About The Boundary Rider PDF Print E-mail
Written by Luke Tagg   
Friday, 04 December 2009 02:34
So here we are, you and I, at the inevitable About Page.

Either you're genuinely interested in the meaning of it all or you're some sad Internet pervert who gets off on finding out about other people and their business. I hope to satisfy both of you.

For the perve, I boast a 10-inch cock. Happy?

For the rest, this is how it all came about...

It's actually a miracle that I ended up loving cricket as I do - my first (and only) experience of professional cricket as a youngster was a day from hell.

My father took me to watch a provincial game between Transvaal and Western Province at the Wanderers in Johannesburg (we lived in Pretoria at the time) sometime in the early eighties, when international cricket was a totally foreign concept to me (excuse the pun).

I spent a long, hot, sticky day in the blazing heat of a Transvaal summer, watching hour upon hour upon hour of Henry Fotheringham padding up to Omar Henry, with a scoreline that increased by a maximum of four runs per day.

It was torturous and should have precluded any future enjoyment I might have had for the game, but I was determined to represent my country at cricket one day and manfully attended school practices at every opportunity.

Unfortunately, those practices were a disaster. The Irish Catholic brother who coached our junior team had an unnatural hatred for me and ensured I rarely got to play at all. For the full story you can read excerpts from my diary at the time (1985) on my stories website The Daily Smoke.

My big break came in my second-last year of high school, when due to injuries, illnesses and other truancy issues I was called up for duty in the school's second XI for a mid-week game against one of the great Cape Town sporting schools, Bishops. Their first XI, who had been stood up by a team they were supposed to be playing.

My school, Westerford High School, was not renowned for its sporting prowess at the time, preferring to churn out bright young minds rather than sporting heroes.

My best mate was the captain and he assigned me bowling duties - the fearsome new bowler with a vicious inswinging yorker designed to cripple all but the very best.

We'd heard that the Bishops side had some kid who was only in Standard 7 (the equivalent of Grade 9), who was fresh off making seven hundreds in his last eight school games. I saw it as a challenge and threw down my gauntlet.

The first six came off the first ball I bowled, and it was beautiful. An inside-out lofted drive over deep extra cover, disappearing into Mount Road. The sound the ball made coming off the bat was the sweetest crack of willow I have ever heard.

In three overs I went for 53 runs, and never played cricket again. Ever.

The batsman? A short-shit by the name of Herschelle Gibbs. Apparently I am solely responsible for his adeptness at that inside-out shot, as he practised it over and over against me. The school still gets sued to this day by the good residents of Mount Rd.

And he went on to record his eighth hundred in nine games. Or so the legend goes.

My love of cricket never died - I just realised I was crap at it. So I continued to watch as much of it as I could, in particular that famous day at Calcutta in November 1991, when Clive Rice led out the first international South African team I had ever seen.

Then came Jonty and the World Cup and the rise and rise of my favourite ever cricketer: Gary Kirsten.

Gazza may seem a strange choice to the uninitiated, who tagged him "boring", "limited" and "solid". But one day early in his career - at the end of a long summer in which we'd had our asses handed to us by everyone - Gazza was facing up to Someone Fearful in a Test we could win.

My mate and I made him a solemn promise: get us a 50 - just a measly half-century - and we will worship you for life. He did; so did we.

Being Gazz-worshipers we began to study him in earnest, watching every single innings he played. We followed his struggles, his redemptions, his lonely hours and his triumphs, and revelled in every one of them.

I learned more about cricket by watching Gary bat than any amount of experience gained in the field or by idle watching.

In 2003 I began writing a cricket column on a community site I built called TashiTagg.com, which we subsequently closed down. The column was called The 12th Man and although the primary focus was cricket, I also covered rugby and formula one.

TT closed down in 2007 and with it The 12th Man. But - as they say in the Caribbean - I had a hankerin', and decided to reinvent the column in December 2009. I would have called it The 12th Man again, but the domain was taken.

The Boundary Rider is a similar concept - a dark gent on the sidelines, involved but invisible.

When covering neutral matches I don't usually pick a side, so you needn't worry about me ripping your guy a new one. When covering South African games naturally I support the Proteas, although I welcome the views of opposing frenemies.

You can post replies without being a registered member, although you'll have to deal with that ridiculous captcha security image. I recommend registering - there's no email confirmation so you can log in straightaway, and you won't have to answer the security question each time.

Thanks for whacking off reading the About Page - I hope you're not still distressed by the earlier penis imagery.

And if you're Jah Gibbs himself - you owe me money, dog. I invented you.

Luke Tagg
Cape Town, South Africa
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