The Rhodes show

Sometimes you can spend the whole day waiting for that one memorable moment; a cover drive, a direct hit, a big leg break….sometimes we assign that status to far more mundane events in an effort to justify our love, or indeed, the time we have spent. But occasionally, only so rarely, the most breathtaking piece of action explodes right in front of you.

It happened to me in Melbourne and I must confess now that I screamed as I saw it happen. The cameraman and sound-recordist beside me, already a bit amused by Cancerian fluctuations in my mood, looked benevolently on. They were very good technicians but they could not have been cricket lovers. They continued sitting, you see.

It was the day before the first game at the Colonial Stadium. Years of experience have taught me that this is a necessary evil….you wait for the one predictable sound byte that you have waited for several times before. And so we were, under the roof watching Lance Klusener practising his long hits in the nets. Just as a precaution, about eighty yards away was another net. You would have thought you were safe behind it. Klusener had decided that he would treat that as his practice boundary line.

Meanwhile Jonty Rhodes, having had his “hit” was relaxing with a bottle of water about thirty yards away when Klusener launched into one of his ninety yarders. From the corner of his eye, Jonty saw it coming. Almost instinctively, he cut short his conversation, threw away the plastic bottle and sprinted after it like a frisky dog chasing a ball on a beach.

He wasn’t meant to get there because the ball had too much of a lead on him. But then, few things are meant to happen when Jonty is on the field. And so, as the ball descended, teasingly out of reach, he took off. Hands met ball five feet in the air, then together they came down to ground as the finest athlete of our times slid a good metre and a half along the turf.

The feat accomplished, he merely threw the ball back and went off to complete his conversation. It was a while before I sat down.

And to think that it wasn’t even a cricket match; that he could merely have watched it float away to be retrieved by the many pre-match hangers-on.

It was magical; the kind of action that makes pilgrims out of us. The game may be threatened but there are some safe hands around.

Harsha Bhogle

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