Gift moment: Mninawa Njokweni was recognized by Mthetheleli Ngumbela, founder of the Ngumbela Cricket Tournament held in Healdtown, Eastern Cape. The winning team plays the top team in the Pineapple Sunday contest. Photo: Michael Pinyana
South African cricket’s best-kept secret has to be Port Alfred’s annual Pineapple Week, which has been going strong since 1904, and shows no sign of it.
There have been occasional interruptions – for World War II and one year during the Covid-19 pandemic – and next year’s tournament is its 120th anniversary.
So-called because pineapples are everywhere in this Eastern Cape region (they still grow but not in abundance, with chicory and farm cattle being preferred), there are 24 teams this week divided into three strength-versus-strength groups. .
Many teams, such as Salem, Station Hill, Southwell and Manley Flats play regularly on weekends in local leagues, but some invitational teams gather to compete in the tournament.
Cricket is played over 50 overs on coconut or hessian mats laid on turf wickets to protect them from seven or eight days of use. The rules are strict – no “ring” or individual player can play that week unless they have played a minimum of matches for the club first – and matches are officiated by long-suffering neutral referees.
Like high-speed fiber, the neutral referee is one of the greatest inventions of the modern world. They can be vloeked but they finally obey. Barry Smith, a former bakkie driver, is the head referee for Pineapple Week and his favorite feature of the contest.
“Nobody gave Barry a lift,” said former tournament organizer Justin Stirk, “partly because he has a long memory. He knows that marginal decisions might go against him if he does.”
Although it is tempting to doze off in the afternoon session while umpiring at the country club, referees must remain vigilant because chance-taking is pretty much institutionalized in Pineapple Week. Anything can happen – and it often does.
After the team flew nonchalantly to the field with 12 players. The ball could not be retrieved from the outfield because it landed near two mating Cape cobras. No one dared to interrupt the action.
There is a story told – Pineapple Week is a good source of stories – of a batsman who had been out in a match with a very low score asking his teammate what he thought.
the opposition will mind if batted again.
“With you as a batsman? No, not at all,” he answered directly.
Stories need characters and Pineapple Week is full of them. Who can forget “Tick bird” Fowlds, long legs and knobbly knees, or “Dog Shark” Fletcher, or “Mielie Meal” Yendall? And who can forget the superstitious partisanship of Beth Amm, wife of Rex and mother to brothers Phillip and Pete, two great cricketers of the day.
Beth is a heavy smoker and believes in supernatural powers to influence the opposition in a match against Salem, the team her husband and son play for.
If visitors score freely, or are difficult to dispose of, Beth will write their name on the side of the cigarette with a pencil. When the cigarette is put down, according to legend, the batsman will die.
Besides the hocus-pocus, the neutral referee and the committee’s insistence on good behavior, there are other reasons for the health of Pineapple Week.
“Some of the youngsters are coming back and playing at their father’s and grandfather’s clubs,” said Pete Amm, one of the leaders of the Salem Cricket Club’s renaissance. Simon’s son plays there. “They like the idea of reviving cricket in the area and are working on it,” he said.
For those who haven’t seen it, Salem is one of the better cricket grounds in the country. The field is flanked by churches and cemeteries and, depending on the time of year, purple rain from bougainvillaea. The structure gives clues to the priorities of the people who live there. The word of God is the most important, but also the word of the forward-defense, cover-drive and virgin pass.
One of the eureka moments of the organizers of Pekan Nanas in recent years was the twinning of the week’s championship with the championship of the Ngumbela Cricket Tournament, which was started in 1989 by Mthetheleli Ngumbela in Healdtown (pronounced Hilltown).
Ngumbela, a cricketer and also a millionaire with a fruit and vegetable shop in Idutywa, started the tournament because he was harassed by Healdtown and Fort Beaufort youths who had nothing to do during the Christmas holidays but get drunk.
The tournament traditionally starts on the public holiday of December 16 and features teams such as Jackhammer, Lamyeni Hard Catch and Fear Not, in an attempt to get people out of the pub and into white. Their vision extends beyond the tournament but both continue to grow. Now there’s Ngumbela Oval, huge prize money and a thriving cricket culture as the tournament approaches its 35th edition.
The first match between the winners of the tournament took place in 2015 in Cuylerville; The return event takes place at Ngumbela Oval next year.
Ngumbela is a non-conformist series. Once, while walking around the Port Alfred Country Club outfield, he noticed a hole in the roof of the grandstand.
“You white people should be ashamed of yourselves, letting it rain on the heads of people sitting in the stands,” he told a group of Pineapple Week organizers with a devilish laugh.
Not one to be critical when doing something real would be better, Ngumbela immediately wrote a check for R25 000 to repair the roof. His generosity has not been forgotten. The grandstand roof lives on as an unofficial memorial to Ngumbela, who died in a car accident last year.
Cricket needs more men like tireless extroverts. And it needs more tournaments like Pineapple Week.
