Cricket: Imperfect past, cloudy present, bright future: South Africa's happy return to the international fold has done much to generate interest among its hitherto indifferent majority. Tony Cozier reports

EVEN allowing for his inclination to hyperbole, it would be difficult to dispute Ali Bacher's assessment of the 1992-93 South African cricket season, now in its closing stages, as 'fantastic'.

Bacher is the former Test captain and dynamo behind South Africa's return to the game's brotherhood after 22 years apartheid-induced isolation. It became a standing joke as he described each landmark on the way back as 'the happiest day of my life' - the amalgamation of the white and non-white bodies into the United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCBSA) in 1991, its acceptance by the International Cricket Council, the belated invitation to the World Cup, the fleeting inaugural visit to India for three one-day matches that immediately established their credentials, and the first Test match back in Barbados last April.

It was now time to play host, for international players to officially come to South Africa, not as highly paid sanction-busting rebels as they had done, but as fully-fledged members of ICC Test teams. The choice of guests was deliberate and significant: India for a full tour of four Tests and seven one-day internationals, Pakistan and the West Indies for a three-way limited overs series. The white members - Australia, England and New Zealand - could wait their turn while the new South Africa showed off its fresh face. When it was all over, Bacher enthused about the 'cricket fever'. 'I have never known cricket to be on a high as we have got now,' he said as he saw the Pakistanis and West Indians earlier this month.

Blanket television coverage of all the matches was a major contributory factor. So was South Africa's humbling of India in both Test and one- day series and the presence of two of the game's most attractive modern stars: Waqar Younis of Pakistan and Brian Lara of the West Indies. Even though South Africa were eliminated and Pakistan and the West Indies contested the limited-overs series final, the 10-match programme still yielded takings of 8.5m rand.

But Bacher's yardstick for success was more than profits and packed grounds. 'The most important thing was that the crowds were truly non- racial,' he said. 'Two or three years ago, if you saw 100 blacks that would have been a lot. Now the crowds truly represent the people of the country.'

While blacks knew nothing about cricket 10 years ago, the Board's development programme of carrying the game deliberately into the townships has changed that, and Bacher claimed they were not only playing and following it but also supporting the South African team even though it remains all-white. 'This indicates the huge change in direction in which South Africa is moving at this point in time,' Bacher said.

In Port Elizabeth, as South Africa neared victory in their first match against the West Indies, whites and blacks in one stand linked hands in singing an old and well loved black miners' song. Yet the general evidence was not so clear cut.

While the Indian section of the crowds at Durban, Verwoerdburg and Johannesburg were large and vociferous, their flags and banners certainly did not indicate they were cheering for South Africa. Black faces were not conspicuous either in numbers or in terms of the enthusiasm that white South Africans appear to have inherited from the Australians.

A survey in the Indicator newspaper in Lenasia - one of Johannesburg's few non-white areas where cricket is a tradition - showed under-16s overwhelmingly supported South Africa. The paper's editor, Ameen Akhalwaya, noted that in the street cricket that had blossomed since last year's World Cup, kids were identifying themselves as white South African players. But Akhalwaya added that the attitude among parents rooted in apartheid was different. They still feared, he wrote, that 'a South African victory against the world's top two black teams might unleash another wave of white jingoism.'

The general absence of blacks from the matches had two explanations. The first was that their education in cricket is recent and restricted and their perception that it is a white game remains strong, a feeling not assuaged by the continuing sight of an all-white South African team. Football, in which the national squad is black-dominated, has always been their game. Crowds of 40,000-50,000 are regular for major club matches at stadiums in close proximity to black areas. In contrast the cricket grounds tend to be a considerable distance away, usually in previously whites- only suburbs, and inaccessible.

Neither Bacher nor the African National Congress (ANC), whose support of the Board's efforts to spread the game was emphasised by the high-profile officials who turned out, are daunted. According to Bacher, the development programme has 'unearthed a gold-mine of talent' among young blacks. Four are in the South African under-15 team in their current series against their touring counterparts from England, and a similar number would challenge for places in the under-19s.

'We only started in 1986,' Bacher said. 'We're not yet in every township and it will take perhaps 30 years to do fully what I believe it can do. But ultimately it will change the whole face of South African cricket. It's the biggest certainty of my life that there's going to come a time when, absolutely on merit, kids from Soweto and Alexandra will be playing Test cricket for South Africa.'

If, at present, the somewhat more important issue seems to be when there will be elected representatives from Soweto and Alexandra in the National Assembly, the influence of sport on national events is not lost on either Bacher or the politicians.

(Photograph omitted)