Bulletproof Truth

Rabada unease symptom of South Africa’s wider disease

“Only 1 African player selected in the Proteas Team [sic] for the upcoming T20 World Cup 2024 Team [sic].” – Fikile Mbalula, bumptious blowhard

Telford Vice / Cape Town

FOR a long moment that stretched from Tuesday into Wednesday, hearts were in throats all over South Africa. “We know Rabada’s gone home injured, so we’ve got to find a replacement,” Brad Haddin, Punjab Kings assistant coach, said unhelpfully vaguely in Guwahati on Tuesday. Wait! What?

CSA answered the question in a short statement at 10.30am (South Africa time) on Wednesday: “Kagiso Rabada has returned home from the IPL due to a lower limb soft tissue infection. The 28-year-old consulted a specialist on arrival in South Africa [on Sunday evening] and is being closely monitored by the CSA medical team. His preparation for the upcoming T20 World Cup in West Indies and the USA is not expected to be affected.”

Phew! With that, relieved hearts sank from suddenly relaxed throats nationwide. And not only among the cricketminded. We need to be woke to the truth that Rabada is exponentially more than a cricketer.

He is the country’s most skilled fast bowler and its most successful of the era; the heart, soul and mind of South Africa’s attack. Since Rabada made his international debut in a T20I against Australia in Adelaide in November 2014, only Mitchell Starc has taken more wickets across the formats at that level.

That hardly nicks the notion of what it is to be Rabada. He is an unblemished exemplar of the fast bowler as artist. This holds true from his balletic action to his visceral aggression — which used to land him in trouble with the ICC — to his rasping intelligence, to the cold hardness that gleams in his eyes the same way it used to in the eyes of Dennis Lillee, Malcom Marshall, Wasim Akram and Allan Donald. Rabada is who you would hold up to cricket agnostics as fast bowling’s and fast bowlers’ fast bowler.

But that is not what he means. Rabada is the closest phenomenon in South Africa to the demigods cricket has created in Indian society. Central to that assertion is that he is black in a country where race fuels a febrile brand of politics enmeshed, as it must be, in economics. Politically, to be black in modern South Africa is to finally have your humanity recognised after centuries of racist oppression. Economically, to be black in modern South Africa is, with not enough exceptions, to be poor. Rabada is among those exceptions. Even so, he is as likely to suffer racism as any other black person on the streets of South Africa. Until, that is, the racists realise who he is.

Even that does not encapsulate Rabada. He has earned his own success and made his own money, but he was put on that path by parents who — unusually for black South Africans of the time — were part of the professional class. Coming from a middle-class home and going to an elite school, he was able to work towards improving at rugby, his first love, and cricket without having to think about how he was going to pay for a new pair of boots. Famously, neither the young Makhaya Ntini nor the grandmother who cared for him in his rural hamlet of Mdingi could not afford to buy boots. But before we celebrate Rabada’s reality as progress, consider that many of today’s up and coming cricketers have something closer to Ntini’s experience.

Rabada is something more still — the only black player in the squad for the T20 World Cup next month. Five brown players are also in the 15. But this is South Africa, where more than 80% of the population is black. Between one and eight black and brown players have gone to the 17 editions of the ODI and T20 World Cups in which South Africa have played. Yet 93 of the 131 Test players capped since readmission in 1991 have been white.

That’s despite race-based selection targets. Currently, they are set at a minimum of six black and brown players, at least two of them black, in every XI. That is measured over the course of a season, but clearly it is going to be difficult to achieve at the T20 World Cup. Just as clearly, the selection policy is not working.

Rabada glides into his beautiful bowling action with all that and more heaped onto his thankfully broad shoulders. He is a beacon for the hopes and aspirations of millions he will never meet. He is a totem of black excellence in a largely black society that is desperate to improve the lot of its black citizens.

So a threat to his participation in the T20 World Cup will shove the hearts into the throats of those South Africans who are interested in cricket and those who are invested in a better, more equitable country. That covers everybody.

Consequently, Rabada sticks out in awkward places. Like the social media accounts of Fikile Mbalula, the secretary general of the ruling African National Congress, who posted on Monday: “Only 1 African player selected in the Proteas Team for the upcoming T20 World Cup 2024 Team [sic]. Definitely a reserval [sic] of the gains of transformation and doesn’t reflect fair representation of all South Africans in the national cricket team.”

Even considering the fact that English is not Mbalula’s first language, there are problems with his statement. All 15 squad members are Africans, regardless of their race. As for the “reversal of the gains of transformation”, what gains? The figures above show that, at international level, they have been negligible at best. Also, the squad was named on April 30. It took Mbalula 14 days to come up with that erroneous emptiness? Then again, an election looms on May 29.

Ray Mali, CSA’s first black president, is not a bumptious blowhard like Mbalula. But he is out of touch. Mali complained on the national broadcaster last week that the make-up of the T20 World Cup squad proved that transformation had “gone backwards”. He also moaned that making the coach the sole selector “is not going to work in a country like ours”.

When has transformation ever gone forward discernibly on the global stage? Would Rob Walter be subjected to that sort of scrutiny were he not white? Mali, 87, is a genial, thoughtful elder in the game; truly a lovely man. But he stopped being CSA’s president in 2007 and his tenure as the ICC’s acting president ended in the throes of the inaugural IPL. Cricket, at all levels and in every sense, is a vastly changed game compared to when Mali was at its centre. Aptly, his second name is Remember.

CSA’s incumbent board was stirred into action by enquiries from the press on the issue of the whiter shade of pale of too much of the squad: 60% of it. “The board received a report from the director of cricket [Enoch Nkwe] on the process and composition of the Proteas squad for the ICC T20 World Cup,” a statement said. “The board noted its concerns regarding the composition of the squad failing to meet the targets that have been set by CSA but reaffirmed its decision not to become involved in selection matters.

“Our responsibility and that of all CSA’s affiliates is to ensure a healthy pipeline of players so that all teams broadly reflect our society. The board accepts that the various initiatives that have been pursued over the years have not yielded the desired results, especially in terms of producing black African cricketers at the highest levels. [Nkwe] also presented to the board plans for the acceleration of black African batting talent and a plan to ensure a more representative group of players ahead of the 2027 ODI World Cup on home soil. The board endorsed these plans.”

Should the unthinkable happen and Rabada be ruled out of the tournament, his place would likely be taken by Lungi Ngidi, one of the reserves. Ngidi is also a fine fast bowler and — importantly — also black. There is a decent argument that he should have made the squad proper, but Walter is banking on Anrich Nortjé rediscovering the blistering pace that has deserted him since he returned, in March, from the equivalent of six months on the sidelines with a lumbar stress fracture.

That, too, is a decent argument. As is the theory that the silkily-skilled Ngidi is closer in type to Rabada than the flame-throwing Nortjé. So Walter wasn’t faced with a 50-50 call between Nortjé and Ngidi. But not a lot of that nuance survives the heat that hovers over the fact that Walter and Nortjé are white.

Faf du Plessis came in for criticism, rightly, when he explained Temba Bavuma’s axing from the Test team in January 2020 by saying, “We don’t see colour.” We have to see colour if we want to move forward as a society. We have to stop seeing only in black, brown and white.

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Soaring sixes: sweet, sour or stale?

Big hitting doesn’t always mean winning. But it does look good on a screen for those who want to see six after six after six.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

BEFORE last Sunday, Heinrich Klaasen’s sweet swing made him the supreme six swatter in this year’s IPL. Now he isn’t even the biggest hitter at his own franchise. Has sweet turned sour?

Not quite. Abishek Sharma, Virat Kohli and Sunil Narine have surpassed Klaasen’s 31 sixes and Travis Head has equalled the South African. But a mere four sixes — fewer than have been hit by a single batter in an innings 38 times in this IPL — separates those players.

And the rampant, roaring redhead will likely be given a chance to reclaim the top spot when Sunrisers Hyderabad host Gujarat Titans on Thursday. Klaasen has hit 11 sixes in his four innings there, including seven in his top score this season, a 34-ball 80 not out against Mumbai Indians on March 27.

The Titans will hope for more of what they managed to do in Ahmedabad on March 31 — stop any SRH batter from reaching 30. Klaasen’s 24 featured two sixes, and the Titans overhauled SRH’s 162/8 with seven wickets standing and five balls remaining.

Most or even all of which could be irrelevant by Thursday in a tournament that has yielded an average of 17.84 sixes per match in its 62 completed games. That isn’t the only reason this year’s IPL has hit global cricket headlines, but it is the most prominent. And it is closely tied to another: the impact player.

Here’s just such a headline, above a column by Nick Hoult in the UK’s Daily Telegraph on April 30: “IPL’s farcical substitution rule is undermining the fabric of cricket”. The subhead: “Allrounders are being sidelined and bowlers are being battered — all for the sake of more and more boundaries”.

In the Melbourne Age on May 5, columnist Greg Baum wrote: “Six used to have its own cachet, standing for a risk taken, a shot well and sometimes audaciously hit, a frisson in flight, some doubt about whether it would clear the fielders or the boundary, exultation when it did. Sixes were rare enough for each to be a landmark in a game.” That headline: “The joy of six has not been entirely lost, but it’s getting there”.

The next day, in the inaugural episode of the podcast Cricket et al, Gideon Haigh told Peter Lalor: “It seems to me these days that the IPL is almost like an accounting exercise rather than a cricket exercise. It’s like spreadsheets rather than scoresheets. Every game, when I turn on the highlights, looks the same. Every game sounds the same. The only change is the colour of the uniforms. And, frankly, that could probably be done by AI [artificial intelligence] anyway.”

Rohit Sharma, Axar Patel, Mukesh Kumar and Jacques Kallis have come out against the impact player rule. But on Tuesday, on R Ashwin’s Youtube channel, Ravi Shastri said: “The impact player is good. You have to evolve with the times. When any new rule comes in there will be people who will try and justify why that’s not right. But in time, when you see the scores — 200 and 190 — and … individuals grabbing that opportunity and making the most of it, people will start re-looking how they think about it.”

The IPL consumes cricket and much of the rest of public discourse in south Asia. Most of its games start at 3pm London time, which is 10pm in Perth, 11.30pm in Adelaide and midnight in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. So while you might tune in to the IPL live if you’re in the Indian subcontinent and the UK — and form a detailed critique of what you see, impact players and all — in Australia your consumption of the tournament is likely to be an ever more frenetic flurry of packaged highlights. Or six after six after six with the lightest sprinkling of comparatively rarer and minor events like wickets. Particularly if SRH are playing.

They have already launched more sixes than any franchise in any edition of the IPL: 146. That’s more than twice as many as the last team on this year’s list, Gujarat, who have hit 68. SRH’s collective strike rate, 168.19, is the highest in the league. They have scored three of the top five totals, not least because they have three of the top five six hitters in Sharma, Head and Klaasen. But every other team have hit more fours than SRH’s 171.

Consequently, Kolkata Knight Riders, Delhi Capitals and Royal Challengers Bangalore have scored a higher percentage of their runs in boundaries than SRH. Those figures are, in order, 71.82%, 70.38%, 68.60% and 68.15%. Gujarat are last with 59.95%.

Of course, none of these numbers will decide which teams go to the playoffs. That’s the function of the standings. How do the boundary percentage positions compare with places on the table? Only KKR and SRH, who are first and fourth in the standings, are in the same spots in boundary percentage terms. The discrepancy between the two measures is two places for RCB, Gujarat and Lucknow Super Giants. Chennai Super Kings are eighth in terms of boundary percentage but third in the standings, and Rajasthan Royals are seventh and second. That’s a difference, in both cases, of five places: the biggest.

So big hitting doesn’t always mean winning. But it does look good on a screen for those who want to see six after six after six hit by players like Klaasen. He has earned 54.87% of his 339 runs in sixes, but just 14.16% in fours. Fifty-seven players have hit more fours than Klaasen, but only 22 have scored more runs.

Klaasen has made 10.92% more of his runs against seamers than spinners, and faced 16.48% more seam than spin. Good luck trying to hatch a theory for what that difference — 5.56% — might mean. He’s been dismissed by seamers five times and by spinners three times; by slower balls twice and in the throes of going for a big shot five times. He’s been bowled three times and caught five times. Not all of those five times have involved a seamer, a big shot and a catch.

There are many more stats where those come from, but already we’re in danger of wringing all meaning from Klaasen’s sweet swing, a thing of simple but not simplistic beauty. Let’s not do that.

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Du Preez presides, for now, after Moreeng marathon finally ends

“Whatever you know about cricket, the moment you move into the women’s space you find out that you might know nothing.” – Dillon du Preez, South Africa interim coach

Telford Vice / Cape Town

HILTON Moreeng’s marathon of more than 11 years as South Africa’s women’s team’s coach is over. But who his permanent replacement might be remains as uncertain as it has been for the almost 15 months that CSA have searched for his successor.

Moreeng has been in the job since December 2012. His last match in charge was to have been the T20 World Cup final between South Africa and Australia at Newlands in February last year. But CSA’s failure to settle on a suitable successor meant he was retained on a series of interim contracts.

On Friday, CSA said Moreeng had decided to relinquish the position. Dillon du Preez, who was appointed assistant coach in September 2020, will step in until the end of the tour to India in June.

Last year’s final is the only World Cup decider any senior South Africa team, female or male, have reached. Moreeng took his team to four other semifinals in both formats. Under him South Africa won 84 of 149 ODIs and 60 of 127 T20Is, an overall success rate of 52.17%.

Moreeng was the first fulltime coach for South Africa’s women’s team. He was appointed almost a year before CSA first decided to contract women, and he was more or less a one-person support staff. Nearly eight years later, when Du Preez came on board, the team had a manager, a strength and conditioning coach, a doctor and a physiotherapist. Now they also have specialist batting and fielding coaches, with Du Preez taking care of the bowling. Moreeng has been an important figure in the successful metamorphosis of women’s cricket in South Africa from an amateur pursuit to fully-fledged professionalism.

“Whatever you know about cricket, the moment you move into the women’s space you find out that you might know nothing,” Du Preez told a press conference on Friday. “What Hilton has done for me has been amazing. I couldn’t have picked a better guy to learn from.”

But Moreeng’s team have outgrown him. In August, not quite six months after the T20 World Cup final, it emerged senior players had written to CSA to express their dissatisfaction with his methods, which they considered outdated. That was thought to be the reason for Suné Luus resigning the captaincy and for Chloe Tryon leaving the squad. The unhappiness has been reflected in the results — since the T20 World Cup, South Africa have won 12 games and lost 15.

The players’ problems with Moreeng weren’t personal. Instead, they felt he had run out of the kind of ideas they were exposed to in foreign franchise leagues. Given that delicate situation, had CSA consulted with the players to see if they were happy with Du Preez?

“We did acknowledge what transpired in the environment a few months ago,” Enoch Nkwe, CSA’s director of cricket, said. “We had a couple of meetings with everyone included, the management and the players, to figure out the real issues and what can be done in the short term. And also what can be worked on from a long-term point of view to try and better the environment and strengthen it.” Du Preez was more direct: “I’ve got the commitment from the management and the players.”

Considering Du Preez had been Moreeng’s assistant for almost four years, and seeing as his charges approved of him, had he been offered the position permanently? “Those are going to be the conversations that are going to be taking place,” Nkwe said. “We didn’t want to dump everything immediately. We also need him to understand if he would like to do this moving forward. There are also internal processes that need to be understood and respected. It was probably better to go the interim route while we’re trying to sort out a lot of those things internally. And to allow Dillon the space to think through things in the medium to long term. Maybe he puts his hand up and it’s a role that he’d like to take forward. Who knows. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Did Du Preez want the job permanently? “I think I will want it,” he said. “It’s too early to give you a 100% answer. But that’s where you want to be, at the highest level. I would really want to coach there; I enjoy it a lot. But let’s talk after India.”

Nkwe said in November that interviews for the position had been conducted and that Moreeng’s successor was due to be named before the tour to Australia in January and February this year. That did not happen, and Moreeng stayed on. “Unfortunately we couldn’t find fitting candidates to take the team forward,” Nkwe said on Friday. He added that Moreeng had agreed in January to “help us with the transition post the 50-over World Cup next year”. But said he changed his mind last month after Sri Lanka earned their first ever series win in South Africa, prevailing 2-1 in the T20Is, and drew the ODI rubber. “Unfortunately he came to the end of the season and felt he didn’t have it anymore to continue,” Nkwe said.

What now for Moreeng, who at 46 is far from at the end of the coaching road? “We would like to retain him in whichever way because you don’t just let go of such experience, especially in women’s cricket,” Nkwe said.

If Du Preez’ name sounds familiar to those who don’t remember him as a flashy bowling allrounder on South Africa’s domestic scene, it might be because he once had Sachin Tendulkar and Ajinkya Rahane caught in the slips with consecutive deliveries. He was playing for Royal Challengers Bangalore against Mumbai Indians in a 2009 IPL game at the Wanderers, and came within a centimetre or two of a hattrick — his next delivery hit JP Duminy’s pads too high. When Du Preez had Duminy caught behind with the second ball of his next over, he had taken three wickets for no runs.

Fifteen years and exactly one week later, Du Preez isn’t hitting the headlines that hard anymore. But, as Nkwe said, “who knows” whether he will again.

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Brace for SA20 impact players?

“It’s a terrible rule.” – Jacques Kallis

Telford Vice / Cape Town

THE impact player rule jolting the IPL could be implemented in next year’s SA20. Cricbuzz understands the measure will be on the agenda when the South African tournament’s administrators gather to plan the 2025 edition.

That meeting will be held after the ICC releases their updated playing conditions, which are usually published on October 1. If the rule is approved, the SA20 will be ripe for the kind of revolution being seen in the IPL.

Should such a change seem unlikely, consider that the SA20 discussed introducing the rule last year. It was decided not to follow the IPL’s example partly because the SA20 player auction had happened by then and the franchises had not been able to shape their squads with impact players in mind. Concerns over the adverse consequences for allrounders, who are earning fewer opportunities because of the rule, and player development also helped make up minds. Those opposed, whose ranks include several prominent players, will hope that thinking prevails.

Among them is Jacques Kallis, who told Cricbuzz: “It’s a terrible rule. You’re negating the allrounder, and I don’t think that’s good for cricket. Especially for India, who are trying to grow their allrounders. As an allrounder, I don’t want to see that. You want them to play a major role.

“Also, there’s a very small chance of being bowled out because you’re basically playing with eight batters. That makes a big difference, and that’s why the scores have gone crazy. Yes, the batters have taken the game to the next level, but I definitely don’t agree that there should be an impact player.”

Kallis did see an upside to the rule for players who couldn’t quite crack the XI: “If your team is doing well your side doesn’t change much. Then guys sit on the sidelines and do nothing. So they could get gametime as impact players. That’s probably the only bonus, but it’s still not good for the game.”

Happily for Kallis and those who concur, he is on good terms with SA20 commissioner Graeme Smith — who has not responded to enquiries about the possibility of impact players being green lit for next year’s tournament. “I have had a chat with Graeme about this, and from what I understand they’re not going to do it,” Kallis said.

But the ongoing rule-fuelled explosion of runs in India, and the fact that all six of the SA20 franchises are IPL-owned, could prompt a rethink in South Africa when the bigwigs meet.

The tournament already has a semblance of a substitution system in place, with captains nominating at the toss which two of the 13 players’ names on their team sheets will sit out. In the IPL, five replacements are designated before the match — one of whom can be deployed during any natural break at any stage of the game.

The benefit of the SA20’s current approach is limited to allowing teams to finalise their XIs after analysing the actual conditions, not estimating what they might be based on experience. The benefits of the impact player rule for IPL teams, particularly in batting terms, seem unlimited.

Measured until after Tuesday’s game between Delhi Capitals and Rajasthan Royals, the 1,014th played in all IPLs, 11 of the tournament’s all-time top 20 highest totals have been seen this year along with 10 of the 20 biggest match aggregates and four of the highest 20 successful run chases. Teams have been bowled out for fewer than 100 in 40 IPL innings, but only once this year.

The record of a dozen centuries for a single edition of the IPL — five more than in 2016 and 2022, which are second on the list — was set last year, the first time impact players were deployed. Suryakumar Yadav’s undefeated 102 off 51 balls for Mumbai Indians against Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Wankhede on Monday was already the 12th ton this year, and that with 19 games left in the competition at that stage.

Five of last year’s hundreds were scored by players who were then subbed out of the line-up, all of them in the top four. That has been true once this year, when Travis Head opened and made 102 off 41 for Sunrisers Hyderabad against Royal Challengers Bangalore at the Chinnaswamy on April 15. It happened the other way around a day later at Eden Gardens, where Sanju Samson chose to field first and Jos Buttler scored 107 not out off 60 against Kolkata Knight Riders after being parachuted into Rajasthan Royals’ opening partnership.

Sai Sudharsan was the highest impact runscorer after 56 games, making 325 runs — including both of his half-centuries and all five of his top scores — at a strike rate of 129.48 in eight innings as a substitute. He made 33, 31 and 35 in his other innings, but at a higher strike rate of 139.44.

The best impact strike rate after 56 games, among players who had scored at least 50 runs, belonged to Royal Challengers Bangalore’s Mahipal Lomror — 238.10. Overall, batters who were subbed out had a strike rate of 162.12. Those who came into the XI scored at 143.67.

Arshdeep Singh was the most successful impact bowler with 13 wickets and Mustafizur Rahman’s economy rate of 6.38 was the best among those who had sent down five or more overs. Subbed out bowlers have taken 70 wickets, and their economy rate was 9.85. Those coming in have claimed 36 wickets and conceded 11.13 runs an over.

But it’s batting where this buck stops, or has refused to stop. The real effect of the rule is that it has removed from the non-impact batters’ minds much of the fear of getting out. They no longer need to curb their enthusiasm. Whoever the impact player is and however many runs they might make matters less than the invigorating fact of their presence. That gives their teammates licence to lash out more lustily than ever. Hence we’ve seen exponentially more IPL centuries than ever in 2023 and 2024.

We saw four centuries in the SA20 this year — up by one from the inaugural edition — and 454 sixes; 77 more than in 2023. On Thursday the tournament reported a 21% increase in global broadcaster viewership and 75-million digital views. That’s a fraction of the interest in the IPL, which garnered 111-million streaming viewers for this year’s opening match alone.

But the SA20 is far from broken. So why try to fix it with an impact player rule. Besides, South Africa’s outfields are significantly bigger than India’s, and the pitches not as flat. That an IPL record low of two centuries were scored when the tournament was played in South Africa in 2009 — four fewer than in 2008 — seems instructive.

That, of course, was long before impact players. The toothpaste is out of the tube. Good luck getting it back inside.

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South Africa’s selection sickness

“Players need to be able to trust the system. Irrespective of their race, creed or colour, they want a fair opportunity. They want to know that they’re backed and valued in the system. But there are so many shortcomings.” – Rihan Richards, CSA president

Telford Vice / Cape Town

THE system. Suddenly South Africa’s cricketminded are woke to the flaws in the game’s design to deliver particular players to the international arena. Not that there is much new about that. What is new is the focus on the s-word.

This sharpened last Tuesday, when Rob Walter said, “My number one imperative is to create a winning Proteas team. In order to do that, every time I pick a side I’ve got to pick the best team at the time that I think will give us a chance of doing that. That said, the system needs to up the ante so that in six months, 12 months or two years’ time, and in particular when we reach the 2027 World Cup at home, the demographics of our team are different.”

Walter was explaining why his squad for the men’s T20 World Cup in the United States and the Caribbean in June included only one black and five brown players. Or why 60% were white in a country where the white population is estimated at 7.3%.

Walter knows the system. Seven black and brown Titans players during his tenure as that franchise’s coach, from 2013/14 to 2015/16, became internationals. But his statement might have been accompanied by a disclaimer: a winning team doesn’t mean a white team. All but one of the players South Africa took to each of their first three men’s World Cups — in 1992, 1996 and 1999 — were white. And yet they did not reach the final in any of those tournaments. They still haven’t.

Walter’s all-consuming job is to try to win World Cups. His job is not to find enough black and brown players who have escaped the circumstances of most South Africans of their races well enough to play international cricket. Making that team credibly represent South Africa is the job of the system. It has never done that. The current boss of that system is Rihan Richards, CSA’s president and the leader of the members council — the presidents of the 15 provincial unions and CSA’s highest decision-making body. Did Richards think Walter’s view was fair?

“Unless we take responsibility, things don’t change,” Richards told Cricbuzz. “So I understand what Rob is saying; that collectively we have to change. He has gone with specialists because that’s the way he feels he wants to play. That ethos must be cascaded into the system. Every player should know what we demand and everybody should strive for it. Rob is doing what he thinks is right. So we have to trust him. We’ve given him the authority, so we have to hold him accountable.”

Richards was first elected in 2013 to the majority non-independent CSA board that had to be dragged out of office kicking and screaming — with the help of the sports ministry — in October 2020. Richards had become president in the wake of Chris Nenzani’s resignation two months earlier. If the board had not been deposed, the pile-up of governance crises was set to plunge the game into an abyss from which it would have struggled to emerge. Most of the members of the reconstituted board are independent, and much of the authority is now vested in the chair, Lawson Naidoo, an independent. If Richards has been such a strong advocate for change, and been in positions to make it happen, why don’t we see more black and brown players in a South Africa shirt?

“Because the process of decision-making is too long,” Richards said. “We need to streamline it, and hold people accountable for what we appoint them to do. If they don’t, we move on. We take seven or eight months to get something done when it should be done in two months. If it means tearing down the system and rebuilding it, it shouldn’t take 10 years. We just keep hoping things will change. We must make the hard choices and refocus our expenses. We need to evaluate what is working and what’s not working.

“Players need to be able to trust the system. Irrespective of their race, creed or colour, they want a fair opportunity. They want to know that they’re backed and valued in the system. But there are so many shortcomings. The players’ salary bill in the SA20 is bigger than our professional budget. There are schools with bigger cricket budgets than the [provincial] affiliates.”

This comes across as nebulous weasel-wording by someone who is part of the problem. But Richards genuinely wants to leave the system better than he found it: “The minute something negative is said about you, you pass the buck, you try and blame someone else. We are responsible as a collective, whether it’s the board, the president of CSA, the provincial presidents, and we can all run and hide. But I have to lead the delegation to go and answer to the EPG [Eminent Persons Group] and the [parliamentary] portfolio committee on why we don’t make our [race] targets.”

Other national sides are free to select without satisfying the demands of a racial scorecard, notionally because their players are thought to have roughly equitable opportunities to reach the top. The South Africans are expected to choose a minimum of six black and brown players in every XI, at least two of them black. If the numbers don’t average out over the course of a year, CSA have to explain themselves to parliament. Should the politicians, many of whom couldn’t tell a googly from a thigh pad, not be satisfied they could order the withdrawal of CSA’s privilege of calling their teams South Africa.

If that seems radical, consider the reaction to a side taking the field at a packed Eden Gardens — six of them are white, the other five look south Asian. They are not New Zealand or England. They wear an attractive shade of blue, and their shirts read “India”. Would they be accepted anywhere from Indira Col to Kanniyakumari?

South Africa is deeply divided along socio-economic lines. According to the World Bank, it is the most unequal society on earth. Broadly, whites who were rich under apartheid — which was scrapped in 1994 — remain rich. The black middle class is growing, but blacks who were poor under apartheid remain so. While racism is no longer the law of the land, its tenets remain, in too many ways, the way South Africa functions. Or doesn’t.

Rampant government corruption, widespread white resistance to change, and the tendency of the moneyed — old and new, white and black — to insulate themselves from their country’s many challenges stymies attempts to build a fairer, better society. Cricket is part of the flotsam and jetsam of all that.

The better facilities are in largely white areas. To make their way in the game, black and brown players are all but forced to subject themselves to the comparative outlandishness of what not long ago were all-white elite schools. Affluent families have the means to indulge a younger member’s ambition of a career in professional cricket. Poorer families need them to get a proper job in an economy where the unemployment rate rose to 32.1% in the last quarter of 2023, and that’s the untrusted government figure.

More black and brown people than whites play and follow cricket in South Africa, but that isn’t accurately reflected on the field at higher levels. This isn’t for want of ongoing attempts to darken the game. Cricbuzz understands CSA’s board were on Friday presented with a detailed blueprint aimed at fast-tracking black batters, the country’s least spotted species of quality cricketer. It has been estimated that CSA invested USD5.4-million in transformation in the past financial year alone. Thousands of coaches spend thousands of hours searching for black and brown prospects. They won’t want to hear this, and they deserve better, but in terms of the big picture much of their effort fails.

Of the 131 men’s Test players picked since it became legal to choose from all races, after re-admission in 1991, 93 have been white and have filled 2,361 of the 3,212 places available in the XIs. That’s 70.99% and 73.50%. By this admittedly crude measure, there have been almost 10 times too many whites in South Africa’s Test teams taking up more than 10 times too many playing opportunities.

You don’t get that feeling reading the narrative about the end of Dean Elgar’s Test career. He was understandably upset at being summarily replaced by Temba Bavuma as South Africa’s captain in February last year. Elgar retired in January, after the home series against India. In several articles, the first published in March, the latest on Sunday, Elgar’s excoriating version of events has appeared without evidence of corroboration. Even when he has been quoted as saying something as potentially damaging, in legal terms, as, “Shukri Conrad is the reason my Test career was cut short.” For the record, Cricbuzz asked Conrad for comment. He has yet to respond.

The articles’ publication has generated an aghast response, which a section of South Africans will see as racist. What do we expect when a brown coach not only removes a white captain but replaces him with a black player? Of course arrogant, fragile, systemic whiteness will be loudly unhappy. Another section will see this as another example of South Africa’s slide into a swamp of identity politics.

The report in which the Elgar quote appeared said Graeme Smith had been fired as CSA’s director of cricket. In fact, he resigned. That’s no doubt an honest error, but it fuels the existing racist discourse of black and brown incompetence trying to deflect by wilfully ridding itself of white excellence.

Rugby keeps such nastiness muted by winning. The Springboks have been World Cup champions a record four times. When they triumphed the first time, in 1995, they also had — like cricket in that era — one player who wasn’t white, the brown Chester Williams. That was up to seven of a squad of 32, injury replacements included, when they won in 2007. It was 12 of 31 in 2019 and 14 of 35 in 2023. Keeping the race-obsessed at bay, the genius who engineered both of those latest successes said last week, was about more than juggling players.

“We struggle with the word transformation because a lot of us love to connect that to [moving] black people in and white people out,” Rassie Erasmus said after accepting an honorary doctorate from North West University in Potchefstroom on Friday. “But transformation in other countries means change. You change how you operate, how you communicate with the media, how you fight for your country, how diverse your management team is, how you select a team, what’s your work ethic is. That’s change, that’s transformation. We gave the word its real meaning.

“I went through all the phases as a player, a coach, an assistant coach, a technical analyst, and I saw a lot of mistakes that I probably made the most of. When I was in Ireland [coaching Munster in 2016 and 2017] and I could see what was happening, I thought, ‘We can fix this if we stop doing it by embarrassing a group of people or individuals.’ That was the cornerstone. In the Springbok team, you can be so honest and it feels really safe. But it’s not a place where you can hide.”

Maybe Walter is tired of hiding, but is not too tired to say so. He will find many of the former in South Africa’s cricket system, but not of the latter.

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When will Tests return to Wanderers?

“It is still seen as the pinnacle.” – Heinrich Strydom, Dolphins CEO, on hosting Tests.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

THE Wanderers is South Africa’s biggest and premier cricket venue, and among the most storied in the global game. But it will go at least three-and-a-half years without hosting a Test. Although that’s bad news for spectators, it will likely save the stadium a significant amount of money.

South Africa’s match against West Indies in March 2023 is the most recent Wanderers men’s Test. Only two have been played in the country since — against India in Centurion and at Newlands in December 2023 and this January.

CSA released South Africa’s home fixtures on Friday, and the four men’s Tests against Sri Lanka and Pakistan have been scheduled for Kingsmead, St George’s Park, Centurion and Newlands from November until next January. South Africa’s next home men’s Tests are three against Australia in September 2026. Only then can Johannesburg expect to be back on the roster.

Besides the Wanderers’ 44 Tests, which have yielded 60 centuries and 54 five-wicket hauls, it was where the 2003 men’s World Cup final was played and the venue for the decider in the inaugural men’s World T20 in 2007. It will likely host the 2027 men’s World Cup final.

Among the 11 grounds that have seen Test cricket in South Africa, only Newlands and Kingsmead have hosted more matches than the Wanderers. Since readmission in 1991, make that only Newlands.

Besides the facts of the matter, the Wanderers is where Merv Hughes swung a bat at an abusive spectator in March 1994, which prompted the installation of the plexiglass tunnel that still leads from the boundary to the dressingroom. It’s where, in January 1995, the start of the Test was delayed by a day to allow for frantic negotiations to keep Pakistan’s tour on track after Saqlain Mushtaq and Mohammad Akram claimed they had been mugged outside a Johannesburg nightclub. It’s where South Africa won the 438 game against Australia in March 2006. And where as measured and mannered a man as Michael Holding labelled the pitch in the Test against India in January 2018 “shit”.

The Wanderers is a place of beers, braais, boorishness, babelaas — the Afrikaans word for a hangover — and being as brilliantly entertained at a sporting event as it is possible to be. It isn’t the prettiest ground in South Africa, but it is unarguably the most South African of cricket grounds.

Even so, in the real world, none of those facts and figures matter more than the equivalent of USD135,000 South Africa’s grounds spend on hosting a single Test. CSA pay their provincial unions USD19,000 in hosting fees per Test, and the venue keeps 40% of the revenue from the sales of tickets — which go for USD10 each at most — and makes money from selling hospitality suites. But if the opposition are not drawcards like Australia, England or India — and to a lesser extent Pakistan — there is no hope of breaking even, nevermind making a profit. At the Wanderers, which holds 28,000, whether more security guards and food vendors than spectators are present is sometimes a serious conversation.

The equation is exponentially more skewed in domestic cricket. Venues for matches in division one of the CSA T20 Challenge, which was played from March 8 to April 28, earned a hosting fee of USD1,335 per game — each of which cost the Wanderers USD16,200. Crowds were minuscule and there were no takers for hospitality suites, so those factors didn’t put a dent in the losses.

That said, there is disappointment in Gauteng cricket circles that the Pakistanis won’t be coming to town to play a Test next summer. And not only because the locals would like to remind the visitors about that nightclub incident in January 1995. For all its rough edges Johannesburg is a proud place, and being overlooked again after losing out on last season’s India Tests does not sit well.

But Joburg’s loss is Gqeberha’s and Durban’s gain. St George’s Park and Kingsmead haven’t hosted Tests since the series against Bangladesh in March and April 2022. Is a Test series that doesn’t go to St George’s Park, the home of cricket in South Africa in many ways, really a Test series in South Africa? And why shouldn’t the USD1-million worth of improvements made at Kingsmead since Heinrich Strydom was appointed chief executive in July 2017 be recognised?

But, in the modern world, with its evaporating attention span and demand for constant full colour excitement, was hosting a Test worth the asking price? “It is still seen as the pinnacle,” Strydom told Cricbuzz. “Also there’s the value of the TV exposure over five days. If the opposition is high quality and the timing of the hosting makes sense — for example around Boxing Day — then it is definitely still a yes from me.”

The Wanderers would concur, and be quietly grateful to wait for Australia in 2026.

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Walter’s T20 World Cup squad gambles on a dream

“I’m definitely not a betting man. I trust the quality of the players.” – Rob Walter

Telford Vice / Cape Town

NO to Rassie van der Dussen, Matthew Breetzke and Lungi Ngidi. Yes to Quinton de Kock, Anrich Nortjé and Marco Jansen. If you didn’t know whether Rob Walter was a gambler, you do now.

The experienced and respected Van der Dussen was among the top 10 run-scorers in this year’s SA20 and CSA T20 Challenge. Only Babar Azam has made more runs in the format in the world this year. But Van der Dussen has not cracked Walter’s nod for the T20 World Cup in the United States and the Caribbean in June.

Neither has Breetzke, who was the third-highest runscorer in the SA20 and the highest in the T20 Challenge. Nor Ngidi, despite taking more wickets than all but five other fast bowlers in the SA20.

But De Kock has been included even though he looks jaded and is having an under-par IPL, where he is 27th on the runscoring charts. Nortjé is also at the tournament, and has an economy rate of 13.36 — maybe because he was sidelined by a lumbar stress fracture from last September to March this year. Jansen, too, is at the IPL, although you might not have noticed considering he has played one match.

Walter denied, during a press conference on Tuesday, that his squad was the product of a long night at the roulette wheel: “I’m definitely not a betting man, never have been. But I trust the quality of the players. Anrich has another month before the World Cup starts, so no doubt he’ll hit his straps. It’s good to see that his speed is up and, with playing and more time training, he’ll start to get his feel back. It’s the same with Marco. Again, Quinny is a quality cricketer. We’ve seen him do the job time and time again for us.”

How did Walter, South Africa’s white-ball coach and so the sole selector in those formats, go about making up his mind? “There are various criteria — performances this year, performances over the last year, historical performances further back than that, the make-up of squads, the potential conditions that we are going to have to balance. And then there’s the good old-fashioned coach’s gut feeling.”

There’s also subjectivity, to which all of us are prone. It’s easy to look past the fact that 18 players in the SA20 and 22 in the T20 Challenge scored faster than Van der Dussen. And that while Ngidi was ruled out of the IPL with his own lumbar problem, he doesn’t offer Nortjé’s ability to bowl at 150 kilometres an hour. And that De Kock, even though he is out of sorts, has passed 50 three times in nine innings at the IPL.

Taking aim at individuals in a squad isn’t difficult. Making an alternative case that takes into account a side’s balance, the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents and the likely conditions is a stiffer challenge.

“I’ve chatted to probably 30-plus players in the last three days around selection and non-selection,” Walter said. “We do our best to communicate with those who we feel were in the mix and who were close to selection but didn’t quite get there. As much as it’s nice to make good phone calls, I really feel for the guys who miss out. You’ve got good people working hard on their games to live their dream of going to a World Cup. I’m the one who has to tell them that’s not going to happen. It’s not easy for me but it’s a lot harder for them to deal with that reality.”

The squad to play three T20Is against West Indies in the Caribbean before the World Cup was also named, pending changes that could depend on which South Africans are available after the league stage of the IPL. This squad includes Van der Dussen, Ngidi and Nqaba Peter, the 21-year-old leg spinner who lit up an otherwise dowdy T20 Challenge by taking 20 wickets in 10 games at an average of 9.50 and an economy rate of 5.84.

Walter is allowed to make changes to the World Cup squad until May 25. That seems unlikely, but those who have missed out and will be part of the Windies series wouldn’t be human if they didn’t hope something happens to change the coach’s mind.

More criticism is sure to come Walter’s way because the World Cup 15 includes only six players of colour, just one of them black — a situation exacerbated by the exposure of Temba Bavuma’s unsuitability to the demands of batting in the format. Bavuma, who is black, was South Africa’s captain during their disastrous 2022 T20 World Cup campaign.

Remedies are not easy to see. Rivaldo Moonsamy and Sibonelo Makhanya were among the top 10 runscorers in the T20 Challenge, but how do they win a place if Van der Dussen doesn’t? Simu Simetu was the leading wicket-taker in that competition, and like Keshav Maharaj and Bjorn Fortuin he is a left-arm orthodox spinner.

“My number one imperative is to create a winning Proteas team,” Walter said. “In order to do that, every time I pick a side I’ve got to pick the best team at the time that I think will give us a chance of doing that. That said, the [domestic] system needs to up the ante so that in six months, 12 months or two years’ time, and in particular when we reach the 2027 World Cup at home, the demographics of our team are different.

“Outside of the World Cup we’ll continue to use our bilateral series to do exactly that — to grow our base of players, to create international opportunity, to give opportunity for players to take their skills to a higher level, and make sure that we’ve bought into and are delivering on a process that’s going to change what our team looks like as we move forward.”

Walter is white, which in racially riven South Africa will increase scrutiny of his decisions. But even though the buck stops with him, it first has to get past CSA’s director of cricket, Enoch Nkwe, who is black. “No squad that I pick is selected without discussion with the director of cricket; it’s as simple as that,” Walter said.

It isn’t that simple, of course. South Africa’s World Cup squads in 1992, 1996 and 1999 each included one brown but no black players. Five black and brown players were picked for the 2003 ODI World Cup and the 2010 version of what is now called the T20 World Cup. The 2011 World Cup squad and the 2009, 2012 and 2016 T20 selections featured six black and brown players each. There were seven at the 2007 and 2015 World Cups, and at the 2007, 2021 and 2022 T20 versions. Eight made it to the 2014 T20 tournament, and to the 2019 and 2023 World Cups; the latter also chosen by Walter.

Not one of those squads, staffed by South Africa’s finest players, all of them — whatever their race — among the best in the global game, won a trophy. So maybe Walter should be taken seriously when he says he’s not a gambler. What is he?

A clue could be seen on the wall behind Walter’s right shoulder as he spoke to reporters from New Zealand, where he and his family live. It was a wooden sign, and it read: “Dream big.”

South Africa men’s squads:

T20 World Cup: Aiden Markram (capt), Ottniel Baartman, Gerald Coetzee, Quinton de Kock, Bjorn Fortuin, Reeza Hendricks, Marco Jansen, Heinrich Klaasen, Keshav Maharaj, David Miller, Anrich Nortjé, Kagiso Rabada, Ryan Rickelton, Tabraiz Shamsi, Tristan Stubbs. Travelling reserves: Nandré Burger, Lungi Ngidi.

T20I series against West Indies: Ottniel Baartman, Matthew Breetzke, Bjorn Fortuin, Reeza Hendricks, Patrick Kruger, Wiaan Mulder, Lungi Ngidi, Nqaba Peter, Ryan Rickelton, Andile Phehlukwayo, Tabraiz Shamsi, Rassie van der Dussen.

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IPL casts deep shadow over T20 Challenge

“Some players are not scoring as many runs as others, but their strike rates are higher. Those are the guys T20 franchises want, and that has become a massive thing in modern players’ thinking.” – Ashwell Prince

Telford Vice / Cape Town

FOR 25 minutes at the Wanderers on Wednesday night, a gloomy tower served as a metaphor for CSA’s men’s T20 Challenge. One of the stadium’s floodlight pylons suddenly went dark, halting the semifinal between the Lions and the Titans — and rendering unseeable a competition that struggled to be seen even before the lights went out.

Happily, they came back efficiently enough for the Lions to purr to victory by eight wickets. They will face the Dolphins, who beat the Warriors by five wickets at Kingsmead on Thursday in the other semi, in the final at the Wanderers on Sunday.

The competition’s 55 league games were played over 45 days. Fewer than half of those matches — 22 — were broadcast live, and only to SuperSport’s limited audience. Four games were played on a single day five times, as many times as there were three on the go simultaneously. Eight other days featured two. Only twice was one game played on a day. The focus was fuzzy.

Then there’s the time of year. The tournament started 28 days after the SA20 final and it had the spotlight to itself in South Africa for 14 days before the IPL began. For 36 days now — almost three-quarters of T20 Challenge’s existence — it has been blotted out of the public consciousness by global cricket’s blingiest, blariest, best event.

The intended audience’s attention is at the IPL because most of South Africa’s box office players are there. That explains the smatterings of spectators at T20 Challenge matches, but only partly. The crowds have been tiny also because the tournament has too often failed to deliver cricket that its market, influenced by what is being beamed from India, would deem worth watching — particularly from a batting perspective.

Totals of 200 or more have been seen four times in the T20 Challenge, in which teams have been dismissed for fewer than 100 six times. In the IPL’s first 41 games, sides topped 200 in 22 instances and were bowled out in double figures once. Three centuries and two unbeaten efforts in the 90s have been seen in the T20 Challenge. The IPL has been graced by nine centuries. And all that, mind, despite 16 more matches being played in the South African competition compared to the Indian extravaganza.

The pitches in the IPL have been helped by the fact that the load is being spread around 13 grounds. Only in 2014 and 2015 have as many venues been used, and never more. “The surfaces here are very flat, so there’s no seam movement and not much turn, and there’s very little swing and lots of dew,” Lance Klusener, Lucknow Super Giants’ assistant coach, told Cricbuzz. “We’re playing on relatively small grounds that have lightning quick outfields. Add the best batters on the planet and you get big scores. Also, so many teams have an extra batter because of the impact player rule.”

Ashwell Prince, who won 119 caps for South Africa across the formats, would concur. As a television commentator on the T20 Challenge and a keen IPL follower, he is well-placed to offer an informed view on both competitions. “The impact player has made a big difference, particularly for the guys who bat early in the innings,” Prince told Cricbuzz. “Nobody is trying to secure a good start by being watchful. I’m not saying everybody is playing without responsibility, but they are erring on the side of aggression rather than being watchful because it’s an extended batting line-up. That’s freed batters’ minds.”

Jos Buttler is this year’s leading impact batter. He has scored 285 runs in seven innings for Rajasthan Royals, 142 of them after being subbed into the XI, which has happened twice. The second time, against Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens on April 16, he opened and made an unbeaten 107 off 60 balls. Chasing 224 to win, Rajasthan dwindled to 121/6 in the 13th. They would likely have lost had it not been for Buttler’s effort. Rajasthan lead the league in runs scored by their impact batters with 189. They also top the standings.

But maybe there’s more to this than impact players. “Our pitches are tired; it’s wintertime, so the ball isn’t coming onto the bat,” Prince said. “That’s not the only reason you’re not seeing so many runs. Our players’ application could be better; the scores don’t have to be as low as they are. It seems as if there aren’t any batters who are prepared to dig their team to a competitive score. Everybody wants to smash their team to a competitive score.

“But, at this time of the year, you need adaptability because the pitches aren’t as good as the mindsets want them to be. The guys are going to the crease with the mindset of wanting to attack every bowler in every bowling line-up. But the surfaces aren’t allowing for that. There’s a lack of adaptability, and teams are getting bowled out for low scores.

“Sometimes, particularly in T20 cricket, it’s hard for batters to put their ego away. The conditions may suggest that a score of around 145, 150 might be competitive, and that should mean you adapt to play that style of cricket. But because you want to play a different style, you get bundled out for 100, 115, 120. People don’t dig in and, for instance, run the runs because it’s not as glamorous as smashing the runs.”

Prince had a theory for that tendency: “You might play a matchwinning innings; let’s say you score 60 off 50 balls. Players don’t want that kind of innings in their stats. If you have to do that two or three times in a campaign, it brings your strike rate down. You might win matches for your team playing that way, but it hurts your chances of being drafted in the next big tournament.

“Franchises look at your aggregate and say, ‘Okay, you’re scoring runs. But you’re scoring them at a strike rate of 135. That’s too low. We don’t want you.’ Some players are not scoring as many runs as others, but their strike rates are higher. Those are the guys they want, and that has become a massive thing in modern players’ thinking.”

Comparing the IPL and the T20 Challenge involves many facets of difference. Prince detailed some of them: “The players in the IPL are of a higher calibre in terms of their skills. But we’re also talking about understanding the game better. We’re talking about mentality. They are the best players in the world. That’s why they’re playing in the IPL.

“Even if you had impact players in South Africa, you would struggle to put the kinds of scores on the board we’re seeing in the IPL. South African pitches offer bowlers more. Maybe there’s more bounce or lateral movement, or sometimes the natural inconsistency of the pitch offers the bowler something.

“In the IPL the surfaces are so good that somebody who comes in at number eight doesn’t have to play himself in and find the pace of the pitch. You can take two or three balls and start swinging. You know at what height and pace the ball is going to get to you.

“When you’re playing on a pitch that is bouncing more or reacting inconsistently — I listened to Matthew Hayden describe this beautifully on commentary — it delays your decision-making as a batter. When you commit later to the stroke, you can’t swing as hard as when you’re trusting the bounce and the pace. You can’t swing as hard on a South African pitch as you might do on an IPL pitch.”

The only connection between the IPL and the T20 Challenge is that they are played in the same format. For the latter to be seen is as difficult as it would be for the former not to be seen. Even if the lights went out.

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How cricket built a healthy, and evolving, relationship with electronic umpiring

“We need to move past this assumption that the best on-field match officials are also your best television match officials.” – Simon Taufel

Telford Vice / Cape Town

“TV umpire to director, we have a review for …” It’s a step in the process that starts when players are dissatisfied with the on-field umpires’ decision. Or when those umpires are unsure. So the umpire upstairs, using video evidence and gizmos, takes a look and hands down the verdict.

The mechanism has become an integral part of the modern game. Many sports have embraced electronic officiating, but none has done so as well as cricket. Crucial to the system’s integrity is trust in the technology, credible, confident communication, and transparency.

The original electronics were vetted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and relaying the relevant information and umpires’ deliberations to the watching public is a matter of connecting the officials to screens and speakers. What matters more than anything, then, is the human element: what umpires say and how they say it.

“The two biggest skills required in TV match officiating are composure and effective communication,” Simon Taufel, the former elite umpire, told Cricbuzz before plucking an analogy from the skies: “Businesses that need to focus on communicating effectively, something like air traffic control, use agreed terminology and work with non-English speaking people.

“We have to work with the lowest common denominator. While that might seem too basic, if we don’t do that we don’t have effective communication. We run an international game, and English is not something that comes easily to a lot of people.”

Umpires’ familiar DRS script makes them sound as if they’re on autopilot, but consistency is part of the point. To be believable and believed, what they say must be repeatable. And understood by all involved and by all who have an interest in the outcome.

“It can come across as robotic, but when you have very clear, agreed communication phrases of introduction, identification, requests and acknowledgement, then you leave very little room for human error and misunderstanding,” Taufel said.

He knows what he’s talking about. Having built a sterling reputation as an international umpire from January 1999 to August 2012 — he was awarded the David Shepherd Trophy a record five times consecutively — Taufel served as the ICC’s umpire performance and training manager from November 2012 to August 2016.

His tenure at the ICC coincided with those of senior administrators David Richardson, Geoff Allardice and Vince van der Bijl. With the input of leading umpires of the era like Steve Davis and Ian Gould, they transformed what had arrived in November 1992 as basic electronic umpiring and was first deployed as DRS in July 2008. The joke inside the ICC in the early days was that DRS stood for “the David Richardson System” because of the then chief executive’s drive to improve and refine it.

The tinkering continues. In March 2022 it was decided the television umpire would keep an eye on no-balls. That meant part of the DRS script became “I have checked the front foot and it is a fair delivery”. The change saved time and allowed on-field umpires to keep their eye on the action unfolding in front. As logical as that update to the playing conditions is, it shuttled between various committees of the ICC and the MCC — the custodians of the “laws” — and back for years before it was adopted.

A previous major step was taken in November 2014, when communication between umpires and broadcasters was first relayed to television viewers. “We held off on doing that for a long time on the basis that, quite often, a good decision can be ruined by a poor explanation,” Taufel said. “You become protective of your match officials to ensure you don’t fall over in that space.”

There were two challenges, Taufel said: “Number one was for the match officials to clearly articulate what they wanted, why they were making the decision, and to sell the decision verbally. The second was getting the commentators to shut up and let the TV match official talk and explain what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. It was a leap of faith but it worked.”

Spectacularly well, as was proved again in a game between Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore at Eden Gardens on Sunday. Virat Kohli felt the slow full toss he had slapped to Harshit Rana for a return catch had reached him above his waist, and was thus high enough to be ruled a no-ball. The on-field umpires, Akshay Totre and Vinod Seshan, deemed that a possibility, and — before Kohli demanded they do — asked television official Michael Gough to investigate. Replays showed Kohli was correct about the ball’s height. But they also proved he was well outside his crease when he met the delivery, which made his argument irrelevant.

As “law” 41.7.1 makes clear: “Any delivery, which passes or would have passed, without pitching, above waist height of the striker standing upright at the popping crease, is unfair. Whenever such a delivery is bowled, the umpire shall call and signal no-ball.”

Kohli’s front foot was the best part of a metre in front of the crease. His back foot was also out of his ground. The gizmos produced data that said the ball would have reached him a dozen centimetres below his waist had he been “standing upright at the popping crease”.

Gough rightly gave Kohli out, triggering enough fury from the batter to cost him half his match fee. Much of the subsequent heat has been aimed, unfairly, at the umpires. Instead, Kohli should have been upset with himself for falling prey to Rana’s canny sucker punch — and for his own lack of knowledge on what constitutes a waist-high no-ball. Kohli was wrong. The officials were correct, and they had the data to prove it.

“The biggest challenge with the television umpire role is that once a decision is referred or reviewed, we never get it wrong,” Taufel said. To that end, Taufel — who now manages umpires in franchise leagues — foresees a category of officials who make their decisions from behind a screen exclusively.

“In the ILT20 this year we had two specialist television officials, who did 17 matches each. We had not only live comms to air, but two video cameras in the box so that people could see what they were doing as well as hear what they were doing. They were also able to have the odd exchange with the commentator.

“Matching the best people with the best technology to get the best outcomes is a must. We need to move past this assumption that the best on-field match officials are also your best television match officials. I think that’s incorrect. I worked in printing before I became an umpire and my best printer didn’t make my best foreman.”

Clearly, technology isn’t done with umpiring. So far cricket has managed the relationship better than sports like football, which is frequently mired in Video Assistant Referee controversies. Nottingham Forest were denied what they considered three clear penalties in their 2-0 EPL loss to Everton at Goodison Park on Sunday. Forest alleged publicly that the VAR official, Stuart Attwell, supported Luton Town — who like Forest are struggling to avoid relegation. “If we were in another country we’d start speaking about conspiracy,” Nuno Espírito Santo, Forest’s manager, said. In cricket, Kohli’s futile rant — routine by football standards — is as bad as it gets.

“We’re lucky that we have a lot more line decisions than most other sports,” Taufel said. “Rugby is a very technical game, even soccer. But we still have a lot of … you use the term controversy. I use differences of opinion because people see things from their own perspective. When we talk about clean catches or obstruction, we’re talking about wilful intent or a definition.”

And talking in clear, consistent, credible, confident communication.

Cricbuzz

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Show them the money, Shohei Ohtani

“Back in the ’70s and ’80s I wish I’d had an interpreter. I’d be scot-free.” – Pete Rose, banned from baseball for life for gambling, on Shohei Ohtani’s explanation for illegal bets placed using his banking account.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

MAYBE you don’t know of Shohei Ohtani. Doubtless you do know of Babe Ruth, who arrived on the big league baseball scene in 1914 as a pitcher who could bat and became the greatest home run hitter the game had seen.

Ohtani, 29, is the closest thing to Ruth in modern baseball, where allrounders are mythical creatures. He bats! He pitches! He breathes fire! Not quite. But he is almost unheard of in strictly specialised American sport. His clunky classification as a “two-way player” didn’t exist as an official designation until 2020.

Major League Baseball (MLB) has been confounded by Ohtani since 2018, when he first played for the Los Angeles Angels after establishing himself with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in his native Japan. In December he signed the biggest contract in the history of sport — a 10-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers worth US$700-million. Or US$26-million more than Barcelona agreed to pay Lionel Messi in 2017, albeit for only four years’ work.

Ohtani was Rookie of the Year in 2018 but struggled with injuries in 2019 and 2020. In 2021 he became the only player to hit more than 10 home runs, steal more than 20 bases, record more than 100 strikeouts and pitch in more than 10 games in a single MLB season. He was a shoo-in as the Most Valuable Player.

In 2022 Ohtani was the first player since Ruth’s era to bat and pitch often enough to make it onto the leaderboard in both departments. “Normally I don’t worry about those types of numbers but I was getting close and wanted to see what it feels like,” Ohtani said in Japanese. His words were translated by an interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara. Remember that name.

In the World Baseball Classic (WBC) final in Miami in March last year, Ohtani duelled the US’ Mike Trout, then his Angels teammate and a bona fide star, with two out in the top of the ninth, no-one on base and Japan leading 3-2. Ohtani took Trout to a full count of three balls and two strikes. Unless the next pitch was hit foul something had to give. Ohtani produced a wicked slider that veered away from the swinging Trout’s bat to reel in a strike out and clinch Japan’s first title since 2009.

More than 55-million viewers saw that. Seven months later a total of 45.51-million watched all five games as the Texas Rangers earned their first World Series trophy by beating the Arizona Diamondbacks. That’s an average of 9.08-million per game, or more than six times fewer than for the WBC climax.

Ohtani has yet to feature in a World Series. If and when he does, expect those numbers to be hit out of the park. Merely signing him improved the Dodgers’ chances of winning this year by 3.4%, according to the bookies. And that’s despite the team knowing he can’t pitch until at least 2025 because of an elbow injury.

Undoubtedly Ohtani is good for the baseball business. But is some of the business around baseball good for him? Here’s where Mizuhara, the interpreter, comes back into the story.

The Dodgers fired him in March after Ohtani’s lawyers alleged he had hacked the player’s banking account to pay a bookmaker in California, where betting on sport is illegal. A federal investigation cleared Ohtani, and Mizuhara has been charged with bank fraud for stealing more than US$16-million from Ohtani.

Gambling has been baseball’s kryptonite since the Chicago White Sox were bribed, reportedly by mob boss Arnold Rothstein, to throw the 1919 World Series. The scandal resulted in the appointment in 1920 of the game’s first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a judge who became the most powerful man in baseball. Ruth himself was obliged to write to Landis in 1924: “You can rest assured that I do not intend to do any more betting on the [horse] races.”

Not everybody is willing to let Ohtani go so quietly. Pete Rose was headed for the Hall of Fame before his betting on baseball while he was a player and a manager was exposed. He was banned for life. What did Rose make of Ohtani’s explanation? In a recent TikTok video that seems to have been shot in a casino, Rose says: “Back in the ’70s and ’80s I wish I’d had an interpreter. I’d be scot-free.” Doubtless Hansie Cronjé would concur.

Financial Mail

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