Telford Vice: Smith's 'real cricketing' insult offers New Zealand motivation

Opinion

People who would not know Grimmett from Greatbatch from the Grinch Who Stole Christmas might be forgiven for wondering out loud whether New Zealand is a "real cricketing nation".

But what happens when someone who should know better says this, in the afterglow of South Africa clinching their test series against Sri Lanka? With his team's tour to New Zealand looming, Graeme Smith was asked if he was concerned that his attack was short on experience of conditions there.

"New Zealand is always an interesting place to tour," Smith said. "I think it's the different dynamics in terms of fields. You're playing largely on rugby fields; drop-in wickets most of the time."

Nothing controversial in that, but stand by for the r-bomb: "Last time we were there, their training facilities weren't as good as in real cricketing nations, but from what I hear they've improved drastically. They're a very streetsmart team. They know how to win at home."

Smith no doubt meant to say "bigger cricketing nations" or even "other cricketing nations". What he did say was "real cricketing nations" and he chose not to count New Zealand among them. He did not blink or blanche as he said this.

It was a throwaway line barbed with a hook that may yet embed itself in Smith's backside.

You might think a nation that has been playing test cricket since 1930 would have attained a sufficient measure of realness in the ensuing 82 years. You might also think that Smith, who has been fronting up at press conferences for much of the past nine years, coulda, shoulda, woulda known better.

Consider that he said this less than a year after the Black Caps had dumped the Proteas out of the World Cup. Consider, too, that South Africa's results at home at that stage of this summer - drawn T20 and test series and a lost one-day rubber against Australia, and victory by the smallest of margins in a test series against Sri Lanka - hardly gave them reason to swagger.

Of course, it's not bragging if you can do it and the South Africans have done all they can on this tour to exorcise the ghosts of that dark day-night in Dhaka.

That AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis have been central to South Africa's dominance of the one-day series is nothing short of poetic considering the starring roles they played in their team's World Cup exit.

But after the third, last and irrelevant one-dayer (when will cricket learn from American sport and simply cancel dead rubbers?) there remains on the Proteas' agenda the matter of the test series.

And what better way to give the opposition and their supporters something besides their problems to think about than by insulting them with one short phrase that, once printed out in big, black, block capitals, will fit snugly across a dressing room mirror. Keep it real, fellas.

Telford Vice is a freelance cricket writer in South Africa