By Andy Wilson
The Lions will be joining a select band of English cricketers to have represented their country in the iconic Johannesburg district of Soweto when they make the 40-minute journey from their Wanderers base for the start of the three-day match against a Gauteng Invitation XI tomorrow morning.
It is almost two decades since an England team last played in Soweto, in a four-day fixture against a South African Invitation XI captained by Hansie Cronje which is remembered by all involved for the visit of the most famous former resident of the townships surrounding the ground – Nelson Mandela.
Graham Thorpe, who is with the Lions in South Africa as Batting Coach, was a member of that squad, although he did not play in the game because of a wrist injury.
After a long and sweaty session with the dog-ball thrower in the Wanderers nets today, he fondly recalled Mandela’s arrival, by helicopter, that October morning in 1995 - and shaking the great man’s hand when both teams stood in line for an official presentation.
But the memories of Thorpe’s former England team-mate Devon Malcolm were even more vivid when he was interviewed by the Daily Mirror’s Mike Walters following Mandela’s death in December 2013.
"Suddenly, the word was going round that Nelson Mandela was paying a visit," said Malcolm, who had famously taken 9-57 against South Africa at The Oval little more than a year earlier after even more famously warning them that “you guys are history”.
"I didn't believe it, I thought he had more important people to see than a bunch of cricketers,” Malcolm continued.
But his disbelief intensified when Mandela stopped to address him as he shook his hand. ‘Ah, I know you’, South Africa’s President is reported to have said. ‘You are the destroyer’.
"As the only black player on the tour, I cannot deny how much that meant to me," Malcolm added. "As the years have gone by, I have felt blessed to meet one of history's greatest men and, now he is gone, I realise it was more important to me than anything I achieved on a cricket field.
"Later, after an impromptu press conference, he invited me to help out with coaching in the townships and I hope the goodwill played a small part in the country's healing process.
"I visited a few townships with the England team chaplain, Rev Andrew Wingfield-Digby, and took along some bats, pads, scorebooks and equipment to help promote the game.
"And on his first state visit to Britain as President of South Africa, I was invited with my wife to a private lunch at Downing Street, where Mr Mandela was the guest of honour, and I was completely knocked out.
"I was sat there, wondering how a fast bowler from Derbyshire can be invited to lunch at the Prime Minister's place with the greatest African of the 20th century - a man who preached reconciliation and forgiveness, and not a word about retribution against the people who put him behind bars and made him break rocks for 27 years.
"And then I remembered: I had not really preached forgiveness when I was hit on the head in that Test match. I hope Mr Mandela, whose temperament was a gift from God, won't mind if I say it was divine retribution!"
That 1995 game was played at the Soweto Oval, in the heart of the townships, which had previously staged a number of privately-organised international fixtures during South Africa’s sporting isolation – most of them organised and funded by Derrick Robins, a millionaire businessman who was also the chairman of Coventry City FC.
The Lions will be playing in the more sanitised surroundings of the University of Johannesburg’s Soweto Campus. But the drive from Wanderers, past the strange plateaux known as tailings or mine dumps which offer evidence of the area’s gold-mining heritage, and the Soccer City stadium which is the home of the Kaizer Chiefs club and staged the 2010 World Cup final, is still exotic enough.
There is a further legacy of that World Cup at one end of the ground, where behind the Orlando grasslands two huge and brilliantly colourful cooling towers are linked by a precarious-looking rope walkway.
The huge paintings, funded in a sponsorship deal with a bank, were created by a team of 10 artists. Eat your heart out, Drax and Ferrybridge.
Those bowlers who are not given the Cooling Tower end will instead have a collection of giant cacti growing on a hillside behind their backs when they run in. It is a shame there are no students around at the moment during the University’s long summer break, and there is a fair amount of building work going on around the campus behind the high fences that surround the Oval. But the next three days in Soweto promise to be an unusual cricketing experience, nonetheless.