Amazing Scenes

GH sees nationalism in action

Competing nations in the T20 World Cup

It’s easy to be cynical about modern sport; I often am. It’s also easy to be distracted, action tending to dissolve the context, particularly when it is as vivid as last night’s match between South Africa and Afghanistan, separated throughout by a fag paper, decided in the end on the last ball of a second super over. But it was as worth sitting back as sitting forward to contemplate the miracle of it all.

Here were teams representing nations with histories soaked in blood and tragedy: South Africa, with its legacies of apartheid and depths of corruption, and Afghanistan, which has recently legalised slavery and granted impunity to its clerisy. They have no diplomatic ties, little shared history. But here they were, somehow playing cricket, thrown together in the T20 World Cup’s toughest group, playing an incredible match, and capable at the end of a handshake of recognition. A multiracial team from South Africa, and a team from Afghanistan at all, phenomena that at times would have seemed impossible to hope for, each bearing the hopes of their home fans, expressing the aspirations of their nations. It was enough to have you reaching for everyone’s favourite Eric Hobsbawm quote (even if he was talking about football): ‘The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people. The individual, even the one who only cheers, becomes a symbol of his nation himself.’

I need hardly say this, but it is precisely what you do not get with franchise T20. Yes, there is excitement. Yes, there is sometimes calamity. But nothing feels all that momentous. Success is temporary. Disappointment is transitory. It is predictable, containable and commodifiable, which is the root of its appeal to private investors.