“‘Conspicuously destined to be a mother in the near future’” - Peter Delmar: It's a Small Business World Balaskas always knew an opportunity when he saw one. Let us now praise famous men … 1995, 1996, 2007 ... These are years that will live in South African sporting history, their glory forever undimmed. So should 1935, except that few nowadays remember what the big sporting deal was in that year. It was then that a fellow by the unlikely cricketing name of Xenophon Balaskas helped South Africa to its first Test cricket win in England, at Lord’s nogal. The evening before the first day of that Test, the leg-spinning Greek was walking along Shaftesbury Avenue, London, with Louis Duffus, a famous South African sports writer. As they strolled through the narrow, winding streets of Soho, no doubt pondering what the morrow would bring, Balaskas (a pharmacist from Johannesburg) and Duffus came upon Greek Street and, taking that name as an omen, walked down the street. The little leg spinner spotted, in Duffus’s words, “a loiterer conspicuously destined to become a mother in the near future”. “Now there’s luck,” Balaskas exclaimed. “If I pat her, I can’t go wrong.” With light banter, he patted her and within the next few days his strange superstition brought him the best performance of his career. In that Test at Lord’s, Balaskas took nine for 103 to help South Africa to an immortal victory. In the second England innings, Bob Crisp, a much faster bowler than Balaskas, helped the spinner finish off the home side, taking two for 30. Crisp once took four wickets in four balls for Western Province, but is remembered as much for his cricketing prowess as for his colourful later life. He was a decorated tank commander during the Second World War, rode donkeys around the Mediterranean, ran a mink farm, and was a notorious piss cat and a journalist whose role in starting Drum magazine always seems to get forgotten. His first job was as a sports reporter on the Bulawayo Chronicle. When still a cub reporter, Crisp was sent to cover a local athletics meeting. The next day he turned in a report that contained the startling intelligence that RJ Crisp had won most of the sprints. His unimpressed sports editor wanted to know why he was taking the mickey. Crisp explained that, when he arrived at the athletics ground, he found that several events were a bit short of entrants so he entered himself and won everything in sight. Crisp, as mentioned, was another journalist not afraid of a drink or two. In 1980, he told the Sunday Times that he had cured himself of cancer through a mixture of drugs prescribed by his doctor and drinking several bottles of red wine a day. What do 1935, Xenophon Balaskas, Bob Crisp and Greek Street have to do with a newspaper column on small business, you’re wondering. Hang on a moment, I’m getting there. A decade or so ago, you see, two youngish South African journalists used to meet up whenever they could in Greek Street, at the Coach and Horses pub, to be precise, dreaming of the day when they would become famous newspaper columnists. One of them was Bonny Schoonakker, now a famed columnist on the Weekender, who writes about whatever is going on in Hong Kong. The other is, erm, me. The Coach and Horses in Greek Street is famous for the disclaimer “Jeffrey Bernard is unwell”. Bernard was a brilliant columnist on The Spectator with the slightest over-fondness for the demon drink. And it was at the Coach and Horses that he took his poison. Not infrequently, his column would fail to appear, the absence of his prose being explained by the euphemism that he was unwell. So now you will see where I’m coming from. Or going to. This column has to be with the sub- editors on Monday mornings, so it gets written on a Sunday, and, well, like Jeffrey Bernard, I anticipated (quite rightly as it turns out) not being well on Sunday. Not well at all. And, anyway, who wants to read anything, at least for the foreseeable future, about anything apart from rugby and those glorious Springboks? Unlike Jeffrey Bernard, I’ve at least scratched something together. And I’ll bet you didn’t know the story about Xenophon Balaskas and Greek Street. $(li type>square$)Peter Delmar is the publisher of It’s My Business, the fortnightly small- business supplement in the Sunday Times. He’s feeling much better today. |