When Chris Nenzani, the CSA president, and Norman Arendse, a CSA director, met BCCI officials in Dubai for a firefighting meeting days before the tour was officially given the go-ahead, they had already been briefed about the BCCI’s need to play some cricket at home ahead of the South Africa tour. With the BCCI receiving Rs 33 crore per home day of international cricket from its broadcast partner, there was no way India could go without some cricket at home. With this being the case, CSA suggested that the South African team would come from the United Arab Emirates, where they were playing Pakistan, to take on India in two home Tests. This would have happened at the time India ended up playing West Indies.
CSA proposed that this would be followed by three Tests in South Africa, and the five Tests viewed as a complete series could be played for the Gandhi-Mandela Trophy. “We got the appropriate clearances to use the Mandela name, and had asked BCCI officials if they could seek similar permissions for the Gandhi name in India,” a top CSA functionary told Wisden India. “We kept hearing that Haroon Lorgat was the problem, but a lot of this was through reports in the media, and when we tried to clarify things directly with the BCCI, we drew a blank.”
When asked about this, a BCCI official, who did not want to be named, explained that there was no chance of playing three Tests in South Africa. “If we had played three Tests, the final one would have been in the New Year, the traditional Newlands Test, as this is what South Africa had proposed. Unfortunately, our sponsorship deal with Sahara ended on December 31, and we could not have played in the New Year without a sponsor,” clarified the official. “There was no time to get a new sponsor on board, and we need to get that in place before the New Zealand series begins.”
In effect, problems with Lorgat or not, India could not have played a third Test in South Africa in January, and the Gandhi-Mandela Trophy was not to be.
If the five-Test proposal had been accepted, it would have had a kind of perfect symmetry that even scriptwriters cannot plan. The second Test in Mumbai, against a strong South African team being tested to the hilt in conditions they don’t really enjoy, against two spinners on a turning track, would have been Tendulkar’s last. Subsequently, the fifth Test at Newlands would have been Jacques Kallis’s last, at home. Of course, no one could have predicted that Tendulkar and Kallis would call time when they did. And, with Mandela passing on, there would have been a gravitas to the series not quite matched by its eventual name, after producers of triple-refined sunflower oil.
But, as they say, not all things are meant to be. Sometimes you have to be content wondering what might have been, if we lived in times where the bottom line and inter-board politics did not have the final say.
I'm sure Steyn wakes up at night with nervous sweats
