Ep. 36 - Hospitality prices, Too much Rugby, RSA IPL, Sporting Duos, FFFFs
TOPIC 1 — HOSPITALITY
Watching sport used to cost the price of a ticket. Now it costs the price of a small car, a hotel in Sandton, and your children's university fund. Welcome to corporate hospitality.
Watching the Springboks play the All Blacks will set you back R9,995. That's before you've had a drink. The Barmy Army flew to South Africa for three Tests — 23 nights, flights included — and paid up to R210,000 each. The All Blacks' full 31-day tour package hit 384,000 Rand. No flights. Sold out anyway. Meanwhile the ordinary fan is standing in a queue at Loftus in the rain wondering why his pie costs R85.
TOPIC 2 — URC vs SUPER RUGBY
The Bulls fly to Belfast on a Tuesday. The Stormers play Dublin on a Saturday. The Springboks play New Zealand in July. Nobody is sleeping. Welcome to the calendar from hell.
The URC is more physical, more competitive and better for SA rugby. Also: the players are awake for eleven months of the year and the Currie Cup has lost 120 of its best players. Super Rugby had bad travel and worse results. The URC has great travel and great results — and a Champions Cup that nobody in South Africa can explain, a Challenge Cup that nobody watches, and a scheduling problem that SA Rugby is now desperately trying to solve before someone actually collapses.
TOPIC 3 — IPL UPDATE
Klaasen is third in the run charts. Rabada is second in wickets. Markram has no fifties. Jansen is struggling. And Quinton de Kock has played three innings and averaged 66. Cricket is chaos.
Heinrich Klaasen is batting out of his skin — 555 runs, average 50, in the middle order. Rabada has 21 wickets. And then there is everyone else. Markram has no fifties. Jansen is really struggling. Ngidi got injured just when his slower ball was terrifying people. De Kock has played three times and averaged 66 — a statistical masterpiece of irrelevance. The surprise package is Donovan Ferreira, striking at 173 for Rajasthan like a man who heard there was a party and showed up early. Baby AB is watching from the dugout. Virat Kohli is 38 and averaging 54. South African cricket: it's complicated.
TOPIC 4 — BEST SPORTS DUOS
Shaq and Kobe couldn't be in the same room. Matfield and Bakkies barely needed to speak. Wasim and Waqar destroyed everything. Great duos are built on chemistry — or beautiful, productive dysfunction.
Shaq and Kobe won three NBA titles and then imploded spectacularly — both going on to win separately, as if to prove the partnership was the problem and the brilliance was personal. Wasim and Waqar took 559 Test wickets together and scared a generation of batsmen into early retirement. Anderson and Broad took 1,039 — together, over a career so long their opponents' children had started playing cricket. Matfield and Bakkies played 62 Tests, won a World Cup, beat the Lions, and collected trophies like most people collect speeding fines. And Navratilova and Pam Shriver won 109 consecutive doubles matches — which in tennis terms is basically winning every Tuesday for three years.
TOPIC 5 — FUN FAST FIVE FACTS
Five questions. No help. No Googling. And if you say "I think it's..." you've already lost.
Q1: How many times did Glenn McGrath dismiss Mike Atherton in Test cricket — and how many were ducks?
Q2: Which Springbok front row trio holds the record for most Tests together — and how many times did they play as a unit?
Q3: Which SA family produced a father, a son, and a coach — all three affecting South African cricket — and how?
Q4: Which SA bowling partnership has taken the most Test wickets combined — and how many?
Q5: The Bryan Brothers won 118 doubles titles together. Which Grand Slam did one of them win separately — with a completely different partner — after the brothers retired?
