If you linger for any length of time in the cricket-playing lands of frontier country in South Africa's Eastern Cape, sooner or later you will hear this phrase: "There are only two seasons here, cricket season and hunting season." If ever words told the abbreviated story of a land, its history and people, we have them right here, for cricket in these parts is not a religion so much as a way of life. The region doesn't produce any national cricketers anymore and is incidental on the cricket map. But the game is cherished soulfully, which is one of the reasons it has survived for 150 years.

Put the words together with what you know and what you see, and a picture begins to emerge. It is a portrait of contested land, where, despite some restitution, black dispossession jostles uneasily with white commercial farming. Darker currents swirl beneath the surface. Race relations are troubled. Crime and cattle rustling are ubiquitous. Sexual relations - as with the infamous case of former Eastern Province cricketer, Lorrie Wilmot - can be horrifically primal. This is where the charm of the countryside and the gin sill sleaze of the backwoods meet, and cricket, both a road into the future and a bridge into the past, is intimately involved with it all.

It is a Sunday morning in Grahamstown, heart of the frontier, the sky clean, the light rain-spun. Swallows, the home team, are playing Tiger Titans in the Grahamstown Cricket Board's (GCB) second league (the second division). The field is lush, but borrowed - Swallows don't own a ground. Off in the distance you can see the Scottish flag, flying from the church tower of St Andrews school. Behind that, several jacarandas, in indecently bright mauve. On a far hill is the 1820 Settlers National Monument. Close your eyes for a moment and listen to the lulling "pock" of ball on bat, and all seems right with the world.

Many Titans players live in an almost interminable present, where they tend not to think much beyond their next meal or cricket game

Yet all is not what it seems, for the town has a mild but lingering personality disorder. Two hundred-odd years ago Grahamstown was a thriving garrison and commercial centre on the edge of the Cape Colony - what used to be called the Eastern Frontier. Beyond that were Xhosa pastoralists and roving bands of nomadic Khoi and San. Cattle rustling was the main sport and the tribes were united in their loathing, preferring to look at one another through their gun sights rather than, as some could, through attending church or playing cricket together. The garrison has gone but Grahamstown retains its settler feel. Some still call this "Settler Country".

The more politically correct call it "Frontier Country", however, and whatever your preference, as a visitor you realise this is still the front line of integration, where everything - history, land, cricket, identity, power - is up for grabs. With its black mayor and ANC-council, is Grahamstown a black town in Africa or a white town in the Scottish lowlands, or does it sit somewhere uneasily between? Nobody seems to know, although many agree that economic power is still largely in white hands. Sean Thompson, the Swallows skipper, tells me that 60% of his players are unemployed; for Tigers Titans the number is even higher. Many black families live on the state grants. Life is pretty much as it was under apartheid. Or is it?

The best thing about Swallows and Tigers is the sledging, which manages to be both good-natured and nasty. Swallows are a predominantly coloured side and they speak Afrikaans, so the lip is in the vernacular. "Gooi dai bat weg seuntjie. Daai bat is dood jong - dis 'n a mini cricket bat, " says one from gully. (Throw that bat away, my boy, it's dead; it's a mini cricket bat.) After restricting Swallows to just over 200 in a 50-over game - one of their leading batsmen comes to the wicket with his red briefs over his whites - Titans make a hash of their chase. A rhythm is established. A flurry of runs, often including some bravura shots, invariably followed by a wicket. Partnerships of substance are rare. Titans lose wickets throughout and their capitulation is meek. They lose heavily.

Masixole Mkrakra and Ross McCreath at Lord's, where they were invited to speak. Mkrakra received a standing ovation © McCreath family

Their excuses are many. They're using an inexperienced reserve wicketkeeper, they say, because their wicketkeeper has "gone into the bush". This is shorthand for saying he's about to be smeared in white clay prior to his ritual circumcision, after which he will emerge from a period of isolation in his beehive hut initiated, a man. Potential players have gone walkabout and Titans - as ever - have availability problems. You can see flashes of brilliance but seldom is it sustained. They lack leadership and have neither coach nor fight. Most of all they seem to want to get back into their bus and head home.

Home is Bathurst, 45km to the south. It was once pineapple and chicory farming country but has recently given over to Peppadews and cattle. As if in homage to the old days there's a giant pineapple outside of town and a toposcope on the high ground overlooking Nolukhanyo Township. The toposcope was erected in 1968, on land once climbed by Jacob Cuyler as he showed the recently arrived 1820 Settlers their allotments of bush; Cuyler, an American of Dutch origin, was a key figure in that settlement.

Seen from slightly below, the toposcope looks like a stone circle punctuated by a stone cairn. Step into the flattened circle and the surrounding wall is lined with plaques, etched on each one the distance from the memorial to the allocated farm, the location of the farm, the leader of the party, and the name of the ship on which the parties sailed from England. Plaques have been ripped from the walls and the toposcope has been vandalised, but despite its poor condition, the monument has great symbolic significance for the settler descendants. Many of the original settler names still farm here. Some play or have played cricket; Bradfield, Stirk, Ford, Southey, Reed and Wilmot are recurring names in cricket on the old frontier.

Many Tigers Titans players live in the nearby township, with little or no idea of their ancestors. They live in an almost interminable present, where they tend not to think much beyond their next meal or cricket game. The club was started eight years ago by Ross McCreath, the son of local cattle farmers. The McCreaths instilled a can-do spirit in their children and Ross, who was educated at St Andrews, realised that there was nothing to do for the schoolgoing children of the township during the holidays. He put the word out that he was starting a club. In the early days they had a few bats and balls and a great deal of goodwill. Practices were rudimentary, often consisting of a long afternoon of fielding.

The Wilmot story still stirs the imagination because there seems something effortlessly Eastern Cape about it, that a man can use racial authority to do as he pleases

As the administration of Eastern Province, EP Cricket, did nothing to support them, Titans went about creating themselves. They captured the local imagination and soon fielded several sides. The media became interested in their story of perky self-reliance just when questions were beginning to be asked about half-hearted approaches to development. They appeared several times on national television as part of current affairs features. Anne, Ross' mother, an indefatigable, chain-smoking fifty-something, became heavily involved, arranging kit and lifts, earning the nickname "Mama Tiger". The club won several prestigious awards, some with cash prizes. Ross and his best friend, Masixole Mkrakra, were invited to speak at a function at Lord's. In his speech Mkrakra said that he and his mates loved Ross for his inability to pronounce Xhosa names. "Instead he just made them up - it made us all laugh," went the speech.

Anne is scathing of the administration in her corner of the Eastern Cape and believes the Port Elizabeth-based board 130km to the west could do far more. The GCB make do with their lot because they have little alternative. Constant budget cuts have meant that umpires get paid poorly; their petrol subsidies have been slashed; and new balls are always an issue. A delegation from EP Cricket were meant to have addressed the GCB's annual general meeting to explain themselves. They didn't pitch. Where once there were trophies at the end-of-season function, sometimes even small cash prizes, now there are only certificates. "The cricket system fails us because it's not even sustaining itself," says Anne.

If Titans are an example of what can be achieved with energy and patience, a new club for a new South Africa, other clubs in the area tend to be more traditional. They're usually made up of farmer- and old-settler stock and integration isn't necessarily top of their agenda. The same families have played cricket for generations and playing the sport is as much a gathering of the clan as it is about winning the league. "I can tell you something - those old colonial clubs with clubhouses - Cuylerville, Port Alfred Country Club… Kenton-on-Sea, Salem, Southwell, Manley Flats - they'll provide lunch, which is always welcome, but the Tiger Titans boys aren't going to be invited into the bar afterwards," says Mama Tiger.

Manley Flats, where Lorrie Wilmot played some of his cricket © Luke Alfred

Lorrie Wilmot was something of a legend in these parts, playing for Salem and Manley Flats with distinction. He was much loved, a local farmer and small-time businessman who never gave his wicket away and brought the experience of nearly 150 first-class games for Eastern Province to the crease. As possibly the best player Eastern Cape rural cricket has ever produced, the beefy Wilmot didn't have many technical deficiencies but could occasionally be cavalier outside off stump. "I remember my old man playing against him a couple of times for Alexandria," says Barry Smith, a selfless and long-time administrator in the area and former player himself. "Dad always used to say: 'Put a short third-man in for Lorrie because he liked to hit the ball airborne through gully. Lorrie apparently told the Alexandria captain that he should have listened to my old man's advice because he knew it was a weakness."

The Wilmot myth continues to be a touchy subject. Wilmot, you see, is alleged to have coerced his female labourers to have sex with him over a number of years, so much so that it has given rise to an oft-told joke in the local pubs. Apparently Wilmot used to get into his pick-up and trawl the back roads for sex, coercing young local women into the bush with offers of payment for their favours. His chat-up line, such as it was, involved him rolling down his window and hooting at the object of his affection. It earned him the nickname "Tootie". Legend has it that if you drive the gravel roads, say from Salem to Southwell and on towards Bathurst, you might even come upon a little boy who has well-developed hand-eye coordination and finds himself doing rather well at school cricket. This is known, roundabout here, as "the Wilmot legacy".

With its black mayor and ANC-council, is Grahamstown a black town in Africa or a white town in the Scottish lowlands, or somewhere uneasily between?

Eventually Wilmot's persistent frontier lawlessness became such a public embarrassment that the Eastern Cape police became involved. In 2000, he was convicted for raping one of his 13-year-old labourers and what followed involved a circuitous route to the Appeals Court in Bloemfontein before the case was eventually taken to the High Court - again on appeal. The High Court referred the matter back to the Grahamstown Regional Court and, despite two new witnesses from Wilmot's legal team, the original judgement was upheld. Magistrate Mzonke Dunywa dubbed the new testimony "hopeless" and "a pack of lies", adding that the new witnesses were clearly compromised. Both women had once worked on Wilmot's small citrus farm and, according to reports at the time, had been coerced into taking the stand. In 2004, Wilmot committed suicide by shooting himself. He was facing 12 years in prison.

The story still stirs the imagination because there seems something effortlessly Eastern Cape about it, the idea that a man considered otherwise decent can use racial authority and sexual power to do as he pleases with his employees, who were close in status to slaves. Attempts to talk about it, though, are met either with polite rejection or outright hostility. This is an episode in the often turbulent history of the frontier that the community would prefer to forget. But like all that is repressed, it has a way of insinuating itself into discussions and anecdotes, suggesting that there remains a level of discomfort for the community about Wilmot.

The 1820 Settlers National Monument (top); the Bathurst toposcope cairn © Getty Images, Luke Alfred

Perhaps the most poignant aspect of the story is his wife, Pam, who worked for many years at Graeme College in Grahamstown as a school secretary. An acquaintance of Pam's described the "pathetic sympathy" she received upon her husband's death, a mixture of compassion, distaste and tangible relief. One sensed, the acquaintance said, the lifting of a burden. He believes Pam nowadays is quite happy. She has a boat docked down at the coast on the Kowie river and sails on the open sea as often as she can.

Wilmot's is not the only anguished cricketer's story here. Six months after appearing at Lord's, where he received a standing ovation for his speech, Mkrakra and a fellow initiate went swimming in a quarry that had filled quickly with water due to unseasonal rain. Both boys wanted to cool off on a hot day. Mkrakra's friend immediately got into difficulties in the water and Mkrakra jumped in to save him. Within seconds Mkrakra had drowned (the other boy survived).

Mkrakra was the ramshackle club's poster boy. Although he was an orphan and lived in a shack with his grandmother, the Bangladeshi "spaza" (or convenience store) owners in Nolukhanyo nicknamed him "Hasan" for his peacefulness and gravity. Anne thought him "a divine child" and Ross considered him a brother. The two of them spent two weeks in the McCreath's family home prior to going off to Lord's. They were even fitted together for suits in Grahamstown before jetting off.

The little boys of Titans loved Mkrakra. He had been with the club virtually since its inception and was seen as a potential Makhaya Ntini. Here was a player, everyone felt, who was going to walk them out of obscurity and into the bright world of the international game. The outside world doesn't know the story of "Hasan", and most who do are too sad to tell it - the tragic story of a sometimes troubled place, where the frontier always lingers, even when it is no longer there.

Luke Alfred is a journalist based in Johannesburg

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