A captain's knock

Strangely for a team that has "" purely in terms of dour workmanlike efficiency "" been the second-best cricketing side of the past decade, South African cricket is still on the brink.

Through all their successes in the last few years, one can't shake off the feeling that they've never completely recovered from the Apartheid years, when they were banned from playing a sport of which they had just reached the very pinnacle.

Since their comeback in 1991, South Africa have made headlines more for their four World Cup misses, continuing race-related problems and the match-fixing scandal than for their clinical victories.

And crucially, they have been unable to beat their most cherished rivals, Australia, in a match or series of any consequence "" which adds sheen to the deeds of the team that whitewashed the Aussies 4-0 in 1969-70, and shortly afterwards learnt that it would never play on the international stage again.

Even those of us well versed in cricket lore might easily forget that Dr Ali (born Aron) Bacher was the captain of that great, and tragic, side; so accustomed are we to his contemporary image as one of the game's leading administrators.

However, Bacher has worn many hats. The pudgy little man we often see on TV with the bemused, slightly apologetic look on his face began his playing career in the early 1960s when he was touted the South African Bradman.

While understandably not living up to such blah, he proved a solid-enough bat, and his astuteness and man-management skills soon made him a shoo-in for the captain's job.

He thus figured prominently in his country's darkest cricketing phase; then played a marginal administrative role for a few years; and finally returned to help facilitate the developments that would see South Africa's return to the international fold.

It's a life that demands chronicling, and this is meticulously done in Ali: The Life of Ali Bacher, by journalist Rodney Hartman, who has followed South African cricket for years and whose previous books include Hansie and the Boys (1997).

With all respect to Hartman's research, the blueprint for a book like this was ready before a word had been written. Bacher's description of himself as "a fortunate man who was in the right place at the right time" is an understatement.

The many twists and turns, triumphs and despondencies of his life make for such rich dramatic material that an exhaustive biography was just waiting to happen. Here it is.

Ali has five broad chapter titles, each of which contains an interesting story in itself. The first, "Roots (1942-1970)", deals with the early life of Aron Bacher and supplies the material most interesting to a cricket historian "" with glimpses of South Africa's domestic and national squads and players in the 1950s and 1960s.

In "New Horizons (1971-1981)" we learn about Ali's non-cricketing life "" including a stint in marketing fabric softener and the Ali Magic Dishwasher(!). "Epiphany (1981-1990)" sees him play an active (and much criticised) role in organising rebel tours by coercing foreign players to come to South Africa, often for exorbitant sums of money "" all of which culminates in the contentious Gatting Tour.

"Unity (1991-2000)" documents South Africa's stormy reemergence and Bacher's gradual rise in stature on the world stage. And "De Profundis (2000-2003)", most relevant to casual followers of the sport, deals in the main with the Hansie Cronje matchfixing scandal that shattered a nation.

With such a treasure trove of material available to him, it's to the author's credit that he doesn't let his subject's personality get submerged.

We get plenty of insights into Bacher's character, especially his motivational skills (as a captain he inspires Graeme Pollock to new levels of performance by suggesting that Barry Richards is the best South African batsman; and he applies similar reverse psychology on himself years later, when chalking out a fitness regimen to conquer his health problems).

Bacher's views on players are always interesting too "" given a full international career, he believes Mike Procter would have been a greater all-rounder than Imran Khan, Kapil Dev, Ian Botham or Richard Hadlee.

Creditably, Hartman doesn't give Bacher a completely clean chit. At one point he implies that like many other well-intentioned South Africans who were themselves unencumbered by prejudice, Bacher sometimes failed to account for the prejudices of others "" contenting himself with working single-mindedly for the welfare of cricket without assessing the larger picture. This, inevitably, led to problems of communication that may even have stalled the progress of his cause.

While the tone of the book is strait-laced, sans frills "" much like a Gary Kirsten innings, it quietly gets the work done "" there is the odd spot of humour too, and some anecdotal gems. Like how Bacher, who "couldn't bowl a hoop down a hill", got more wickets than the great Gary Sobers in a double-wicket tournament in Rhodesia "" to his own astonishment, and to the chagrin of those who had paired him with Sobers only to disadvantage the great man.

Equally amusing are the many quaint descriptions of young Bacher's batsmanship by sports reporter Dick Whitington, who called him "the Boy Methuselah". There are also nice bits on his first meeting with Nelson Mandela, and their subsequent friendship.

Ali works well both as a history told from the larger perspective, and as a personal account. It has all the detail and complexity you would expect from the story of a man who has neared the summit of cricket administration and yet admits to a morbid fear of heights.

Ali: The Life of Ali Bacher

Rodney Hartman
Penguin Books/Viking
Pages: 450
Price:Rs 495