Donald delivers suprise from unlikely source (24 May 1999)

24 May 1999

Donald delivers suprise from unlikely source

Michael Henderson

The sportsman's autobiography usually makes a very poor book, and cricketers are not exempt. By the very nature of the enterprise, it is more often than not a ghosted catalogue of justification, special pleading and over upon over of dismal in-jokes ("then 'Lamby' said to 'Lubo' "). Few make good reading. Most are ghastly.

Every now and then, however, one slips the net of PR embrocation. This year, the surprise has come from the unlikely pen of Allan Donald. Or rather, it has come from the word processor of Pat Murphy, the 'Gibbon of Bromsgrove', for whom publishing houses have cut down many forests of perfectly good trees.

Not a year goes by without Murphy helping some cricketer or other to scribble his unreliable memoirs. Last year, he assisted Devon Malcolm in a thin little thing that ought to have been sub-titled 'I'm jolly good and anybody who doesn't agree is perfectly beastly' and stocked on the fiction shelves of every reputable bookseller. Mr Henderson wrote as much at the time. Mr Murphy did not like it. So let Mr Henderson pour the balm of kind words where, last year, there was a jug of scorn.

White Lightning, written by Murphy at Donald's behest, turns out to be a golden surprise. It begins with the front cover, which uses a superb photograph, by Graham Morris, of the bowler in his delivery stride. If ever a picture was worth a hundred words of deepest purple, this is it. Wrist cocked, eyes ablaze, legs criss-crossed, Donald is about to release a grenade at 90mph. It conveys all you need to know about the fearsome, imprecise craft of fast bowling.

Starting with his young days, growing up in Bloemfontein as an Afrikaner who spoke English very much as a second language, the book charts the course of his subsequent career, through to the 5-0 series victory against West Indies last winter. Donald comes across as a decent, fair-minded man, committed to his team and generous to opponents - if they have earnt his respect.

We see the young pro, eager to succeed in county cricket; the Test spearhead when South Africa are readmitted to the Test brotherhood; and the older man who is now winding down. There is a lot about the mechanics of fast bowling (he pays tribute to Bob Woolmer, the South African coach), and a fair amount about the social intercourse of belonging to a team. That, in essence, is where sportsmen are different to the rest of us. They live in an enclosed world that is difficult to pierce.

The most interesting passages are to be found early on, when he confesses that he could never be sure he was going to become the bowler he wanted to be. There is a teenage skirmish with Rodney Hogg, the Australian fast bowler, which reduces Donald to tears of despair. Within a year, though, he had developed the confidence to repay Hogg with a few bullets of his own and, after that, he is off and running.

Having belonged to two successful teams, at Warwickshire and in South Africa, Donald gives a candid account of life in a modern dressing-room, with the age-old themes of personal insecurity and professional rivalry. He admires Dermot Reeve, his old captain at Edgbaston, but he ends up thinking not a great deal of Brian Lara, which hardly makes him the member of an exclusive club.

Throughout the book, there is a sense of goodwill towards a game that has allowed him to fulfil his potential, although the road has sometimes been strewn with rocks. That is the fast bowler's lot. It is hard work, and Donald is not shy of revealing the domestic uncertainty that hides behind the carapace of public aggression.

That is the most peculiar aspect of any top performer's life, whatever the discipline. Those on the outside, who observe at one remove, always imagine that simply being fast grants the bowler the secret of eternal life. We rarely see the turmoil within, or identify the peaks that must be climbed, with fingers that sometimes fail to grip the rockface.

One of the stories that best demonstrates this concerns Carlos Kleiber, the great Austrian conductor, who was once congratulated for a superb performance of a Beethoven symphony in Stuttgart. "Yes", he replied, "but years ago in Prague it went very badly."

It is not an exact parallel. Donald has never conducted the Eroica. But neither has Kleiber bowled on a flat'un at Old Trafford, with a soft ball and carrying limbs that need to soak in a hot tub. If people tell Donald he bowled brilliantly at Headingley in 1998, he may feel like replying: "Yes, but I couldn't get Angus Fraser out at Manchester two games before!" Quite true. Has anybody bowled better than Donald did in England last summer, and finished on the losing side of a Test series?

Being a South African sportsman in the last decade of this century, of course, means being sensitive to things other than sport, and Donald makes full acknowledgement of that. The foreword, incidentally, is by Nelson Mandela, which is not something that the young Donald will have dreamt of when he was growing up in the Boer kingdom.

One of the most impressive things about the South African team that has grown over the last five years into the second best in the world is that the players are aware of their wider responsibilities, to their nation and to the world beyond. That must be a humbling process and, while Donald makes allowance for the arrogance that accompanied old Springbok attitudes, he is a cricketer of his times, and his times have changed more than anybody could have imagined even 10 years ago.

When people say of sport that "winning is everything", you can mark them down immediately as buffoons. If cricket is only about winning, then it ceases to mean anything. Sport, as Danny Blanchflower said in a different context, is about glory, and Donald has known plenty of that. Having seen the South Africans blow away England at the Oval on Saturday, it is reasonable to assume there is more to come.

Mr Murphy, sir, you have served your subject well. You may raise your bat to acknowledge the applause.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)