Cricket: Who will break boundaries when Ntini retires?

Makhaya Ntini in dazzling action. Photo / Getty Images

To reach the house where Makhaya Ntini grew up takes a 5km drive down a dirt track. Mdingi village consists of maybe 100 homes, some built of stone and a few of baked mud, the conical rondavels mixed willy-nilly with small, one-storey cottages.

Goats and sheep wander between the houses. A few pigs are penned. Mdingi has a primary school, a secondary school and, as the centrepiece, a Methodist church. The very last house in the village is dusky pink with a corrugated iron roof and paddock at the front.

This is where Ntini spent his childhood, brought up by his grandmother who still lives here. He never dreamed of how life might turn out for him because he never knew such a life existed.

Next week he will play his 100th test match for South Africa. He has taken 388 wickets, he is the country's most popular sportsman and an icon: the living embodiment of the new country, where everybody has a chance whatever their name and wherever they come from, if they can only get the breaks.

But the search is on for the new Ntini. He is clearly extremely close to the end of his remarkable career and such has been his lessening of pace and therefore penetration that many reckon he will not see out the end of the impending test series against England.

Ntini was the first black cricketer to represent South Africa and when he emerged, it was blithely presumed by outsiders that he might be the first of a hitherto untapped production line.

If it existed it has malfunctioned. While South Africa's cricket team is undoubtedly multicultural its lack of black players is obvious, and the truth is that players such as Hashim Amla and Ashwell Prince, for all their palpable non-whiteness, are simply not black Africans.

Others have followed Ntini - Mfuneko Ngam, Monde Zondeki - but their presence has been fleeting.

There are two other major team sports in South Africa: football and rugby union.

Football is the sport of the black man and the country is suffering from World Cup fever because of the event to take place here next year.

But the team are faltering and do not bridge the divide as cricket does.

Similarly rugby, although it has more blacks than cricket, does not possess the emotive pull of cricket in this society for all its popularity.

When Ntini departs there will be a gap. The Government and Cricket South Africa will insist it is filled sooner rather than later.

A national cricket team consisting of white and coloured players is not seen to be representative of the rainbow nation.

Nor is it, of course. The trouble is that in only one area of the country has cricket been an integral part of the culture of black society.

That's the Eastern Cape, where Mdingi lies. It is here, if anywhere, that a production line might be established. It is here that Greg Hayes has launched the quest for the next Ntini.

Hayes is a former all-rounder with the local club Border. He played club cricket for several summers in England and is the high performance manager in the Eastern Cape.

A day spent wandering with him in the rural settlements, where there seems no rhyme or reason for people to live, provides object lessons on many themes, including the challenge of finding cricketers. One way or another, Hayes has already been doing it for 20 years.

"Maybe we've lost five years somewhere along the way and it isn't going to happen straightaway," he says. "But there are kids here who can play. The problem of physically getting them to cricket is not easy to get around but if we don't try we're letting them down."

The game has a footing in this country region because for years its menfolk would go off to find work in the northern mines or in Cape Town, be enthralled by cricket and set up teams on their return.

There was additional input from British missionaries. But it was all, of necessity, rudimentary. Until 15 or so years ago, of course, it was also played in isolation.

Perhaps Ntini's impending walk into the sunset has concentrated minds, perhaps there is a feeling that things do not happen by themselves, that talent has to be spotted.

Hayes, with the dedicated support of Gerald Majola, the chief executive of Cricket South Africa, has been instrumental in establishing a multi-stranded, flagship coaching programme in the area aimed at ensuring elite talent is first of all embraced and then encouraged.

It is a joint venture between Cricket South Africa, the Border Cricket Board and the University of Fort Hare in the town of Alice, an institution which features significantly in the history of black South Africa, it being the alma mater of Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko.

Its main hub is the university where there is a new indoor school, named after the non-racial cricket pioneer and first non-white president of the South African cricket board Krish Mackerdhuj and where Ngam is coach.

Cricketing bursaries are being offered each year at UFHA and the nearby MSC college.

Apart from the Alice site, programmes have been established at places called Middledrift and Healdtown - more dusty villages off the beaten track.

They are not easy to reach by car and the cricketers using them do not have transport. Almost R1 million ($182,700) is being spent on this project each year and every bit of it will be needed, not only for equipment but for getting these kids to the grounds.

But it needs organisation and encouragement too. Some of the difficulties are enshrined in Mdingi. It might be thought in the light of Ntini's triumph that its inhabitants would be cricket crazy. But the nets and pitch carved out of an arid landscape about 15 years ago are unused.

Healdtown, backed by a cricket-mad businessman called Advocate Ngumbela, is like Lord's compared with Middledrift, where the outfield resembles the cross-country section of a three-day event course and the middle is not much better. But coach Aviwe Mfiki, just 21, has a love of the game that can transcend any surface.

"There is a lot of talent here and we can develop it," he said simply but with a belief that outshone the usual platitudes.

The other day he was putting through their paces, on a strip of concrete which passed for a net, some 12-year-old kids. Among them was Bamanye Xenxe, a name which it might be worth remembering.

He has a lovely approach which leads to a side-on action with discernible away swing. Bamanye has been plucked from his village and, like Ntini before him, has been found a scholarship place at the esteemed Dale College in King William's Town.

There, his game will be honed as Ntini's was 18 years ago and he will get an education he would otherwise not have had. Several promising cricketers are channelled in this way but Ntini was the first.

Hayes can recall when he mentioned the boy to Malcolm Andrew, then the school's head. Andrew, who was not utterly unsympathetic to the notion, was still sceptical at taking a 14-year-old kid from a rustic backwater who spoke no English and wore takkies, as plimsoles are known in South Africa, instead of cricket boots.

But it worked.

The quest for the next Ntini may be as fruitless as trying to find the new Bradman or another Sobers, because such precious diamonds are not that plentiful even in this country. But the will is there.

- INDEPENDENT