hour of day 4, by an innings. 48 by Caddick entertained us for a while. The other feature was Gavin Hamilton's debut-a pair, no wickets, dropped catch- no wonder he never played again!

Jo'borg was a dangerous place. I Caught cabs everywhere. Every vehicle had guns in back seats and all houses had barbed wire outside. Blacks were still treated like 2nd class citizens. Very grim place- a bit of an eye opener.

Off to Durban which was only marginally safer than Jo'borg We had a 3 day match against their shield side, Natal. Never understood why pre test warm ups are 3 and not 4 day games. Natal didn't play their test players (Rhodes, Pollock, Klusener). The game was a write off- it had draw written all over it from the word go. There were crowds of about 200 in a 28K stadium, but i did have a few laughs, including numerous chats with Tuffers on the boundary edge. I was reading his "What now?" book- which he kindly signed as did most of team. I asked Atherton to sign it from the boundary edge and with his usual body language he said "you're too far away." I shouted "do you actually realise how far I've come to see you". Another amusing incident was when Chris Read was out and on his way back to the pavilion Tuffers shouted "What a ****ing **** shot you useless ****." Who says he's a bad tourist.
Nasser got a ton in this game, but no-one else enhanced their reputations.

Off to Port Elizabeth next for the second test. This was a much safer place where i could walk the streets without looking over my shoulder. The atmosphere was West Indies like with kids from townships playing some impro steel band music completely out of tune. As the beers were consumed they sounded better. The match was marred by the barmy army forming 2 cliques where each were trying to outdo each other and bad feeling arose. Also some South Africans (Aussies in disguise) were into provoking trouble which required a lot of self restrain, by me on a couple of occasions. Back to the cricket- we put SA in who lost 4 early wickets.
This was looking good. That was until Klusener's run riot. He made 150+ and was particularly severe on the Cat. This was superb power hitting. He had the support of a good tail, with Pollock and Boucher making significant contributions and a 450+ score was attained. Thanks to an Atherton century we avoided the follow-on. In their second innings we again started well. Tuffers was put on early and he was ripping through their top order. Then the turning point- Kallis bat pad, Adams dived and caught off ground- he was convinced that he took it cleanly, but Kallis didn't walk and was given not out. This was one of many poor decisions made by Rudi Koertzen against England. Kallis made a mistake of being spotted at local bar by England fans-with the words cheat ringing through his ears. Back to the match and it then became a case of waiting for a declaration. Cronje (no bungs on this
game) was very negative and despite some more shocking decisions a Nasser ton saved us and with Flintoff being solid the match petered out to draw.

The Barmy Army moved in to where the "steel" bands were and for the last hour there was basically a disco in the ground, mixing with the local kids. A pleasant way to finish a test match that was full of bitterness on and off the pitch.