Our man in the stands

Our boys may be out of the World Cup, but there's no shortage of life left in the tournament. Even if most of it seems to come from the crowds. Mark Steel casts an anthropologist's eye over a gathering of the world's cricketing tribes

I'm about to watch my first match – Bangladesh vs New Zealand – at the Cricket World Cup, and am buzzing like a six-year-old on Christmas morning as the security guard checks my bag outside the ground in Kimberley. She takes my bottle of water, shakes her head and says: "You can't take that in unless you tear off the label. The sponsors are Pepsi, but this is Valpre water, and Valpre is bottled by Coke. It might be seen on TV, so you really must scratch off the label." Thank God she spotted it. The other sponsors of the World Cup are South African Airways, so I hope the match officials ensured that all other airlines were denied airspace over the ground during the match. Imagine if a Qantas plane was in shot as the camera followed a ball going for six. The cameramen would have to cut quickly to a close-up of the umpire, or the whole tournament would be in ruins.

The ground is just over a mile from the diamond mine that Cecil Rhodes made central to the British Empire. Labourers were famously strip-searched after each shift by foremen, who were devoted to ensuring that no one could sneak out a diamond or two. The mine is no longer in use, but it's heartening to see that the skills learnt there are still put to use, this time to stop anyone sneaking in any unsponsored water. I suppose I was lucky I wasn't asked to drop my pants, spread my legs and bend over while an official growled: "We'll see if you've got any Tango up there, you bastard."

Inside the ground a union official representing the security guards tells me that "my members have been told to be really hard on 'advertising sabotage'. They have to look out all day for someone who might suddenly stand up wearing a shirt with 'Coke' written on it." Shane Warne is lucky his drug test only found him positive for a diet pill and not for 7-Up – instead of a one-year ban he'd be looking at four years' hard labour.

Before I find my seat, I go in search of food and have the following conversation, word for word, with Joe, who is selling hot dogs that are actually posh sausages; the sort that have "flavours", such as wild boar and cherry. "Is this your own stall?" I ask. And he says: "I have to rent the franchise. I'm just the little man under the control of big men who own the means of production. But that's capitalism, my friend. Do you want mustard?" You can knock some of the influences of the South African Communist Party, but I've been watching cricket in England for 30 years and never once come across a Marxist in charge of hot snacks.

Like so much else, cricket's World Cup revolves around two contending forces: the drive of a few human beings to own and control the planet, and the drive of masses of human beings to find ways to amuse themselves, some of them indisputably eccentric. So among the sparse crowd watching the game in Kimberley are a posse of Bangladeshis who've been following their team throughout the tournament, undaunted by the fact that they are hopeless. The fans are carrying placards that read "A Bangladesh four is like a first date – a Bangladesh six is like a kiss – a Bangladesh win is better than sex". This might seem unlikely, but to be fair it has yet to be disproved because Bangladesh never win. Despite this, the fans charge round the ground waving their flags at unpredictable moments, which makes it look as if they are celebrating a no-ball, or a public-address announcement about the car park.

To boost the crowd, free tickets have been given to local schoolchildren, who help to fill out one stand. But it turns out that the children go to two rival schools. So they completely ignore the game and spend the whole New Zealand innings chanting, singing, stamping and making that rattlesnake noise in a magnificent effort to drown each other out, spontaneously but in perfect step, and with infectious and deafening enthusiasm.

As Bangladesh dribble to an inevitable defeat, the battle between these kids becomes a far more exciting spectator sport (whereas, no matter how dull a game, no one would be entertained by the equivalent at my school, which was "St Mary Cray are wankers, la la la la, la la la la"). Then the entire Bangladeshi fan contingent charge into the stand and join one of the schools, where they are greeted as if they were the cavalry arriving just in time. Now no one is watching the game at all. The Bangladeshis must have been slightly cross with themselves when they read the match report in the paper the next day and saw that during this time they did actually take two wickets.

One of the glories of a packed cricket match between two countries playing in a foreign land is the mix of cultures that are driven to interact in the stands. Cricket crowds are partisan but unsegregated, and each national style of exuberance simmers all day. For example, one of the quirks of a Caribbean cricket crowd is the role of the fish-cake man, who carries a vast box of chilli-flavoured fish cakes on his shoulder and walks among spectators calling: "Last two fish cakes, only two left." If someone says they'll have the last two, he puts the box on the ground, when it immediately becomes clear that he has at least 300 fish cakes. Then he sets off again, yelling "last two fish cakes".

Clearly there was no chance of this happening in Cape Town, unless someone could get the pieces of chilli to spell "South African Airways" on each fish cake. But there were West Indian traders allowed to stride through the crowd selling official West Indies World Cup caps. And an hour before the game started they were yelling: "Last cap. Very last official cap for sale."

The nature of cricket allows for a period of speculation between each ball, so it's almost impossible, by the end of a day in the stands, not to have swapped experiences of life and prophesies on the game with strangers who live thousands of miles from you. This is how I discovered that Sri Lankan supporters tend to be vocal but anxious. As their batsmen appeared to struggle during one game, two or three of their fans yelled: "Dahapang dahapang." I asked my neighbour in the next seat – Dr Fernando, who was accompanied by his entire Sri Lankan family from their home in Botswana – what "dahapang" meant. "Aah," he said, enjoying the anticipation of educating me, "it means 'don't dilly-dally'." And surely, spreading the knowledge that Sri Lankans have a word for "dilly-dally" singlehandedly justifies cricket's existence.

With similar aplomb, Mick introduced himself to me as "a fragile Australian". Fragile, because he'd drunk enough lager for his face to turn genuinely purple; not drunk purple, but real purple like Barney the dinosaur. I turned him even more Australian by suggesting that it was a shame Shane Warne had been sent home. "Fuck him," he said. "He got that pill off his mother? Bullshit. He might as well go to the doctor and say he caught crabs off the toilet seat." Then he did a burp that could probably be heard at Lord's and went to the bar.

Surprisingly, the fans who have been bucking their own national stereotype most sharply are the English. Joan, a South African who sells baguettes at the games, told me: "The English fans bring everyone to life. They're so much fun, and even when they're drunk there's no trouble." Others seem to agree, which is why I'm stunned by the pace of change here. Getting from apartheid to having a black president opening a world cup in a democratic South Africa was relatively easy. But you'd never have believed that English sports fans could go abroad en masse and be remembered for their sense of fun, as opposed to pissing in fountains and setting fire to monasteries.

Which leaves the most fascinating group of spectators; the South Africans themselves. The first uncertainty among many black South Africans is whether to take any interest in cricket at all, as during apartheid it was seen as the white man's game. Indeed, about two-thirds of South Africans at the games I've watched have been white.

But on the way to Cape Town a week ago, I stopped for a drink at a town that consisted of one bar, a garage and no houses. The bar had run out of beverages, but its crackly television was showing the match between South Africa and Canada, so I stayed to watch. A black mechanic with no teeth wandered around carrying some sort of enormous pincers, showing no interest whatsoever in the game – until the black player Makhaya Ntini came in to bat. The mechanic put down his pincers and sat next to me on a bar stool that was leaking foam, and talked to me. I talked back; neither of us had any idea what the other was saying. Then Ntini hit a six and, instead of cheering, the mechanic laughed; not a prissy, English laugh, but a full-blooded African laugh that said: "Doesn't that sum up life." Next ball, Ntini was out. The mechanic got up and, without a word, left the building.

Among those blacks who take an interest in cricket, there's a division about whether to support their home country. Most older blacks support the West Indies, although many of them would support anyone against South Africa, a habit they absorbed when "their" country regarded them as subhuman. This group includes Rupee. I met her during the Sri Lanka vs West Indies match at Newlands, the ground in Cape Town. Rupee left Cape Town for London in the 1960s, but came back to watch the World Cup with an English friend. Earlier that day she and her friend had been to Claremont, an area where, under apartheid, she wasn't allowed in without a pass. While there, she'd said: "So this is the view the whites wouldn't let us have all those years." Her friend stormed off, saying Rupee should stop going on about the past, and hadn't been seen since. "I'm quite worried," Rupee added, "as she's got the mobile phone and without it I can't meet my nephew after the game."

For some younger blacks the issue is just as clear. Mark was fairly unequivocal, with a Jamaican flag painted on his face and another on his five-year-old son, Keegan. "I'm saving up," he said, with all the fervour of an Elvis fan planning a trip to Graceland, "because one day I want to see the West Indies play at home." He told me that Brian Lara would get exactly 80; it is very West Indian to predict precisely which player will stuff the opposition and by how much (though here his prediction was out by 79 runs). Keegan was a bit upset, he said, because "the security people took our whistle. They said we can pick it up at the end."

For others the issue is more complex, and the division isn't just between themselves but within themselves. Thaembe supported the West Indies because "I look at the South Africa team and I don't see myself. With the West Indies team I do see myself." Which would be cut and dried, except that he was wearing a vivid green and yellow cricket shirt with huge letters reading "South Africa".

Some black South Africans, especially those too young to remember apartheid, have no trouble supporting the home team. But the confusion isn't just caused by the past. In some ways the vast economic inequality hasn't changed at all. Unemployment is some 54 per cent, and outside every town is a field containing thousands of corrugated iron huts, considerably more fragile than Mick the Australian.

And all races are now free to enjoy the beautiful Newlands ground, where, between each ball, you can glance up and see the mist sparkling around Table Mountain. One of the world's great views, it's as spectacular as if there were a cricket field on top of the Eiffel Tower. Then you nip to the toilet, where two young blacks are paid four pounds a day to stand for nine hours mopping the floor. Maybe they're needed in case anyone tries to smuggle in any Coke by drinking it beforehand, then weeing it out inside the ground.

By comparison, the two joyful teenagers whose job was to sell Pepsi to spectators from a huge black dustbin were wallowing in comfort. Their problem was: "No one here drinks Pepsi, it's all Coke." Which is true, but the aim of the sponsors is to dominate the market in India, where millions will watch the Coke-free games on TV. The lads get 55 cents commission per bottle between them, so if they sell 700 bottles, they make as much as the price of a ticket. To put this another way, tickets for the second-round games – the "Super Six" – are 250 rand (£20); this week the Commercial Farmers' Union declared its opposition to paying a minimum wage for farm labourers of R650 a month. The bulk of the tickets went to highly priced official tours and packages, or to companies who could use them for corporate entertainment.

The match itself, like all fine sporting events, revolved around a social subplot. The West Indian innings appeared shattered when their young batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan was stretchered off after being hit on the head. Against all expectations, and when his team's cause seemed hopeless, he returned and struck some tremendous blows into the crowd, earning a standing ovation from all parts.

Many claims are made for sport; that it brings people together, or that it drives people apart. Sport does neither; other forces do that. But it is one arena in which those forces are played out. I shall never forget the day in 1976 when Viv Richards scored a double century against an England team captained by a white South African who'd said he'd make the West Indies "grovel". As Richards struck the ball again and again, a chant went up – and many white spectators joined in – of "grovel, Greig, grovel". Few people there would have believed they were part of something that would help to transform South Africa into a country where, whatever else, a beautifully exuberant cosmopolitan crowd would unite in standing to cheer a black man.

So maybe the problem for cricket in Africa is similar to the problem for Africa. Imagine the response if you suggested that the World Cup should take place primarily not to satisfy sponsors but to enrich the lives of the millions who love to follow it. You'd be greeted with the laugh of the mechanic with the pincers.