Ashwell Prince – Bulletproof Truth

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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Fast, furious, fickle, flaky, fitful

“Some of the things I’ve seen today, I’ve never seen at Newlands before.” – Ashwell Prince

Telford Vice / Newlands

ON the strength of what we saw at Newlands on Wednesday, maybe it’s no bad thing South Africa will send a second XI to New Zealand. They surely couldn’t do worse than the supposedly first-choice lot, give or take a couple of injuries, who were out there at this crumbling oasis of a ground deep in Cape Town’s leafier, sleepier, flabbier suburbs on an outrageously gorgeous summer’s day.

Ashwell Prince, the most tenacious of batters, has been South Africa’s batting coach since the start of this series. Last week in Centurion he oversaw his team’s only first innings of 400 or more in their last nine Tests and just their second in their last 22. So, with that special cruelty cricket reserves for coaches, it was only natural that he be lined up for a post-stumps interrogation of his charges’ utter dearth of stickability.

Fifty-five all out was South Africa’s lowest total since February 1932, when they made 36 and 45 at the MCG. Their effort on Wednesday was their seventh-lowest score, and it marked the eighth time a team had been dismissed in the first session of a Test. Who did these jokers think they were?

At least, that was the angle until India became the only team in the 2,522 Tests yet played to lose six wickets without the addition of a single run, and that in the space of 11 balls. An innings that had looked likely to earn a lead of 300 or more when they nudged ahead inside 10 overs of their reply with nine wickets standing imploded like panipuri in a hungry mouth, leaving the visitors 98 in front. Who did those jokers think they were? Did the gathered press still want to interrogate Prince?

Only once had the first two innings of a Test been completed in fewer than Wednesday’s 349 deliveries, and not since January 1902, when Australia and England took 287 balls to rip each other to shreds. Would the 20th wicket of the day fall before the pressbox’s spanking new coffee machine broke down? The coffee machine won that race, but not by much.

The third innings started at 4.07pm, more often the kind of time when the team who had chosen to bat first were 200 or so for four or five. Instead the teams had made 208 between them. Thirteen of the 20 partnerships had not reached double figures. Sixteen didn’t last longer than 20 deliveries.

Matters hurtled towards onwards and downwards with such indecent haste that the fact that Dean Elgar is playing his last Test seemed to lurch into the past along with everything else. Until, that is, he prodded Mukesh Kumar to first slip in the seventh over before the close. The Indians converged on the sturdy, compact figure as he departed, offering their congratulations for a career of hard graft and much fight. Virat Kohli enveloped Elgar in a particularly warm and hearty hug.

Whatever Elgar was thinking as he left a Test ground for the final time in pads, his bat raised, his helmet off, his face beaming at the appreciation resounding all round from a full house, it probably wasn’t that he had been dismissed twice in just less than six-and-a-half hours of the same day.

Tony de Zorzi and Tristan Stubbs would suffer a similar fate before the close, bringing the number of wickets that fell to 23. Only once, in the Ashes Test of January 1902 at the MCG, have more wickets crashed on the first day: two more.

Mohammed Siraj bowled nary an unthreatening delivery in his nine unchanged overs, a masterpiece of seam and bounce and swing and, most importantly, aggressive intent. It takes something extraordinary to put Jasprit Bumrah in the shade, and Siraj accomplished that and then some. A career-best 6/15 was just reward.

And so to the pitch, and to Prince — who played 35 first-class matches at Newlands, more than he did at any other ground. “We have to give credit to the Indian bowlers,” he began, as if he was taking guard. “Siraj probably bowled one of the spells of his life. But I’ve played a lot of cricket on this ground and I’ve also been a coach here, and I’ve never seen the pitch that quick on day one. Usually it speeds up on day two. I don’t think, as a batter, you mind pace in the pitch. But then you need the bounce to be consistent. It was a little bit inconsistent with some keeping low and some bouncing steeply. You also don’t mind seam movement on day one, you expect it. But if you add that to inconsistent bounce it’s a different situation.”

Prince played in the Newlands Test of November 2011, when all seemed as it should be when Australia batted first and were dismissed for 284 after lunch on the second day. Then, with swing helping ball dominate bat, South Africa were bowled out for 96, followed by Australia being rattled out for 47. Normal service resumed with South Africa scoring 236/2 to win before lunch on the third day. Did Prince hear echoes of that match and that pitch?

“I think it’s completely different,” he said. “It was mid-game when all of that started happening. It wasn’t on day one. I wouldn’t say, on that occasion, the surface was doing things I’d never seen. Some of the things I’ve seen today, I’ve never seen at Newlands before. The number of pitched up balls the keepers took above their heads was extensive.”

Prince distilled his thoughts into two punchy sentences: “One team can get bowled out [cheaply]; that can happen. If both line-ups can’t bat on a surface, that says a lot.”

He also proffered a theory on why that happened, hinged on major new building that have gone up at Newlands in recent years — which may have affected wind patterns and drainage at the ground: “I remember playing in the UK a few years back and, particularly at Nottingham, the locals saying construction had changed the characteristics of the ground. I don’t know whether that has played a role here, but I’ve never seen a Newlands pitch play like this. A lot of construction is taking place here. Whether that is affecting how the surface is playing, I don’t know.”

Was it a mistake to have batted first after winning the toss? “If we had arrived and there were overcast conditions, perhaps. But we had blue skies. Yes, there was a green tinge on the surface. But I don’t think our batters, across South Africa, are ever bothered when there’s grass on the pitch — as long as the bounce and the movement is consistent.

“With Temba [Bavuma] not available, we could have gone extra safe and added another batsman. But we want to go for the win, so we needed to have a balanced side in terms of the bowlers we need to take the 20 wickets. The nature of Newlands is to offer spin later on in the game. I don’t think anyone could have foreseen how much movement and pace there would be in the pitch on day one.

“We know what we get at Newlands. I don’t think we would have selected one less batsman and then chosen to bat. We expected a usual Newlands surface. Our selection reflects that, and winning the toss and batting first also reflects that. I’m sure the local board would have liked the game to go five days and make a bit of cash, but it is what it is.”

Then Prince was read Sachin Tendulkar’s social media post: “Cricket in ’24 begins with 23 wickets falling in a single day. Unreal! Boarded a flight when South Africa were all out, and now that I’m home, the TV shows South Africa have lost three wickets. What did I miss?”

Asked for his response, Prince said: “We’ve had one or two pitches in India where a lot of wickets fell in a day, that’s the only thing I’m prepared to say.”

That’s true, but never as many as 23. And seldom will Prince have had to think of what to say to a batting line-up who will resume still 36 behind with three of their top four back in the dressingroom. In the second innings. On day two.

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Smith saga sums up CSA woes

“We’re in a sort of half-pregnant state and we don’t know what the birth will be.” – Andrew Breetzke, SACA chief executive

Telford Vice | Cape Town

WHICH will come first: judgment in Graeme Smith’s arbitration process, or the announcement that he no longer wants to be CSA’s director of cricket? But, regardless of what the arbitrator decides, Smith would appear to be on his way out.

The hearing, which started on Monday, was set to conclude by Wednesday evening. It is confidential and the evidence isn’t available to be reported upon, but CSA and Smith have agreed that the arbitrator’s findings be made public. That could take two weeks.

Smith has been in the position since December 2019. His current contract expires at the end of March. Cricbuzz understands he will not seek to renew it. The disaffection appears mutual: on February 8, CSA chairperson Lawson Naidoo was quoted as saying the job would be advertised. That remains the case but has yet to happen, a CSA spokesperson said on Wednesday. But a sure-fire way to let people know they are not wanted is to tell them to re-apply for their posts.

The upshot is that, come the end of the month, CSA are set to be without a director of cricket. Unless, that is, they appoint someone in an acting capacity — which has become a frequent occurrence at the troubled organisation — or don’t bother with interviews and head hunt a suitable candidate, which they are entitled to do. CSA could also choose to restructure the role, assigning different duties to different people. That could open the door to consultants, Smith perhaps among them.

Or to someone like Ashwell Prince, who is back in the country after resigning as Bangladesh’s batting coach last month. Asked on Wednesday whether he was interested in becoming CSA’s next director of cricket, Prince told Cricbuzz his focus had shifted: “My time with Bangladesh allowed me to do quite a bit of soul searching and, to be quite honest, whatever I decide to do next will depend heavily on how much time I can spend with my family.”

Besides, who would want to throw in their lot with CSA? Despite the suspension in December 2019 of Thabang Moroe as chief executive — he was subsequently sacked — to end more than two years of chronic catastrophe on the fiscal and governance fronts, major sponsors who cut ties during that sorry period have not returned and replacements have not been secured. While the removal of a derelict and delinquent old board in November 2020 was widely welcomed, faith in CSA has not been restored. Not even the establishment in June last year of a majority independent board, which was heralded as a great leap forward, hasn’t done that. The pandemic, of course, hasn’t helped the game stay on its feet.

All the while, uncertainty has been snowballing. And South African cricket’s only revenue generators, the players, are looking on in alarm. “Players want stability, and irrespective of the merits of the case they see issues like this as a major disruption to the game,” Andrew Breetzke, the chief executive of the South African Cricketers’ Association, told Cricbuzz. “We’re in a sort of half-pregnant state and we don’t know what the birth will be.”

Smith’s obvious value to CSA is in his solid relationships with the BCCI — based on his friendship with Sourav Ganguly — and with broadcasters SuperSport. It is not a reach to say both of those associations, which are vital to South African cricket’s financial wellbeing, would suffer, at least in the short term, should Smith go.

The details of the action being taken against Smith have not been released, but they have been based on the tentative findings in the Social Justice and Nation Building (SJN) project’s report — which implicates him in several instances, both as a player and an administrator.

The conclusions in the 235-page document, which was released in December, could be dismissed as a hodgepodge of sloppy conjecture and narrow-minded assumption that fails miserably to do justice to the courage of those who came forward to testify about their experiences of racist treatment in cricket. The report also falls pathetically short in offering CSA constructive ways to make progress with combating and eradicating the undoubted, longstanding and ongoing presence of racism in the game. As such, it is difficult to see how it could fairly be used to help determine the rights and wrongs of anyone’s actions.

Even so, given that high hopes for a more just reality for black and brown people in South African cricket were quickly attached to the SJN hearings, CSA’s board could hardly assign the deeply flawed report to the shredder. Allowing an independently appointed arbitrator to decide the issue, in Smith’s case, is the board’s only viable option.

Ditto Mark Boucher’s disciplinary hearing, which is also tied to the SJN report and is set for May 16 to 20. But there are key differences. Long before the report was released, Boucher admitted to and apologised for some of the allegations made against him during the hearings — albeit that he left many dissatisfied with what he said. Maybe that’s why CSA’s board have said they are seeking his dismissal.

The case against Smith is risibly weak, and the outcome is likely moot in real terms. Perhaps all that matters, to him, is clearing his name. Not least because an adverse judgment would surely not sit well with prospective employers. The case against Boucher is stronger, although far from conclusive. But, should he be cleared, would he want to continue knowing that the forces ranged against him since his appointment in December 2019 — almost seven months before the SJN hearings started — would not be deterred in their sometimes unfair, other times irrational, disapproval of him? It’s a question only he can answer, and only if he gets the chance.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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For the game, the whole game and nothing but the game

“There were too many whites involved in a short period of time. Was it procedurally unfair? Not at all. Did a black board approve it? Yes, they did.” – Jacques Faul

Telford Vice | Cape Town

IT’S not a witch-hunt after all. Nor is it a platform for hearing the views of some of the people all of the time. It isn’t biased, uncaring or lacking in empathy for any of those concerned. It’s CSA’s Social Justice and National-Building (SJN) project, and this week it has proved that it exists to serve the game, the whole game and nothing but the game.

The first round of SJN hearings, from July 5 to August 6, necessarily dealt with testimony from people who alleged they had been victims of racism since cricket in South Africa was supposedly unified in 1991. Their anger and hurt was palpable, and led to tears being shed on the witness stand.

Cricket has been played in the country since the first years of the 19th century, and for most of the ensuing time by people of all races. But the SJN was the game’s first honest look in the mirror. The reflection wasn’t pretty. South Africans didn’t so much see the inner workings of a sport as they saw another tumour in their sick society. Cricket, like everything else, had been diseased by racism — even after the defeat, at the ballot box, of racism as the law of the land. Apartheid was dead. Long live apartheid.

But black and brown people exposing injustice, while vital for their own healing and for denying whites their crutch of denial, was never going to start the difficult dialogue on race so sorely lacking in all areas of life in South Africa. Mark Boucher’s written submission, dated August 9, was the vanguard voice from the other side. He admitted his failings, apologised and laid out how he was trying to improve the present to help build a better future.

Even so, the coldly legal tone of Boucher’s affidavit — inevitable given the quasi-legal setting of the SJN hearings — allowed his most irrational critics to parse the phrases they didn’t like from those they chose to ignore and to rage still more loudly.

That was no surprise. Given the toxicity of cricket’s nascent race discussion, simply writing to the SJN will only give the vexed — particularly the cynically vexed — more ammunition with which to dominate the conversation. There is, as there is for most things that need doing well, no viable substitute for turning up in person or at least electronically. If you can’t look into someone’s eyes when they’re telling you what they say is the truth, how do you decide whether they are telling the truth?

That said, pitching up, either in the flesh or on a screen, does not seem an option for Boucher. He was in Ireland with his team when the hearings started and, if they adhere to their current schedule, he will be at the T20 World Cup until after they conclude. Contrary to what some might want us to believe, finding a few free hours to talk to the SJN while you’re trying to win a tournament is far easier said than done. The haters are no doubt relieved at that: the last thing they need is for the totem of their abhorrence to prove himself human despite all allegations to the contrary.

But Graeme Smith, another figure with a target on his back, has no excuse for not testifying. After this week, he should also not need convincing that appearing before the SJN is the only way to defend himself with integrity. And, by doing so, call the bluff of those who would seek to rubbish him at every turn.

Proof of that was delivered in the space of 24 hours, starting with the testimony of Mohammed Moosajee, the former long-term manager and doctor of South Africa’s men’s team, on Wednesday afternoon. He was followed by former selection convenor Linda Zondi, and, on Thursday morning, by former CSA acting chief executive Jacques Faul. All had been accused of wrongdoing, to varying degrees, in the first round of hearings. And all were able to refute, with solid evidence, many of the claims made against them. They also owned up to their roles in the problems cricket had stumbled into. Most importantly, they sketched the complexities of realities that hitherto had been painted in starkly simplistic terms.

Here’s Moosajee on the touchiest subject of all: “In my view the targets or quotas gave opportunities to people of colour, and many of them proved that they could be world-class performers on the international stage. Examples include Makhaya Ntini, Herschelle Gibbs, Ashwell Prince, Hashim Amla, Vernon Philander, Kagiso Rabada, and Lungi Ngidi. They were undoubtedly good enough, but they may not have been given the necessary opportunities if it was not for the quotas or targets.

But there were also “unintended consequences” in trying to remedy racism in this way: “Certain players become ‘undroppable’ because their inclusion in a team is necessary to meet the quotas or targets. A few of these players allowed their fitness levels to wane and were guilty of disciplinary misdemeanours, but these misdemeanours went unpunished because there were concerns that the quotas or targets would not be met.”

Zondi spoke of working hard to engineer opportunities for black and brown players who had been unfairly overlooked, only for some of those players to spurn their chance: “[Imran] Tahir was dominating and, for future purposes, we needed a spinner who could bat and bowl. But [Aaron] Phangiso wasn’t playing red-ball cricket for the Lions. The South Africa A side was in India at the time [in 2015] and I asked Phangiso to play for them. To my surprise, he turned the offer down. We took a different player into the South Africa A side and he ended up playing for the Test team.” That player was Keshav Maharaj, now South Africa’s first-choice Test spinner.

Faul rued the whiter shade of pale CSA’s top brass showed to South Africans in December 2019, when he took office and Smith became director of cricket. Smith appointed Boucher, which prompted the demotion of Enoch Nkwe, who is more qualified than Boucher and had served as interim coach. Boucher signed Jacques Kallis and Paul Harris as consultants. Black and brown outrage, stoked by the suspension days earlier of Thabang Moroe as CSA chief executive, duly followed.

“The optics were totally wrong,” Faul said. “We should have been politically more sensitive; it’s something I regret. We should have been emotionally more intelligent around that. We struggled to fully anticipate the outcry and it was a huge outcry. We didn’t anticipate that we would be viewed as a white takeover. If I knew that this was going to be the sequence of events, I would not have taken the job.”

But those white people hadn’t appointed themselves: “Out of nine board members at the time there were seven people of colour. There was only one objection and that was to the duration the coaching staff would be appointed. [Former board member] Angelo Carolissen objected to the duration because Mr Smith only signed for four months [initially] and he was appointing people for a three-year period. [Former board member] Stephen Cornelius said it is best practice to appoint them for that duration. The appointment of all of that staff happened more or less the same way and was approved by the board.

“The appointments that were made for cricketing reasons, but I admit we got it wrong. There were too many whites involved in a short period of time. Was it procedurally unfair? Not at all. Did a black board approve it? Yes, they did. Should they have been wiser? I think so. We should have been smarter.”

There was far more where that came from. The wilder conspiracy theories wielded like flamethrowers by previous witnesses were doused by the inflammable infallibility of fact and logic. But, mostly, Moosajee, Zondi and Faul concerned themselves with the seriousness of leaving cricket in a better state than that in which they found it. As importantly, the SJN ombud, Dumisa Ntsebeza, protected the space in which they wrestled with that responsibility and showed their efforts due respect.

No-one who has yet appeared at the SJN can claim they have not been properly and fairly heard. So what’s stopping others from answering the charges that have been made against them? Irredeemable guilt is one answer. Another is that they don’t care, and that’s far worse.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Prince, Boucher and the coaching conundrum

Ashwell Prince never won a trophy with the Cobras. Mark Boucher won five with the Titans. What does that say about coaching credentials?

Telford Vice | Cape Town

WHAT does a cricket coach do? Not the kind of coach who teaches beginners how to play a forward defensive, bowl an off-break or take a slip catch, but those who work at first-class and international level. Every player there already knows how to play a forward defensive, bowl an off-break and take a slip catch. So, what do their coaches do?

Correct technical flaws and change techniques, no doubt. Also, make sure the gameplan is adhered to while players focus on their own roles. And, in the particular case of Gary Kirsten, find a way to make giants like Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni stay on the same page long enough and well enough to win a World Cup.

The perennial question of what elite coaches do returned, with a twist, last week when Ashwell Prince told CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-building (SJN) project of being asked, by director of cricket Graeme Smith shortly after his appointment in December 2019, to join South Africa’s backroom.

Smith, Prince said, told him Jacques Kallis was being lined up as the team’s batting coach. “If Kallis is going to be the batting coach, what am I going to do,” Prince said. “What is my role in the coaching staff? I’ve only ever been a batsman. Since I was a reasonable fielder, fielding coach came to mind. But there already was a fielding coach [Justin Ontong]. With Kallis there as the batting coach, I again asked as to what my position will be. [Smith] then said, ‘We’ll see where we can fit you in’.”

It’s not difficult to understand why that wouldn’t have sat well with Prince: “If you want a certain amount of black or non-white faces on your staff, don’t call me. If there’s one thing [Smith] should have known about me, having captained me, is that I want to be treated with respect. If you’re going to put me in a position, put me in a position instead of [me] sitting on the balcony with the Proteas staff without a role.”

This week Prince was appointed to the properly defined role of Bangladesh batting coach. He will thus leave Newlands, where he has been head coach since replacing Paul Adams in December 2016. The Bangladeshis will gain a forthright team man who does not suffer fools. Or, as a cricket-loving Australian shouted after spotting Prince in Hobart in November 2016, when he was commentating on South Africa’s Test series: “Ashwell Prince! You were a mean motherfucker!” Indeed. Prince was the toughest of players. So what will South African cricket lose?

Not a successful coach, in trophy terms. In four-and-a-half seasons in charge of the Cobras, and, concurrently, two Mzansi Super League campaigns with the Cape Town Blitz, Prince never won a title. His one-day team finished last in 2016/17, as did his first-class and one-day sides in 2019/20. His only trip to a final was with the Blitz in 2018/19, when they were beaten by the Jozi Stars. From January 2019 to March 2021 — more than two years — the Cobras failed to win any of their 15 first-class matches.

But it would be unfair to write Prince off on the basis of the unimpressive record of his teams. It’s the job of franchise coaches to produce players for South Africa, and he guided Zubayr Hamza, George Linde, Pieter Malan, Dane Paterson, Kyle Verreynne and Janneman Malan to international honours.

More importantly, Prince has served as the conscience of cricket in his country. Unafraid and unapologetic — his critics would call him unhelpfully dogmatic — he has yet to duck a bouncer on transformation, social issues, politics, or anything else. The quieting of his voice at least until after the 2022 T20I World Cup, when his contract with Bangladesh expires, is the highest price South Africa will pay.

Prince is not the only South African coach in the news. Mark Boucher came home last month not to applause for his team’s successful series in the Caribbean and Ireland, but to outrage over allegations made against him at the SJN. Boucher is known to have made a written submission to the project to respond to claims implicating him that stem from his playing days.

The affidavit’s contents should provide balance to a narrative that has been overtly one-sided. But how Boucher’s version will find its way into the public domain is unclear. Should he release it and risk the ire of the SJN for, it could be argued, disrespecting the process? Or does the responsibility of shedding light on Boucher’s submission lay with the SJN? Cricbuzz has asked the SJN for a copy, but has not received a response.

Boucher could outflank all that by appearing at the SJN hearings in person. Like Prince, he is among the hardest people yet to pull on a pair of whites. It took a flying bail to the eye to end his playing career. What harm could be done to him by testifying to a body that has shown respect even to AfriForum, the execrable white supremacist mob that made an SJN submission amounting to a defence of systemic racism.

There may be more to this than that. Boucher won five titles across the formats as head coach of the Titans from 2016/17 to 2018/19. It’s a salient fact, because much has been made of his appointment to his current position despite holding only a level two coaching certificate.

Do his detractors want to obsess over credentialism, or do they want a coach whose teams win? South Africa lost seven of their first nine series under Boucher, at least in part as a consequence of the damaging chaos in CSA’s boardrooms and offices. But they have since won three of four rubbers and drawn the other.

A cynical view would be that Boucher’s haters are coming after him over racism claims now that they can no longer say his teams are losing and he is out of his depth as a level two coach. But the more pressing issue is whether he has been party, as has been alleged, to a team culture that included, excused and did not eradicate racist behaviour.

Seemingly forgotten in the haste to hang Boucher is that other people would have been part of building that toxic culture, that some of them would have been black and brown, and that the team dynamic has evolved to the extent that Black Lives Matter is now part of dressingroom conversation. Boucher is part of that changing culture, too. As South Africa’s coach, he is surely instrumental in forging change.

What does a cricket coach do? Much more than we might think. It’s time we, in South Africa in particular, answered the question properly.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Arise, Ashwell Prince

“I regarded my career as a war.” – Ashwell Prince

Telford Vice | Cape Town

THE good, the bad and the ugly have been in the spotlight at the hearings of CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-building (SJN) project this week. Like the fixers who came before him, Thabang Moroe tried to use the platform to polish his tarnished reputation. AfriForum, a pressure group that stinks of white supremacy, was intent on ignoring the elephant in the room — racism — and railing irrelevantly at the supposedly greater evil of quota selection.

And then there was Ashwell Prince, who was everything Moroe and AfriForum were not. In the best way: clear, considered, constructive, and firmly connected to reality. Listening to Prince testify on Monday was like watching him bat. It wasn’t always pretty but it was no less damn fine for that; hard, uncompromising, an honest struggle with the truths of the matter, and good luck getting him out.

“I regarded my career as a war,” Prince said. His testimony was no place for poignance, but every cricket person who heard or has read those words should be shocked enough to think long and hard about what they mean and why he felt that way. Cricket becomes a career for a select few and, for exponentially more others, a passion. Never, under any circumstances, should it invite comparisons with war. What did the game put Prince, and many like him, through as punishment for daring to be part of it?

Moroe’s submission amounted to little more than a vilification of the media — who, according to him, wrote him out of his job as CSA’s chief executive, from which he was fired in August. It was, presumably, the press who hoarded the unprecedented power that ended up in Moroe’s hands, the press who chased away sponsors alarmed by the lack of governance that befell CSA when he wielded that power, the press who spent thousands on booze paid for with Moroe’s company credit card, the press who mentioned Moroe 681 times — mostly in withering terms — in the 457 pages of an independent forensic report on the chaos in cricket, and the press who unfairly withdrew the accreditation of five of its most senior members to hamper their ability to do their jobs.

So far did Moroe veer off the SJN’s stated path that the project’s ombud, Dumisa Ntsebeza, interrupted him to read him the terms of reference. But that didn’t stop Moroe from blaming everyone for what went wrong at CSA during his disastrous tenure. Everyone except himself, that is.

As a black South African, there can be no doubting that Moroe has, does and will experience racist treatment from his white compatriots. To too many of them, he was given his job because he is black and made a mess of it because he is black. For those people, he will never be good enough because he is black. Closer to the truth is that, because he is black, we will never know how good he might have been. Some of those wrongs may well have been instrumental in leading Moroe astray. But he cannot expect to be taken seriously if he maintains, as he did on Tuesday, that he is without fault.

For instance, Moroe’s theory that he was removed to make way for Jacques Faul as acting chief executive, which in turn cleared a route for Graeme Smith to become director of cricket, doesn’t add up. Cricbuzz has seen messages, dated December 2, 2019 — four days before CSA suspended Moroe and nine days before Smith’s appointment was announced — in which Moroe wrote to Smith, “I think you are the man for this job! I really wouldn’t have approached you if I didn’t believe so! … This position is for you chief!”

AfriForum’s Quixotic tilt at the windmills of blackness might have been faintly funny had it not come from people who don’t get the sick joke that they owe everything they have in life to the fact that they were born white. Like so many of their sorry outlook they believe, falsely, that they have integrity. What they really have is the toleration of those they continue, despite everything, to undermine, deny and insult. Not that they can see that. That would require a measure of selflessness, which, like Moroe, they did not show.

The group’s written offering to the SJN was a report titled “The Collapse of CSA”, on its face a fiction because CSA has teetered but never collapsed. It spoke of teams being picked “for cricket reasons and for cricket reasons only”. As if such a thing were possible in a society shot through with septic racism. The top line of a subsection headed 2003 was: “The Proteas selected five POCs [players of colour] in the World Cup squad, as committed to by CSA.” As if that was all AfriForum could see, and as if these “POCs” were subhumans wheeled out from somewhere deep and dark and not cricketers who had built their games to the required standard along with everyone else.

“CSA announced that there would be no quotas for the World Cup in May,” goes the 2019 subsection. “Despite this, the Proteas averaged exactly five POC for the tournament — with only variations in the first two games — and no less than two black Africans featured throughout the competition, despite there being only three in the squad.” Because, you know, black and brown players couldn’t possibly make the XI because they were good enough. Oh no: players like Kagiso Rabada and Imraan Tahir were only in the XI because of the idiots and their politics. What? The number of white players selected is still significantly higher than that of black or brown players? Nevermind that. Quotas! Targets! Unfair!

That isn’t far removed from what Prince discovered when he arrived in the national squad in 2002: “There was no welcome from the coach. There was no, ‘Let’s make this guy comfortable’. It was a lonely place. A person knows when they are welcome, and you know when you are unwelcome. You can get a sense of whether people want you here or don’t want you here. It would have been nice for people to back you. You saw it happening to other guys your age, your peers. You saw it happening to a new player if he was white but it wasn’t happening if the player wasn’t white.”

But the political wasn’t only personal for Prince. Unlike the three stooges who represented AfriForum, he took the race conversation to new, higher levels. “We have got to find ways to select better cricket teams; from junior age groups, right to the top,” Prince said. “Are we really going to have an environment where my son’s friends, who are 12, 13, 14, are not going to get a game of cricket because they are white, or coloured or Indian? Is that the future of our cricket?

“CSA might have a picture in their mind of a team that has so many white players, so many black players, then ‘we feel we have the perfect transformation mix’. If you continue to pick [at a higher level] players who are performing to a lower level … [and] … other players cannot get in the team because they are not the right colour, you are going to forever have a problem.”

That moved Sandile July, one of Ntsebeza’s assistants, to say: “Those things would be said by people who are anti-transformation. They see anything that seeks to change the status quo as a threat to their comfort. There is this notion that competence goes with whiteness. So if you are black you are incompetent until you prove yourself otherwise.”

But, as the argument for a more inclusive, less exclusive future was made by Prince — a product of excellence and hard work given a fairer chance by transformation — it couldn’t be so easily dismissed.

What set Prince’s contribution apart is that it was concerned with more than singling out instances of racism. Prince also didn’t try to conjure grand conspiracies, nor did he focus on himself. Instead he looked, critically, at the realities of cricket as they have been shaped by the wider realities beyond. Of course there is racism in South African cricket: it is part of a deeply racist society. What are we — all of us — going to do about that?

First published by Cricbuzz.

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White or not, McKenzie back on board at CSA

“It’s an exciting coaching group I’m going to be part of – looking after the under-19s all the way through to the Proteas.” – Neil McKenzie, CSA’s new batting guru

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

WILL the real CSA please stand up? Last week they gave South Africa’s government a commitment that they would appoint only black and brown consultants unless none were available. This week they appointed two whites in prominent positions.

Dillon du Preez was named as assistant coach of South Africa’s women’s team on Tuesday. On Thursday, Neil McKenzie was unveiled as the “high performance batting lead”. The devil, of course, is in the details: neither has signed on as a consultant. They are permanent staff.

But that will do little to placate those who have charged the cricket establishment with systemic racism going back decades. Not least Nathi Mthethwa, the minister of sport, who has complained that the upper echelons of the game are too white. Do CSA intend to get around the promise they made to him, at a meeting last Monday, about the colour of their consultants by simply not describing their appointees as consultants?

In the super-heated atmosphere cricket has stumbled into, that Du Preez and McKenzie are solidly qualified for their new roles and, particularly in McKenzie’s case, have the track records to prove their competence matters less than the fact that they are neither black nor brown. And thus it also matters whether their jobs could have been given to those of similar stature and abilities who are black or brown. Geoff Toyana, for instance. Or Ashwell Prince.

Two blacks and four brown people were also appointed on Thursday. Eddie Khoza, whose excellence as an administrator has helped him rise above the febrile polarisation in the game, continues as CSA’s “acting head of cricket pathways”. Malibongwe Maketa returns from the exile he seemed to be cast into after last year’s disastrous World Cup, where he was Ottis Gibson’s assistant, as “South Africa A and national academy lead”. Shukri Conrad, a veteran of the coaching circuit, is the “South Africa under-19 men’s lead”. The respected and experienced Vincent Barnes, a former South Africa bowling and assistant coach, is the “high performance manager and bowling lead”. Dinesha Devnarain, who played 51 white-ball internationals, carries on as the South Africa under-19 women’s team and women’s national academy head coach. CSA’s chief medical officer will still be Shuaib Manjra, who doesn’t seem to have put a foot wrong.

But it’s McKenzie’s name that sticks out. He was named South Africa’s batting coach in February 2016 and replaced by Dale Benkenstein in October 2017, when Gibson succeeded Russell Domingo. It’s difficult to judge coaches, especially those who work in the technical disciplines. But it’s a fact that South Africa’s batters averaged 37.54, regardless of format, under McKenzie. Since he has left they have averaged 28.96.

South Africans’ most recent memory of him will be in a World Cup match at the Oval on June 2 last year, when he helped engineer Bangladesh’s victory over his compatriots. The 330/6 McKenzie’s charges scored was then their record ODI total and they topped 300 twice more during the tournament.

“I’ve come back a little more rounded as a coach,” McKenzie said in an audio file released by CSA on Thursday of his stint of more than two years in Bangladesh’s dugout. “It was a good experience but it’s really nice to be back with South Africa and trying to make a really good contribution.”

What were the parameters of his role? “It’s an exciting coaching group I’m going to be part of — looking after the under-19s all the way through to the Proteas,” McKenzie said. “I’ll be generally looking after the batting. It’s a young batting unit when you look across all the formats and spheres in the men’s and women’s [teams].”

In effect, then, McKenzie will serve as South Africa’s batting coach. Or consultant. Or “lead”, whatever that means. That would also seem to indicate there is no vacancy for a dedicated batting coach or consultant for the national team.

McKenzie was a good bet to return to South Africa’s dressingroom since he said on August 21 that he had resigned as Bangladesh’s batting coach. The current politics of cricket in South Africa threatened to throw a spanner in the works, but CSA have found a way to secure his services.

Graeme Smith, CSA’s director of cricket, will doubtless come under fire for what some will refuse to see as nothing other than another instance of him handing out jobs for pals: he played in 50 of McKenzie’s 124 matches for South Africa and captained him 38 times. Smith has faced the same claim over his appointment of Mark Boucher as head coach and Jacques Kallis, who served as the batting consultant last season. Smith played 258 international matches with Boucher and 261 with Kallis.

Perhaps Smith saw the accusation coming. In a video file of more than six minutes he extolled the virtues of Maketa, Conrad and Khoza, and even a position that has yet to be filled — that of convenor of selectors — but did not mention McKenzie.

“The convenor of selectors is a key person in CSA,” Smith said. “It’s a job that comes with a lot of pressure from all fronts. We went about advertising the job. Our HR department collects all the applications and we move from there into interview processes. With the cricket committee and the board members [involved] we decide on the best candidate going forward.

“The role definition is slightly changed. We’ve shifted it to not only being a national team convenor, but to controlling the whole pipeline, which speaks to our high performance strategy. We feel it’s important to create the avenues of communication — the way we play, select, think, operate, the type of people we want involved in that environment is key. We’ve aligned the convenor of selectors right through the pipeline. He’ll be overseeing everything. The convenor now is a much more extensive job.

“One thing I noticed when I got involved with CSA in December is that there were decent people involved but there wasn’t really that cross-communication. What was happening at under-19 level was separate to what was happening at the national academy, was separate to what was happening with the A team and then the national side. The thinking was not going right through the pipeline. The convenor of selectors working on the whole system and owning the whole system, and being part of all the processes, is key.

“That strategy is now in place, and we will sit down as a group and debate and work on our way forward, and try and align as closely to the national teams as we can in terms of culture, performance and what’s needed to hopefully push us to a level where our national teams are the best in the world. That they’re winning World Cups, that we’re bringing talent through, [that] we’re transforming at a level that is acceptable to everybody. Those are the goals with these appointments; that we can become really efficient and that cricket can push forward and create the strength that is required of us.”

Listening to Smith, you could fool yourself that CSA is a functional organisation bound for great things. But then you remember why someone as highly regarded, deservedly, as Khoza is marooned in an acting capacity. His permanent position is senior cricket manager, which is being filled temporarily by David Mokopanele, in real life CSA’s mass participation manager. Khoza has been bumped up because Corrie van Zyl, previously the head of cricket pathways, has returned as an executive consultant in the wake of winning his case after being suspended in October, along with former chief operating officer Naasei Appiah and former sponsorship and sales head Clive Eksteen. Former chief executive Thabang Moroe was central to the drama. Appiah, Eksteen and Moroe have all since been fired. And all are taking legal action.

Can there be any surprise that many South Africans want to get as far way from cricket as they can? Even South Africans like Jonty Rhodes, who has been confirmed as Sweden’s new head coach. Yes, Sweden.

“The sad thing for me is that even though the top 30 players in the country want to work together for the game, the administration is in such chaos that unfortunately it does have an impact on things [on the field],” Rhodes was quoted as saying on Wednesday in a PTI report from Dubai, where he is Kings XI Punjab’s fielding coach for the IPL starting on September 19.

“Someone like me who is not part of the system, we are reading about issues in South African cricket week in and week out and they have not been resolved. The same mistakes are being made and there is not much accountability. It saddens me … it does impact on-field performance. Even though we have some great players, we have been lacking consistency in performance because of inconsistency off the field.”

That’s the real CSA. Right there. It will have to work harder than ever to stand up.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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CSA see in black and white while cricket burns in colour

“We know we have to put aside personal differences and work together. We require the same of our administrators. Politics and self-interest appear to trump cricket imperatives and good governance.” – South Africa’s players stand together.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

CRICKET South Africa (CSA) appear to have all but closed the door on using the skills and experience of figures of the stature of Jacques Kallis, Gary Kirsten, Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock. Simultaneously, the door has been opened wider for household names like Hashim Amla, Makhaya Ntini, Ashwell Prince and Herschelle Gibbs to be more involved in South Africa’s structures.

Kallis, Kirsten, Donald and Pollock between them hold 1,464 international caps, have scored 99 centuries, taken 44 five-wicket hauls and won a World Cup, and occupy two places in the ICC Hall of Fame. They are also all white. And on Monday CSA told Nathi Mthethwa, South Africa’s minister of sport, that they will in future employ only black and brown consultants — unless it is proved that none suitable can be found.

That is unlikely to sit well with director of cricket Graeme Smith, who said on August 1: “If you asking me whether Jacques Kallis was one of the best batting coaches and batting cricketers we’ve ever had, I’d tell you yes. Do I feel he has a role to play in South African cricket? Jeez, it would be stupid of us not to involve our most successful cricketer, and the batting experiences he could bring to our young batters.”

Kallis served as South Africa’s batting consultant last season. Cricbuzz understands Prince turned down the offer of a position. Prince declined to confirm or deny that on Tuesday.

Prince is brown, as are Charl Langeveldt and Justin Ontong, South Africa’s bowling and fielding coaches, while assistant coach Enoch Nkwe is black. Paul Harris, the spin consultant, is the only member of head coach Mark Boucher’s retinue who is white, like Boucher himself.

CSA referred a request to interview Smith on the issue to acting chief executive Kugandrie Govender, who told Cricbuzz, “CSA has committed to this as one of the ways to reverse the decline of progress in this area.”

Did that mean whites need not apply for available positions? “No, it does not mean that,” Govender said. “It means that black and brown candidates with similar skills to white candidates will be hired ahead of the white candidates. Where skills of white candidates are specifically unique, then they will be selected ahead of black candidates. But the emphasis is on unique skills. This isn’t different to BEE [black economic empowerment] policy that many organisations already employ.”

How would CSA respond to the charge that they would waste white skills and experience? “White skills have been used extensively over the last decade, even when black skills could have been utilised just as effectively,” Govender said. “This has left those of us that are now in office with the tough job of redress of the redress. Transformation objectives have not been met. That’s the simple fact. And if there are unique skills that sit solely with white consultants, then CSA will use them. But if these skills can be found in black consultants, CSA has an obligation to select them over white candidates. This is a measure of self-regulation that CSA is employing to ensure we get closer and meet our transformation targets.”

The bigger picture is that Mthethwa has told CSA they need to work on transformation in the wake of several black and brown former players alleging racist treatment during their careers. There is no doubt whites have enjoyed preferential treatment by a game in which disproportionate power and authority has more often than not been vested in white hands. But Mthethwa is part of a government that needs all the approval it can get from its majority black electorate. The state’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic started promisingly but has lurched into shambles, and even in lockdown and with winter’s cold biting hard South Africans are putting up with a slew of service delivery disasters, among them scheduled power blackouts. Putting pressure on the lack of transformation in cricket, which is largely black but is held up as too white, is a lazy way to divert attention from more pressing matters.

CSA themselves are not short of problems. After their audience with Mthethwa on Monday they postponed their annual meeting, which was scheduled for Saturday. And that despite their need to elect a new president and settle on a new lead independent director. At the heart of that decision is a kerfuffle over a forensic investigation’s report, which was used to fire Thabang Moroe as chief executive on Thursday on charges of what CSA called “serious misconduct”.

The report could implicate in wrongdoing current members of the board and members council — which has authority over the board but is a structure deeply flawed by the fact that it includes board members — as well as senior staff. That might explain why the document is being kept under lock and key in a lawyer’s office, and reportedly can only be viewed there by the members council if they sign a non-disclosure agreement.

So there was a touch of déjà vu in the tone of a release that appeared under the banner of the South African Cricketers’ Association on Tuesday: “At board and operational level, CSA has lurched from crisis to crisis over the past year. Issues such as suspensions, dismissals, resignations, forensic audits, confidential leaks, litigation and financial mismanagement have dominated the cricket headlines. This is happening at a time when we are having challenging conversations about transformation, and in an environment where the financial viability of the game is under major threat.

“High standards are expected of us as players. To succeed as Proteas teams, we know we have to put aside personal differences and work together. We require the same of our administrators. Politics and self-interest appear to trump cricket imperatives and good governance. Decisions must be made that are in the best interests of cricket, failing which the game we love may be irreparably damaged in this country. The Proteas teams must be strong, the domestic structure must be strong, and the transformation pipeline must be strong — we demand that this be the focus of the CSA board and operational team.

“The CSA AGM scheduled for [Saturday] has now been postponed. This may be the last chance we have to change direction and save the game. As Proteas we demand that all stakeholders heed our sincere plea.”

And so say many South Africans. But the signatories of the statement weren’t any South Africans. Instead they were Aiden Markram, Andile Phehlukwayo, Anrich Nortjé, Ayabonga Khaka, Beuran Hendricks, Chloe Tryon, Dané van Niekerk, David Miller, Dean Elgar, Dwaine Pretorius, Faf du Plessis, Kagiso Rabada, Keshav Maharaj, Laura Wolvaardt, Lizelle Lee, Lungi Ngidi, Marizanne Kapp, Masabatha Klaas, Mignon du Preez, Nadine de Klerk, Quinton de Kock, Rassie van der Dussen, Reeza Hendricks, Shabnim Ismail, Sinalo Jafta, Suné Luus, Tabraiz Shamzi, Temba Bavuma, Trisha Chetty and Tumi Sekhukhune.

The mighty have spoken. Will the mice listen?

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Prince fires BLM broadside

“Any form of transformation has been met with resistance.” – Ashwell Prince

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

ASHWELL Prince claims South Africa’s team leadership brushed aside reports of spectator racism during a tour to Australia. Contemporary reports say otherwise, but other parts of Prince’s social media broadside will fuel a fire that has burned steadily brighter with arguments by current and former South African players for and against supporting the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

Prince, who played 66 Tests and 52 ODIs from February 2002 to December 2011, tweeted on Friday: “[In] Australia [in] 2005 a number of us encountered racist incidents on the boundary. When we brought this to the attention of the leadership at lunch we were told, ‘Ah, it’s only some people in the crowd, not the majority. Let’s get back out there.’”

Graeme Smith captained that team and Mickey Arthur was the coach. The black and brown players in the squad were Makhaya Ntini, Prince, Herschelle Gibbs, Garnett Kruger and Charl Langeveldt.

Contacted in Colombo on Friday, Arthur, now Sri Lanka’s coach, recalled an incident during the first Test in Perth when Ntini reported abuse after fielding near the boundary, as did Kruger, who was targetted when he carried drinks to his teammates.

South Africa’s management complained to match referee Chris Broad, and Cricket Australia arranged for additional security on the boundary. Arthur said the entire team were disturbed by the episode, and denied that it had been taken lightly.

A report at the time in the Melbourne Age said, “The incident prompted the ICC to reiterate its zero tolerance stance against racism. CA vowed that the policy would be enforced and spectators ejected should such behaviour be repeated at the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne or the third Test in Sydney.”

The article said Prince, Shaun Pollock and Justin Kemp were among the players who objected to the abuse, which included the word “kaffir” — the most serious racist slur used by white South Africans, many of whom have moved to Perth. Ntini was quoted as saying it was “absolutely uncalled for” and “unbearable”, and that, “As a South African we are united now; we are singing one song and we play sport with one heart.”

That has never been the case, according to Prince’s thread of 10 hard-hitting tweets on Friday. He painted a picture of a country struggling to escape the grip of white supremacy, which has also tainted cricket. “The system is broken and has been for some time, both in society and in sport,” Prince wrote.

South Africa’s tour of India in November 1991 ended 21 years of their isolation from world cricket because of apartheid. But the team that took the field in the three ODIs was as white as those that purported to represent the country when it was illegal for blacks and whites to play sport together.

“And so ever since day one this narrative [that blacks don’t play cricket] had to be driven and protected, and any form of transformation has been met with resistance,” Prince wrote. “Real, authentic change, inclusivity, non-racialism has never been able to establish itself.”

On Monday, Lungi Ngidi expressed his support for BLM only to be slammed by white former players. Cricket South Africa at first hesitated to share Ngidi’s stance unequivocally, only doing so on Thursday after the explosive difference of opinion between the fast bowler and the former players had been widely reported.

In a release on Friday the South African Cricketers’ Association came out in strong support of Ngidi, with chief executive Andrew Breetzke quoted as saying, “Freedom of expression is an enabling right that all South Africans support. We must, therefore, respect Lungi, as a sporting role model, when he exercises his freedom of expression on the important matter of racial discrimination. To subject him to unfair criticism is to undermine his right.”

Push will come to shove on July 18, when the Solidarity Cup in Centurion will herald cricket’s first appearance in South Africa since the start of the coronavirus lockdown in March. Prominent messaging in favour of BLM will be expected by many, but dreaded by others. For still others, the time for mere gestures is long gone.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Cometh the hour, but who cometh as captain?

“Leadership has come naturally to me. I have done it before, I definitely can do it. Why I haven’t I’m not sure. But who knows what’s going to happen going forward.” – Rassie van der Dussen

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

YOU look like a captain, play like a captain, talk like a captain, even walk like a captain. So how come you haven’t captained much? Our question to Rassie van der Dussen, delivered during an online interview conducted by his agent, Chris Cardoso, seemed to grip, rip and zip square past his outside edge. At least, Cricbuzz would like to think so.

Van der Dussen took a moment. To think. To consider his answer. Maybe to ask himself the same thing, perhaps not for the first time.

“I don’t know if I walk like a captain, but I’ll take it,” Van der Dussen said. He is among the most unvarnished of cricketers. What you see really is what you get: a splendid splinter of a player who hits the ball with visceral violence. You don’t need to see Van der Dussen play a stroke to know it’s his. You can hear his authorship. The alto gunshot crack hits you, the hearer, in the chest and leaves its mark. He is a lean machine: 1.88 metres of torque and toughness. And a straight up fella.

Van der Dussen is cast from the same cultural mould as AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis — they’re all from Pretoria — but he couldn’t be more different. Like everyone else he doesn’t have De Villiers’ outrageous talent. Unlike Du Plessis he isn’t as slick as his own hair in front of the cameras and behind the microphones. He also doesn’t have De Villiers’ apparent inability to make up his mind about whether he wants to play for South Africa. Nor is he concerned with sculpting his answers quite as immaculately as Du Plessis, who pauses his press conferences to ask the reporters in attendance if he has used the correct term. These are not criticisms: few people on earth are pestered about their plans for the future as often and as tediously as De Villiers, and you won’t find any reporters complaining about their press conference victims trying to improve their replies to questions.

But it is a joy to encounter someone whose authenticity has not faded under the multiple coats of varnish that are applied, inevitably, to cope with the level of scrutiny Van der Dussen evaded until the 2019 World Cup, where his performance — 311 runs in nine innings, three half-centuries and an average of 62.60 — was one of South Africa’s few reasons to be cheerful.

“From the time I made my first-class debut at Northerns I’ve been very lucky to play under ridiculously good captains.” — Rassie van der Dussen

His apprenticeship was long, and started when he was pitched into senior club cricket while still at high school: “As a kid playing with men you learn pretty quickly, and you learn the hard lessons very quickly.” The benefit of all that early and ongoing study is a solid grip on his own game: “I would say cover drive, straight drive, on the legs, that’s where I score. Short ball I can take on. I’m not a big cutter of the ball. I don’t play late to third man. I don’t hit well over extra cover. It’s not that I can’t do it, but it’s not my plan A. I think you only get to know that when you train a lot and put yourself in difficult situations. Anyone can go and hit a thousand underarms and think they’re training well and hard. But putting the bowling machine at 145, 150 [kilometres per hour] coming straight at your head, that’s the challenge you’re going to face out there. You’ve got to train under pressure and really yourself in terms of what you can and can’t do.”

Van der Dussen has played 117 first-class matches, 110 list A games and 114 senior T20s, among them 30 internationals across the formats. He is more than a dozen years past his first-class debut and two months into his 32nd year. Yet, despite all that experience, and the way he looks, plays, talks and walks — in essence, with authority — he has captained in only one first-class match and a list A game, and never in a significant T20. Why?

“From the time I made my first-class debut at Northerns [on Valentines Day in 2008] I’ve been very lucky to play under ridiculously good captains. Aaron Phangiso was the captain when I made my debut and he was still captain of the Lions last season. In terms of South African captains he’s right up there with the best. Then I moved to North West [featuring in his first match for them in February 2012] and played under one of the greatest captains I’ve ever had, Brett Pelser. When I started at the Lions, Alviro Petersen was one of the great cricketing minds of the last 20 years in South Africa. And after him, another two of the great cricketing minds in South Africa, Neil McKenzie and Stephen Cook. Maybe when the time came for me to take over as captain at the Lions I started playing for the national team [regularly from January 2019], and availability played a role. You can’t have a captain who’s not there for half the games.”

Fair points, but it’s a surprising list of role models. Not least because your freshest memory of Petersen might be from December 2016, when he was banned for two years for his role in the fixing scandal than blighted South Africa’s domestic T20 competition the previous year. Phangiso? McKenzie? Cook? Excellent players. But, as captains, are they capable of shaping the next generation of leaders? And who, exactly, is Brett Pelser?

In 2007 Durban-born, England-based batting allrounder Pelser blagged his way onto a North West development project for nine players from England to turn out for clubs in Potchefstroom. Pelser proved such a hit with the locals that he played 153 matches for the province, captaining them 123 times. The original gig was supposed to last six months, but Pelser’s last game for North West was in January 2015.

“I’d look at the way he was playing, and think, ‘I look like a tailender next to him’.” – Brett Pelser on batting with Van der Dussen.

Among the captains Van der Dussen named, Pelser had the highest winning percentage at provincial level. Only Cook has a lower losing percentage. Van der Dussen played 69 games for North West. Pelser was the captain in 56 of those matches — ample time for his approach to influence his players’ idea of good leadership. And for Pelser to be able to offer an informed view of what kind of captain Van der Dussen might make.

“I think he’d be brilliant, and I don’t think not having done the job much will hinder him,” Pelser told Cricbuzz from his home in Bolton. “He does what needs doing for the team. That’s what comes first for him. He knows when to talk. And he knows when to keep quiet. He doesn’t betray his emotions, he just shuts things out and engages when he has to. He has so much maturity and an unshakeable belief in his own ability. I leant on him heavily.” Van der Dussen wasn’t always so high in Pelser’s estimation: “I was quite taken aback when I played against him. He looked really sullen and not interested. He didn’t seem to be about anything. But that’s what he does, he just zones out. That’s his greatest strength. It’s only when I played with him that I understood him better, and discovered he had a wonderful dry sense of humour.”

Pelser and Dussen shared four century stands for North West, two of which soared past 200. “We had some good partnerships together, and he forced me to better,” Pelser said. “I’d look at the way he was playing, and think, ‘I look like a tailender next to him’.”

Why the focus on Van der Dussen’s potential as a captain? Because of what Graeme Smith, South Africa’s director of cricket, said during an online press conference on Friday when Cricbuzz asked him who the Test team’s new leader might be: “The one definitive answer that I can give you is that it’s not going to be Quinton. I can’t tell you who it’s going to be.”

Du Plessis gave up all forms of captaincy in February and Quinton de Kock has been installed as the white-ball boss. South Africa’s next Test series is in the Caribbean in July and August, so even if the rubber isn’t derailed by the coronavirus pandemic there is time to mull over the question of who might replace him. But none of the available options are a perfect fit, not that many teams have that luxury when they need a new skipper.

Dean Elgar has 50 games as captain to his credit, nine at the helm of South Africa A, 11 of them first-class and two of those Tests. He was also in charge at the 2006 under-19 World Cup. Elgar is four months short of two years older than Van der Dussen, and he has played 59 more Tests. Temba Bavuma, who turns 30 on May 17, has 40 Test caps. He has led teams 39 times, 23 of those occasions at first-class level, and five involving South Africa A. Aiden Markram captained South Africa all the way to triumph at the 2014 under-19 World Cup, a fact that sticks out in a cricket culture where no other team has won a global prize since Hansie Cronjé took his side all the way at the 1988 ICC Knockout Trophy — which became the Champions Trophy — in Bangladesh in October and November 1988. Markram has held the reins 50 times, including 11 of first-class stature, and seven of them with South Africa A.

Elgar’s elevation would reflect the importance of appointing a tough leader at a difficult stage of the team’s development. It can only help his cause that Smith and Mark Boucher are cut from the same hard, uncompromising cloth. Making Bavuma captain would satisfy a growing — and justified — push for a black leader of a team that purports to represent an overwhelmingly black nation, and in which most people who play and follow cricket are black. Of the 36 men who have led South Africa’s Test team only two, Ashwell Prince and Hashim Amla, have not been white. Markram’s age, a tender 25, allied to his playing role — of the dozen players who have captained South Africa in Tests since readmission in 1991, only Shaun Pollock, Boucher and Jacques Kallis have not been out-and-out batters — give him an edge.

Elgar has been part of the Test set-up since November 2012, when Smith was captain. If he wasn’t the man to succeed Smith or Amla, what makes him the preferred candidate now? That smacks of unfairness: circumstances don’t remain the same and players change accordingly. But it will be a factor.

Bavuma faces almost the opposite challenge: unlike Elgar he has not nailed down his place in the team, and players need a captain they can trust to do his own job properly before he tells them how to do theirs. That disregards the difficult situations Bavuma has guided South Africa through. But it is nonetheless a matter for discussion.

Patchy form and injuries have stalled Markram’s progress. He broke a finger during the first Test against England at Centurion in December, and despite returning to action with the Titans near the end of February he wasn’t picked for the subsequent ODI series against Australia nor the aborted white-ball tour to India. No centuries in his last 38 completed innings for South Africa, regardless of format, helps explains his omission. Questions about his temperament were raised when he injured a wrist with a punch to what a release euphemised as “a solid object” after he made a pair in the second Test against India in Pune in October.

But Markram is a higher calibre talent than any of the other candidates, and despite having had 30 fewer innings than Bavuma and doing the toughest job, opening the batting in all his trips to the Test crease, he has scored three more centuries. That said, Bavuma has made 421 more runs than Markram even though he has been shunted up and down the order, batting in five places in the top seven including as an opener.

And then there’s Van der Dussen and his four Test caps and a solitary first-class captaincy. But there’s more than that: burgeoning respect in the dressingroom and in the more sensible corridors of power, appreciation for his lack of flash and dash, and recognition of his bedrock confidence in doing what he does better than most. There’s also this, from Smith: “Maybe take a risk on someone, potentially, and back them, try to understand who’s got some credibility within the environment [from] a leadership perspective and respect. Coming from a person a risk was taken on, it is something that we would certainly consider.” You could say as much in these three words: Van der Dussen.

“I want to be a thinking cricketer, obviously when I’m batting but also in the field — coming up with suggestions to assist the captain,” Van der Dussen said in his online interview. “Whether you’re wearing the captain’s armband or not I’ll always challenge guys to try and do that. Because you’re out there on the field for a long time, you get to study opposition players and the conditions. You can challenge yourself to think as you would if you were captain. I was really fortunate, when I made my Test debut against England, to stand at first slip alongside a guy like Faf — one of the greatest man managers and leaders South Africa has ever seen — and on the other side [of me] was the limited overs captain, ‘Quinny’. Talking to those guys, learning, discussing how plans come together, and coming up with suggestions, even if the captain uses them or not, that was a real learning curve for me.

“Leadership has come naturally to me. I have done it before, I definitely can do it. Why I haven’t I’m not sure. But who knows what’s going to happen going forward.”

Nobody knows, thanks to the coronavirus. Just like nobody knew South Africa would take a chance on Smith until Pollock let slip the name of his successor at the press conference he gave in the wake of his sacking in March 2003. Smith didn’t do something similar on Friday — two days after Van der Dussen spoke — not least because the decision is far from taken. And because he is too canny an operator.

But you can bank on him knowing that someone who looks like a captain, plays like a captain, talks like a captain, even walks like a captain, but hasn’t captained much, could be the right man in the right place at the right time. Just like he was.

First published by Cricbuzz.