5 Sporting Events to Watch Again

20 March 2020, by: Sibusiso Mjikeliso

Sporting Events You Should Watch Again

Now that the Corona Virus has jack-knifed all sporting events around the globe, we have to suffer through copious episodes of 90-Day Fiancé, My 600lb Life and the like.

Wouldn’t it be nice if broadcasters, especially paid subscription ones, gave us a choice of sporting events that we would love to watch again, in lieu of the postponed live matches?

A lot of people have already compiled their lists, so I decided to join in the act and put together Five Sporting Events To Watch Again.

*Disclaimer: This list contains dangerous levels of subjectivity, which might offend sensitive readers. Anecdotes are based on true events.

ALSO READ: 10 SPORT DOCUMENTARIES TO GET YOU THROUGH THE QUARANTINEThe 2019 Rugby World Cup tops most people’s lists – unless you’re Kevin McCallum, who wrote 2005 Champions League final five times in a row – and with good reason too.

It was close to a perfect Springbok performance as you’re likely to see. But for my taste, my favourite Springbok game remains the Ricky Januarie Test, New Zealand against South African in Dunedin in 2008.

It was a beautiful rugby match in its nervy uncertainty. The Boks had traveled to New Zealand a number of times without success, succumbing to late All Black bursts, especially during Jake White’s tenure.

In its 100-year history, Dunedin had never witnessed an All Black defeat to the Springboks, until that day. Peter de Villiers was in charge and the Boks weren’t given a hope in hell of getting any success under him.This is a guy they tried to frame as having a sex video of a tryst in the parking lot of some car. You must understand the levels of pessimism that followed Div’s tenure.

As such, it was a game when failure seemed an almost certainty. But the Boks, as usual, had other plans.

Few players get their names attached to a sports event – think the (Ian) Botham Ashes – and this was the Ricky Januarie Test. The Boks led 17-15 at half-time thanks to Percy Montgomery’s boot and a vintage JP Pietersen try. But the Boks were down to 14 men and trailed 23-28 when the magic happened.

The fact that you know how this match ends is almost irrelevant to the spectacle. You look forward to the ending, even though, as you’re reading this, you can picture Januarie’s snipe, dummy, dart, chip, chase, gather and score to win the game.

I sank to my knees in a way I’ve never done after a sporting event before or since.Weirdly, I didn’t watch the opening couple of overs of the Proteas chase. I genuinely didn’t think the Proteas would get anywhere near Australia’s first innings score of 434 in this game.

I watched as Ricky Ponting plundered the SA attack, putting his sword through pretty much every bowler and sending the white ball careening to all parts of the Bullring.

They were proper cricketing shots too, which was both infuriating and enthralling at the same time. Few batters could hold me in a trance like Ponting did, marvelling at his genius and disgusted by it at the same time (Ben Stokes, Steve Smith and Virat Kohli fall into this category).Nonetheless, living in Namibia and pretending to be busy on my laptop (really I was just pirating the James Blunt’s Bedlam Sessions album), the cricket was playing on the telly in the background.

I saw a few Herschelle Gibbs masterstrokes to pique my interest, after Boeta Dippenaar’s timely early dismissal. From there I shut the frivolous activity on my computer and focused on the game, with a large glass of Oros and ice in front of me (I wasn’t allowed to drink in my dad’s house or presence at the time).

I’m a TV yeller and screamer, so when Mark Boucher scored the winning runs, I let out an unmitigated squeak, which my dad, reading the paper in his room, didn’t appreciate.My sporting variety voyeurism had grown legs by 2016, when I was watching everything from Dusi races, Triathlons, NBA basketball and a smidgen of horseracing. For a guy that was carving up a name as a rugby, cricket and football writer, these events seemed far from the usual serving.

Nonetheless, the 2016 Playoffs is the one NBA season I can legitimately claim to have followed from start to finish. Sometimes I like to pretend to know the meaning of Michael Jordan to the sport but in all honesty, basketball only made sense during the late Kobe Bryant and early Lebron James years.In 2016, ‘Bron’s Cleveland Cavaliers were locked in another thrilling finals series against Golden State Warriors (the Warriors that went 73-9 in the regular season, an NBA record).

Games played at 3am in those days and I didn’t have the benefit of streaming them like I do now, where I can watch them “delayed live” at a reasonable hour. This meant I had to wake up at 2:55am, watch a game and take my punch drunk ass to work at 7am.

It was so rough that by the end of game four I was done. I didn’t watch game five, primarily because the Cavs were 1-3 down going to the Oracle Arena and no team had overcome that deficit to win a championship before. I regretted it. The Cavs won games five, six and seven to win their first ever NBA Championship.

I almost teared up watching James fulfil his promise of bring a title to his home state. Even though Kyrie Irving is credited with “The Shot” – a three pointer over Steph Curry – James hit a free-throw that put the score out of Curry and Co.’s reach.It’s TORREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!!!

Chelsea fans know what I’m talking about. Knocking Barcelona out of the Champions League in 2012, drawing 2-2 in this game but beating them 3-2 on aggregate was one of the sweetest matches in life.

It’s possible that some fans enjoyed the return leg at the Nou Camp more than the May 19 final in Munich against Bayern.

It will forever be known as the day Fernando Torres paid back his R50-million transfer fee from Liverpool. Need I mention we won the Champions League that year? We won the Champions League that year.This was the first time South Africa beat Nigeria in an official encounter, a friendly played for the Nelson Mandela Challenge.

The scoreline flattered Nigeria. Bafana Bafana should have won at least 3-1 or 4-1, after Siyabonga Nomvete was denied by the offside flag and had substitute Gift Leremi beaten Greg Etafia late on.

In fact, what made this particular game, above all others, quite special to watch was seeing Leremi come on to raucous and living up to his billing as an offence-minded midfielder.

Former Orlando Pirates midfielder Benedict Vilakazi, who scored that day, was in vintage form. He and Leremi would form one of the most formidable midfield duos of the Premier Soccer League era.

Bafana dominated Nigeria in a way it had never done before and it was a sweet, sweet victory against the old foe.

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ESPN 30 for 30: 9.79* (Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis et al.)