Garra Charrua, Sisu and Protea Fire
A lot is said about players showing up to a contest...
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I recently came across an interesting phrase: Garra Charrua. It is an Uruguayan term. It has been used to define the essence of Uruguayan football for decades. In 1950, Uruguay produced one of the biggest shocks when they beat Brazil, a country with a larger talent pool because of a population 60 times larger than theirs, a population whose psyche is dominated by football. Uruguay beat Brazil 2 - 1 to lift the World Cup title. That team had Garra Charrua.
The 1950 title was Uruguay's second title in their second World Cup appearance. They lifted the 1930 World Cup title. Two years earlier, they had won gold at the Olympics. Uruguay had a reputation for being giant killers. Those teams possessed Garra Charrua.
The English translation of Garra Charrua is Charruan Claws.
The Charrua were an indigenous Uruguayan tribe. There isn't a lot of information about the Charrua - unlike the Incas, Mayas or Aztecs of Central America. The Charrua people are said to have been ferocious and brave against impossible odds. The 'claws' signify their fighting spirit. The Charrua showed their claws, their fighting spirit, when they defended their land against better-armed European settlers.
In Uruguay, garra's meaning is much closer to what the Finnish call sisu. The definition of sisu is hard to translate. Literally, sisu refers to the insides of a person, their guts. The Finns translate sisu as “the Finnish spirit”. Finns believe they are born with sisu. One description of sisu that I saw read as this: it is a compound of bravado and bravery, of ferocity and tenacity, of the ability to keep fighting after most people would have quit, and to fight with the will to win.
Sportspeak or sports language has an endless list of clichés that attempt to define these traits: “refusing to back down,” “fight tooth and nail,” “work harder than your opponent,” “the willingness to die in battle,” “fighting until your last breath.”
Graeme Smith coming out to bat with an injury at number 11 to save a Test in Australia is garra.
Garra Charrua. Sisu. Fighting spirit. Grit. Guts. For the Proteas, this is Protea Fire.
Around 2010, Graeme Smith with the help of Jeremy Snape and Doc Moosajee developed the idea of Protea Fire. It was born out of a need for the Proteas to have a culture and identity. Up until then, the Proteas didn't have a culture that a player came into that had been passed down from generation to generation.
With Protea Fire, the Proteas attached a story to their badge and gave meaning to their emblem. It now symbolized who they are as a team. The Protea flower is an adaptable flower. It is also really resilient and thrives in regions with hot and sunny climates where many other types of flowering plants might not survive.
The flower is also so resilient that it can regenerate from its underground rootstock after a fire.
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For these fynbos, fire stimulates them to germinate and they emerge in a glorious blaze of colours.
This is one of the reasons why fire became an integral part of the Proteas' rituals. Before a tour or series, the Proteas have conversations around a fire. Conversations that are meant to make the new members feel accepted and also provide the team with a way forward. Fire has symbolism within the Proteas team.
As a unit, this is how the Proteas see themselves: forged in fire and resilient. They can sink to the lowest defeats, but they possess the protea's ability to regenerate after a fire. Adversity only makes them stronger. In a variety of ways, ex-Proteas and current senior players speak of resilience being a part of their DNA.
Protea Fire is the Proteas' grit. Their Garra Charrua, their sisu. In a way, they all mean the same thing. These terms are at the heart of what so many of us believe you need to win in sports.
But, even with their Garra Charrua, Uruguay's fortunes changed after the 1950 World Cup. They have not been that fierce giant-killing outfit in a long time. With each failure, Uruguay's football team was asked to play with increased intensity; more garra. At each turn, they were asked to play harder, to show more respect for the badge and the past. They were told to ramp up the intensity to unseen heights.
But, how much more could they give when they were giving their all on the pitch?
Uruguay’s players went into every contest with as much Garra Charrua as the world cup-winning teams or more, but that did not get them over the line. The Uruguayans played with so much garra some of their matches devolved into a ruthless physical contests that left opponents injured.
The requirement for the Uruguayan team to play with more garra drove Diego Forlan to lash out: “Garra is misinterpreted. You always have to give it your all on the pitch, but a lot of countries play very well, even though they don’t have Uruguay’s garra and determination. And they win more important titles than us… Football changed, but we didn’t. And if we don’t start to change, things are going to keep getting worse, and all that garra in the world won’t help us.”
Garra alone is not enough. Sisu alone is not enough. Protea Fire alone is not enough, as Forlan argues. You can't run through every wall, some walls have steel reinforcement. As one of my favourite writers once remarked, life is not a Rocky movie.
Success (sustainable success) is a by-product of garra, skill and keeping up with the times. Sport evolves and so should teams if they want to remain competitive. But, change is not easy, especially in cricket. Many are dragged into the present while they resolutely hold on to the past.
The other day, I was talking with a head coach, and he bemoaned the shortage of ‘leaders of men’ among coaches. Many coaches are excellent tactically, but many of them also lack the skills for proper man-management. The traditional hard-nosed methods of coaching focused squarely on tactics and less on individual player needs are simply no longer adequate. Times have changed.
“It’s not enough for the players to play for their place in the team or for each other,” he told me.
They also should able to play for the coach, because they trust that the coach has their best interests at heart and trusts them to do a job. Trust is a big issue.
It's not just the man-management that matters, how the Proteas play also matters. What is the use of more Protea Fire if the team's philosophy is rooted in the 2010s? With their current philosophy, the Proteas are the least likely team to take advantage of match-ups or the state of the game when batting. They are most likely going to stick to the batting order they have on paper. Batting order fluidity is a foreign concept.
The Proteas need a reset of their white ball cricket philosophy. The players have the skill and ability, but they play according to what a coach desires. Sometime in 2021, I had a chat with a player who said the difference between playing the IPL and playing for the Proteas is that in the IPL, the franchise banks on a batter playing at least one match-winning knock. When with the Proteas, players are expected to be consistent, not match-winners. It’s a conservative approach.
Proteas players are still asked to go in with a safety-first approach, they are asked to be aggressive, but cautiously so. It’s a strange request, it sounds like this, ‘play your natural game, but you should tone it down a bit.’ And when the players are not being asked to play conservatively, they choose to be conservative because they do not trust that coaches and administrators understand that failure is as much a part of cricket as is success. They retreat into their shells and play for survival, not success.
When Uruguayan fans demanded more garra from their players, what they actually wanted was to see their team being more dominant, and showing superior skill and execution. They just did not know how to say it. After all, when Uruguay made their mark on the world of football, they didn’t only bring Garra Charrua. Back then, most teams played football in a forceful manner: long balls, little creativity and no rhythm. Uruguay burst on the scene looking like an orchestra, with short passes and individual brilliance. It was beautiful to watch.
Ditto for the Proteas. The problem is not that they underperform in white-ball cricket, it’s not that they don’t live up to Protea Fire and preceding generations, but that they espouse an out-of-touch and dour philosophy.
Of course, a reset can happen, but it will come with the appointment of a coach in touch with the times.
However, for this to work, there needs to be trust between the players and the administrators. The difference between the ECB and other boards is that the ECB provides players and the coaches all the tools and information to be the best they can. Players are the cricket board’s biggest asset and the board’s duty is to look after them, not the other way round.