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uere lullling il 0ull0r rcnl. find us l0ll]l l0ll}l$ $[0w$,

lilB B0$r llor hud u surRrisinu muultll0 d0 ullh cricltel

fl rolfi ffllil'.S:ff3;f;,'::;3'r *:u:iil. Io r o r o n e r

metaphor for nobility. \0flar at the rurn of the cenrury was BUdgn-POWgll.

Ihe Boers issued

u uhullenge:

lsee in lhe

Buluwuyo

Chronicle lhul

your men iloycrickel on

State forces had surrounded Kimberley and Mafekingin the northern Cape. The British forces endured a

seven-month siege at Mafeking, aided by the curiouslydour strategy of the Boer generals. Colonel Baden-Powell made the most of the Boers' righteous refusal tosully the Sabbath with gunfire. A diary entry of courtinterpreter Sol Plaatjie refers to atypical Sunday:'Theusual thing: ;'oy pleasure, merriment, sports, etc, etc.'

Plaatjie, a member of the Eccentrics Cricket Clubwho went on to be the first secretary of the AfricanNational Congress (ANC), went for a ride beyond thelines and 'saw the Boers so close that I nearly felt inclinedto go over and have a chat with them as they were seated

on the ridges of their trenches looking at games played so

merrily round our camp with longing eyes.'

Actually the Boers went further than looking on.They issued a challenge: 'To Colonel Baden-Powell. Isee in the Bulauayo Chronicle that your men playcricket on Sundays and give concerts and balls onSunday evenings. In case you would allow my men tojoin in the same it would be very agreeable to me as

here outside Mafeking there are seldom any of the fairsex and there can be no merriment without their beingpresent. \Tishing you a pleasant day, I remain yourobliging friend, S Eloff, Commandant of JohannesburgCommando.'

Baden-Powell's reply shows quintessential Britishpluck 'Sir, I beg to thank you for your letter of yester-day ... I should like nothing better - after the match inwhich we are at present engaged is over. But just nowwe are having our innings and have so far scored 200

days, not out, against the bowling of [General] Cronje. .. and we are having a very enjoyable game.'

Plaatjie extended the crickedng metaphor to the death

PP

THEW

ANJITSINHJI once declared that'cricketis certainly amongst the most powerfullinks which keep our Empire together',but it was a war about gold that forcedthe independent Afrikaner republics intothat Empire. England's cricketers thiswinter will start their tour 100 years afterthe start of the Anglo-Boer'War.

The Boer '!U'ar forced former team-mates onto opposing sides, killed some finecricketers ... and provided some unlikelyhumour. Rudyard Kipling's cynical

a chance to live out Henry Newbolt's romantic vision:The Gatling\ jarnmed and tbe Cobnel deadAnd England's far and Honoar a nanle,But the ooice of a schoolboy rallies the ranhs;Play wp! Pky up! and play tbe garne!Cricket, war and empire were memorably linked at

Crystal Palace in 1900. Sir George r0flhite was thesoldier whose 'weakness in letting himself be trapped

il:ii'JIT: iffil'$ffil*l'fl?'ifl.'tH; $undovs "'hoodwinked the British public into believing he hadfought a fine rearguard action. W'hite's first gambit onreturning home was to parade onto a cricket field tomeet \[G Grace. The Doctor's warm greetings helpedestablish the general as a war hero and maintain themyth of Imperial invincibility.

'$7'hen Britain refused to withdraw its troops fromthe Boer republics' borders, war was declared on Oct17, 1899. V/ithin the week, Transvaal and Orange Free

24lDecemberlWIM

toll 'The following is the result of the season's fixturesbetween Baden-Powell's 400 and Cronje's ten times thatnumber: Baden-Powell 287, Cro$e 19. \7hat a licking!'

The Morning Posr's siege correspondent praised theendurance of the troops by recalling two ofLancashire's finest opening batsmen: 'It is a great thing-to make a regiment that will charge any place on earth;it is a greater thing to have made a regiment that will sittight like the Manchester under heary fire, cracking"pawky" little north-country jokes that somehowrecall the brave days of Hornby and Barlow.'

An earlier attempt to overthrow the Transvaalgovernment inspired Kipling to write 'If in praise ofthe leader of the Jameson Raid. 'If you can make oneheap of all your winnings/And risk it on one turn ofpitch-and-toss' celebrates the gamble inherent in warand sport, but Lord Hawke's 1896 touring team had atough dme because of Jameson's folly. The raid's failurewas announced to Cape Prime Minister and co-con-spirator Cecil Rhodes while he was hosting a lunch forthe cricketers. On the way north they were stopped byBoer commandos, and only extricated themselves bygiving coaching tips. They arrived in Jo'burg in time tosee General Cronje march the Raiders through thestreets, but were allowed to join Jameson for dinner -in prison.

Identities were fluid at the height of Empire. MajorRM Poore was chosen for England in 1895-96, but hiscommanders would only give him leave if he played forSouth Africa. Poore scored 1399 runs for Hampshire injust rwo months in 1899, before the Boer'War drew himback to South Africa, this time to represent Britain.

The war put a stop to England's planned 1899 tourbut, confident the war would be over before Christmas1900, a South African tour of England was arranged for1901. The war actually ended in May of the followingyear, but the tour went ahead.

Jimmy Sinclair made his cricket name by scoringSAs first Test century. He was a big man who once hiteight sixes out of the ground at Newlands. He was also

too big for any clothes which his Boer captors couldfind. He escaped and joined the controversial 1901 tour.

On the Boer side, \flestern Province CC memberPH de Villiers got VIP treatment from the Lancashiresoldiers who captured him, because he had played withtheir idol, Johnny Briggs. de Villiers was in cricket kitwhen he was caught and was probably lucky he didn'tplay for Green Point - their colours are the same as

Yorkshire's. de Villiers did not allow captivity onafar-g away island to stop his cricket. He arranged for the

i Boer Po\ffs to play a Ceylon XI.I The Yorkshire amateur Frank Milligan was less

I fortunate. He was shot dead trying to relieve Mafeking.

fr Among his possessions was a fixture list for 1900. Fever

I claimed thousands of men. The grave of QueenI Victoria's grandson Prince Christian Victor, *ho kept

! wicket for I Zingart, is in Pretoria, where he died ofI enteric fever. And a gravestone in Durban reads 'In

fr Memory of Jack Ferris (The Australian Bowler), whoH died at Durban, 17th Nov, 1900.'Ferris formed one ofg Australia's finest new-ball partnerships with CharlesE,-; Ierror lurner.

fr R hutrd.ed years after the ghastly conflict thatE claimed tens of thousands of lives, gold is again at the

f cerrt.. of a dispute between South Africa and Britain.i The nank of England's decision to sell its gold reserves

! is causing anger and unemployment in South Africa.$ Conversation under the sumptuous marquees ofi Randjesfontein during the first -atch of the iour had

bemer be restricted to cricket, in the interests of peace.

A hla#fer's guBde ts tke S*er WarThe Boer War began in 1899 and lasted for three years. Hostilitiesbroke out because the Afrikaans-speaking Boers - descendedfrom Dutch settlers who had been in South Africa centuries beforethe British arrived - felt under threat from British colonists enter-ing the indep€ndent republics of Orange Free State and Transvaalin search ofgold, The Boers had already moved once, leavingthecoast for new inland areas in the 'Great Trek' of 183!36; theyretused to be pushed further into the African interor.

ahsv* British pluck:Colonel Bade]}Powell,Britain's commandelat Mafeking. tue!&wBearded Boer: GeneralCronje with GaptainWatenmeyer of theCape Highlanders

A Boer declaration of war was followed by several victoriesover outnumbered British forces and the sieges of thetowns of Mafeking (held by Baden-Powell) andKimberley. The arrival of lmperial reinforcements in ;-.-...19OO (many from Australia and New Zealand) t2 ----.'swung the advantage back to Britain and forcedthe Boers to resort to guerilla tactics.

The British responded by annexing states,occupying every major city and attacking theBoers'farms and land. They set up 'con-centration camps' into which they herdeddisplaced women and children, Eventuallythe Boers signed a peace treaty in7902.

Although there was no intention to killthose placed in the camps, internationalopinion was outraged when many did dieof disease. Kaiser Wilhelm in particularactively supported the Boers - an earlysignal of the AnglGcerman antagonism

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which would lead to World War l. il6ike $ash