Richard
Cricket Web Staff Member
I don't think Kallis has suffered anywhere near as badly as anyone, nor Donald and Pollock, but I do think all 3 have had some of the "uurgh, South African" mentality, even if not anywhere near as much as many others.wpdavid said:I think there's an element of truth in what you're saying about English attitudes towards SA, but it hasn't stopped Barry Richards being regarded in the same light as Viv (despite virtually no opportunity to merit it at the highest level), so I'm not convinced that Kallis' reputation has really suffered unfairly. Donald & Pollock are regarded as world class performers by all right-thinking folks, for example.
Barry Richards (as you pointed-out below) predated everything - the Apartheid ban, the Cronje affair, the lot. So he's free from it.
If Smith gets a rough deal it's because people can't take the idea that someone so limited as him can be such a good player, from where I'm standing. Most people don't even realise his single weakness is his weakness, and think what are unerring strengths are weaknesses, so I struggle to take them seriously on the Smith front.As for why the antipathy exists, I suspect there's a number of reasons. AFAICS in the 1990's several English cricketers didn't like the SA players at all, whereas they had no real problems with even the most obnoxious of the Australians, and followers of the game will have picked up on that. There was a real culture clash, for a number of reasons. Religion may have had something to do with it - our guys viewed some of the Saffies as sanctimonious, whereas they viewed some of ours as disrespectful - but I think it went beyond that. Maybe it had something to do with the period of exclusion. My guess is that some players who grew up in the 80's would have been affected by the widespread resentment at the situation, which in turn developed something of an "us against the world" mentality. Again, this wouldn't exactly endear them to anyone. I would imagine that's much less of an issue now, so if Smith gets a rough deal it's only because people don't like him. Don't over-analyse it!
Some very interesting England-South Africa stuff there - but I still feel the Cronje affair exacerbated everything.