Bloemfontein – Bulletproof Truth

All things bright and Bloemtiful

“We are the champions, and we are playing like champions.” – Arshin Kulkarni

Telford Vice / Mangaung Oval

IS an awakening rude if it is caused by thunder and lightning and the bucketing down of 10 millimetres of rain in not much more than 10 minutes? Not if it shakes you from sleep when you are warm and dry in bed.

It was a strangely comforting internal conversation to have at 2.30am in Bloemfontein on Sunday. Or seven-and-a-half-hours before the men’s under-19 World Cup match between India and the United States was due to start a long boundary away at Mangaung Oval.

But start on time it did. The summer earth is thirsty here, so by 10am the ground was as dry as a desert dune even though the remnants of the night’s deluge glistened still in puddles and potholes under a dazzling sky.

By the time Arshin Kulkarni nudged Arya Garg through fine leg for four in the 41st to reach his first century in eight under-19 ODI innings — he made 100 in a miscellaneous match against India B in Mulapadu in November last year — clouds had crowded over the ground. Had they come to see if Kulkarni could add credence to the theory that he’s the next big thing in Indian cricket? He scored 91 in a triangular series game against South Africa in Johannesburg on January 2, but poor stroke execution in his first two World Cup innings limited him to 39 runs off 72 balls.

Kulkarni’s 108 on Sunday might also have been ended early. He was 16 not out in the 14th when he slapped a delivery from Ateendra Subramanian gently and at an inviting height to mid-off, where Prannav Chettipalayam made a right hash of a catch that seemed easier to hold than drop. Kulkarni batted on into the 43rd, when he heaved Subramanian down long-off’s throat. Did Kulkarni’s change of fortune come with a change in approach or application?

“I did nothing differently; I just tried to play my game,” Kulkarni told Cricbuzz. “I tried to stay close to the wickets a little bit more, and that helped me. I just wish I could have scored a bigger innings, and scored runs more easily.”

How had the US attack added to the challenge? “They were bowling to their strengths. The pace of their seamers was very low compared to our team’s bowlers and others’. But they were just doing their jobs; sticking to their lines and lengths.”

India were 56/1 when Kulkarni was dropped, or 10 runs into a stand of 155 he shared with Musheer Khan; almost half their total of 326/5, the highest in the tournament. What might have been had the catch been taken? Maybe not much that would have made a difference given the Americans dropped two other catches and gave away 20 runs in wides. Besides Subramanian and his 2/45 at an economy rate of 4.50, they bowled listlessly.

Despite that they were cheered to the skies above by a small but vocal group of travelling parents and family, one of whom kept up a raucous bleat for much of India’s innings. It isn’t often India are outsupported, but they were to such an extent on Sunday that, as the teams filed past the American fans to line up for the anthems, more than one Indian head jerked towards the stands to see where all the fuss was coming from.

The clamour dwindled during the US innings. Perhaps mom and pop knew the chances of their boys chasing down the target was unlikely considering they took 40.2 overs to be bowled out for 105 by Ireland and 47.1 to be dismissed for 170 by Bangladesh. To qualify for the Super Sixes the Americans would have had to beat India in 17.1 overs. That was the longest of shots, and it became all but impossible when they shambled to 12/3 inside eight overs. Could they have got their figures crossed: they were 17/3 after the powerplay. They were 45/3 after 17.1, when the match might as well have been called off.

But that would have been too harsh on a team who had come primarily to play rather than progress to the next round; a team who don’t often see a dedicated ground or a turf pitch and who live in a country where most of their compatriots think cricket is a type of insect. The game in the US couldn’t be more different from what it is in India, which lends poignance to the fact that all of the members of the American squad have south Asian heritage. Three were born in India and another in Pakistan.

So rather than get on Siddarth Kappa’s case about wasting 60 balls on his 18, or try to fathom the point of eking out a reply of 125/8 a runrate of 2.5 in an innings that ground on for all 50 miserable overs — by which time the asking rate had soared past 200 to the over — or even ask why the Indians couldn’t end the torturous torpor, let’s keep perspective.

After this tournament the US squad will return to a place where nobody but their friends and families know their names. It’s a place where few outside of the 1.62% of the population who identify as south Asian will know or care that two of the most enthralling men’s Tests in all of the 2,525 yet played since March 1877 ended in Brisbane and Hyderabad on Sunday.

Of course that’s not the case in India, whose teams have played in all 14 editions of the under-19 men’s World Cup and won five of them. That’s more than any other country, and no-one who has been to India will struggle to understand why.

The clouds parted enough to allow the ground to be soaked in sunshine when India finally wrapped up their win. “We are the champions, and we are playing like champions,” Kulkarni said. “We want to continue that as a team and as individuals so that we win the final.” The country’s class of 2024 will roll undefeated on to the next stage of defending the title they clinched in Antigua in February 2022. Roll like thunder and strike like lightning, you might say. Indeed, as Kulkarni stood on the outfield and spoke, a thick bolt of the former shattered the grey in the distance as it snaked down to earth. Happily, it was far enough away. Just as happily, it wasn’t 2.30am.

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Musheer makes magic

“My father is a proud man today.” – Musheer Khan on his and his brother’s centuries.

Telford Vice / Mangaung Oval

INDIA’S innings in their men’s under-19 World Cup match against Ireland at Mangaung Oval in Bloemfontein on Thursday lasted for 312 balls and more than three-and-a-half hours, but what many who saw it will remember most happened in the space of a single delivery and in the blink of an eye.

Oliver Riley ran in to Musheer Khan to bowl the second ball of the 48th over. Several strides before Riley reached the crease, Musheer started moving towards the off side. The bowler saw the batter going, and speared the ball wide of off stump. By then Musheer had travelled so far from his original position — all the way off the pitch to where silly point might have curled — that, in effect, he was dealing with a leg-side delivery.

Musheer wound himself into a coil so tight he looked like he was threatening to hit the ball onto the greens of the Orangia Lawn Bowls Club across the street from the ground, a distance of some 300 metres. Happily for the trundlers out there on a sweaty summer’s day, and the greenkeeper who would have had to repair the damage, the force that Musheer’s intended feat required negated the necessary precision. Consequently his furious whip to leg didn’t make the desired level of contact.

The force of the effort exploded through the instant when ball met bat and threw Musheer off his feet. He landed in a heap even further onto the off side, and rose in time to see the ball bisect two fielders stationed inside the ring and streak to the backward square leg boundary for four.

The stroke was similar in theory to the six David Warner hit off Shaheen Shah Afridi in last month’s Perth Test. But, in its execution, Musheer’s version was viscerally more ambitious and expansive. Modern players would call it a scoop. In the wake of Musheer’s rendition, the rest of us would consider that a hopelessly anaemic description.

It must have taken years of practice to play the shot as well as he did, even in its partially successful form. How long had he been working on it? Had he attempted it in a match before? If so, how did it come off? How had he been able to train to unleash it considering the real estate that required was more than the width of the average net?

There was not enough shared language between Musheer and the reporters he spoke to after the match to have the conversation properly. The translated version was: “It’s a shot I’ve been working on, and which my father [Naushad Khan] has been helping me with as my personal coach. It’s been part of my routine, and it’s not the first time I’ve played it in a match.”

Musheer wasn’t the only member of the family with reason to celebrate on Thursday. His brother, Sarfaraz Khan, scored 161 for India A against England Lions in a four-day match in Ahmedabad that started on Wednesday. “My father is a proud man today,” Musheer said. Sarfaraz is more than seven years older than Musheer and played 36 under-19 ODIs for India. So it made sense that the brothers should have been in touch about Musheer’s trip to South Africa. “We had a healthy conversation and he passed on a lot of experience,” Musheer said. “That’s helping me to perform better and understand the conditions.”

Two balls after his genius stroke, with India’s hunger for runs curdling into greed, Musheer tried to take two to long-on and was run out for a 106-ball 118. His innings, more than half of it scored during a stand of 156 off 151 with Uday Saharan, who made 75, was the centrepiece of a total of 301/7. It was the second-biggest in the tournament behind the 302/8 New Zealand made against Nepal at Buffalo Park in East London on Sunday.

India took 119 runs off the last 10 frenetic overs against the increasingly rattled Irish, who plainly had not recovered their composure by the time they came out to bat. They crashed to 45/8 inside 15 overs, somehow surviving the sniping Naman Tiwari’s first four overs without him taking a wicket. Tiwari took two in his fifth, another in his sixth, and finished with 4/53. Saumy Pandey found turn and bounce and with that a haul of 3/18 in eight overs.

India’s intensity eased as their victory assumed certainty, and a last-wicket stand of 16 off 38 by Daniel Forkin and Finn Lutton took Ireland to 100 before they were dismissed in the 30th. Seven of their partnerships didn’t reach double figures and five were snuffed out in fewer than 10 balls. Their biggest and longest stand, the 39 shared off 55 by Riley and Forkin, was worth a quarter of the runs of the Musheer-Saharan epic and not much more than a third in terms of balls faced. Another way to help parse the difference between the teams was the fact that India hit 24 fours and five sixes. That’s 41.86% of their runs in boundaries. The Irish? Nine fours, no sixes.

But numbers don’t have the warmth and wonder to tell the story. Rather, what captured the thrust of Thursday’s events and will make them shine in the memory was what happened when Oliver Riley ran in to bowl the second ball of the 48th over of India’s innings to Musheer Khan. That’s what makes magic.

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Why South Africa is cricket’s superhost

“It’s the passion and love for the game throughout the country.” – Wanele Mngomezulu, the men’s under-19 World Cup tournament director, on what makes the country an excellent host.

Telford Vice / Mangaung Oval

MANY know it as Danny Boy. It started life as Londonderry Air. Whatever, the song has become the quintessential sound of Irishness wherever it is played. Including beyond the northern boundary at Bloemfontein’s Mangaung Oval on Monday, when the unmistakable strains lilted into the heavy air of a hot afternoon from a trumpet and a pair of chunky xylophones.

If you’re South African, this will not surprise you. Trying to make cricket teams from everywhere feel at home is part of what the country does best. If that means playing a song from far away on unfamiliar instruments, so be it.

South Africa struggles with many problems, including lingering racism from the apartheid era, chronic economic inequality, more than its fair share of violent crime, widespread corruption up to government level and an often interrupted supply of electricity. But it is not short on hospitality and know-how.

The ICC announced on November 21 last year that the men’s under-19 World Cup had been taken away from Sri Lanka because of SLC’s suspension due to government interference. Fifty-eight days later, on Friday, West Indies’ Nathan Edward bowled the first ball to South Africa’s Lhuan-dre Pretorius in Potchefstroom at the same time Ireland’s Reuben Wilson did to the US’ Pranav Chettipalayam in Bloem. By Sunday, East London and Kimberley had also hosted games. Benoni will come on board next Wednesday. The 16 competing teams will have played 41 matches when the final is decided in Benoni on February 11.

Monday’s game in Bloem was between Ireland and Bangladesh, hence the choice of music. We will have to forgive the Free State’s finest trumpet and xylophone ensemble for not being up to speed with what tops the playlists in Dhaka these days.

But turn on your television in the coming days and you will see what looks like a match in an ICC tournament, with all its branding bells and whistles. You will not see the 58 days of frantic work put in by CSA, ICC and broadcast staff to make it look like that. Wanele Mngomezulu, CSA’s chief marketing officer who is serving as tournament director, told reporters in Bloem on Monday that he was satisfied: “We’ve had one or two challenges, which we’re getting on top of. But overall we’re happy.”

So far, the only noticeable sign of something going wrong has been the power going down in the outside broadcast van early in Bangladesh’s reply at Mangaung Oval on Monday, which interrupted play for eight minutes. When you endure outages of between two hours and six hours on most days, as South Africans do, eight minutes is nothing.

But 13 means something. For some it’s an unlucky number. For cricketminded South Africans it’s an affirmation of how adept and efficient the country is at hosting major tournaments despite its difficulties and sometimes at short notice. The men’s under-19 World Cup is the 13th big event seen here from the 1998 version of the same bunfight came to town.

That was followed by the 2003 men’s World Cup, the 2005 women’s World Cup, the 2007 men’s World T20, the men’s World Cup qualifiers, the Champions Trophy and the IPL — all in 2009 — the 2010 and 2012 editions of the Champions League T20, the 2020 men’s under-19 World Cup, the inaugural women’s under-19 World Cup and the women’s T20 World Cup, both last year. The 2009 IPL and the 2012 Champions League T20 were, like the current tournament, moved to South Africa at the drop of a floppy hat.

What makes a place where so much goes wrong good at stepping into the breach when a high-profile cricket tournament looms? “It’s the passion and love for the game throughout the country,” Mngomezulu said. “It’s not just about what happens on the field. It’s about the people who support the game, and the fan perspective — the schools and the different partners, and the sporting nation itself. That’s the best testament to how we’re able to do this in a short space of time.”

Friday’s match was played to a backdrop of beaming, buzzing and occasionally booming schoolchildren, who were back at Mangaung Oval for the game between India and Bangladesh on Saturday — when they were joined on the grass banks by a sizeable contingent of the region’s Bangladeshi community. Fewer fans were in attendance to see Bangladesh beat Ireland by six wickets. But, as Mngomezulu said: “It’s a Monday. Schools are back. Everybody’s back at work.”

If the match was played in India, doubtless several thousand would have been in the ground. But South Africa doesn’t have the chaos that compounds the complications of hosting cricket in India, and to a lesser extent in other Asian countries. South Africa also isn’t tangled in the red tape that ties up everything organised in England, Australia and New Zealand, and it doesn’t have the travel and logistical issues that can blight playing in the Caribbean.

What South Africa does have is enough decent cricket grounds and, more importantly, enough people who take pride in running them properly. Yes, Newlands was a mess for the Test against India at the start of the month. Yes, CSA’s flaccid handling of the David Teeger affair is one of many hashes they have made over the years. No, that doesn’t mean the game is irretrievably damaged in this country, as many on social media would have you believe.

“That’s the beauty of South African cricket, that each province has two or three facilities that can host international matches,” Mngomezulu said. “Not all of them will be A grade, but they are trying to put their best foot forward. East London is classified B grade, but they are making efforts to try and ensure that they do attract international matches. Free State have put in a lot to get back into the top class — the facilities and surroundings, and by working closely with hotels because that’s a contributing factor in hosting these matches.”

In short, everybody learns. That’s important because, as the smart branding around the grounds hosting matches reminds us, the event is about cricket’s “future stars”. And about future bar, restaurant and hotel managers. “It’s key for us that we have tournaments like this,” Mngomezulu said. “It’s also about development and ensuring we have sufficient talent coming through to the national set-ups. Tournaments like this give us a view of what’s to come.”

And of what’s past. The xylophone, for instance, which made its way from southeast Asia to Africa in around the year 500 of the common area. Danny Boy will never be the same.

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Febrility fuels intense India, bristling Bangladesh

“Things did happen and were said in the heat of the moment, but it’s part and parcel of the game and you need to take it in your stride and move on.” – Adarsh Singh

Telford Vice / Mangaung Oval

QUIET reigns on Bloemfontein’s Zola Budd Street on most mornings, and Saturday was no exception. The Kings Park Rose Garden sprawled in splendid silence on the corner and, across the wide expanse of weathered asphalt lined by grassy pavements, there was nothing to be heard from the Advocates’ Chambers.

But the hardcourts of Free State Tennis resounded with the protest of rubber soles cement, along with urgent shouts of “Out!” Punctuation was provided by perhaps the most pleasing sounds in all of sport: plick, plock, thwack, thwump …

Then something else floated into the still fresh air from Mangaung Oval, which abuts the tennis courts. The voices were dulled by the surrounding trees but unmistakable in their electronically rendered clarity: “Jana-gana-mana-adhinayaka … jaya he Bharata-bhagya-vidhata …” It was followed by “Amar sonar Bangla … Ami tomay bhalobashi … Ciradin tomar akas, tomar batas, amar prane …”

Whatever you think about the curious incongruity of national anthems at sporting events — we are, after all, not remembering a war — this time they were appropriate.

A law passed in 1891 barred “an Arab, a Chinaman, a Coolie or any other Asiatic or Coloured person from carrying on business or farming in the Orange Free State”. People called “Indian” — whether their heritage was from somewhere else in south Asia didn’t matter — were not allowed to live in the province, even though most of them were as South African as those who oppressed them.

They couldn’t enter the Free State or travel through it without special permission, and they were not allowed to be there after sunset. These laws prevailed, in some form, until shortly before the end of legislated apartheid in 1994.

It needed canny loophole-spotting and hoop-jumping for Free State to be able to deploy their star signing in the 1984/85 season. Alvin Kallicharran, shut out of the game in West Indies for being part of rebel tours to South Africa in 1982/83 and 1983/84, is Guyanese. But, because of his name, to the Free State authorities he would have been “Indian”. As an “honorary white” — an official designation, believe it or not — he played for the province until March 1988. So to hear the national anthems of India and Bangladesh softly rise over what used to be, not that long ago, a place of subjugation and unfairness put a spring into at least one passer-by’s step.

It wasn’t the first time — various India and Bangladesh sides had played in Bloem 14 times before, though never against each other. Saturday’s occasion was a men’s under-19 World Cup match. Thus a game between the current World Cup and Asia Cup champions at this level. It also reprised the 2020 World Cup final, a rain-affected match in Potchefstroom that Bangladesh won by three wickets. Maybe because of that too-close-for-comfort history, Saturday’s contest bristled with febrility.

Unseemliness came from both sides. Falls of wickets were celebrated with blood-chilling shrieks and followed by unmistakably aggressive send-offs. Maruf Mridha’s celebration — an impersonation of a kneeling sniper — took on more objectionably threatening overtones with each of the five times he was given the excuse to perform it. When a Naman Tiwari bouncer landed a sickening blow on the back of Ashiqur Rahman’s helmet, one of India’s players could be heard cackling with maniacal laughter.

“I enjoy the challenge that comes with such intense games, and the pressure situations,” Adarsh Singh said after the match. “Things did happen and were said in the heat of the moment, but it’s part and parcel of the game and you need to take it in your stride and move on.”

The emotion crossed the boundary, but happily without turning into similar scenes. The match was less than an over old when a Bangladeshi family, dressed in all their finery and eager to find their seats, barrelled out of the lift on the wrong floor and almost rushed into the pressbox before being politely stopped at the door. In the blazing sun that lit up the grass banks, clumps of bussed-in local children were set upon enthusiastically by what can only be called uncles. Whether the kids chanted “India” or “Bangladesh” depended entirely on which flag their particular uncle waved. But the Bengalis had it, not least because the province that once wouldn’t tolerate their presence is now home to a sizeable Bangladeshi community. And what more Bangla thing can there be than spending a day at the cricket?

Some of them took refuge from the building heat by gathering in a pool of shade under the main scoreboard. They were identifiable not only by which events on the field inspired them to cheer, but by the large Bangladesh flag they propped up in front of them. Held above it, in a sign of the times, smaller but twirled with fervour, was the flag of Palestine.

Half-centuries by Adarsh and Uday Saharan — who shared 116 off 144 after Maruf reduced India to 31/2 in the eighth — and middle order nuggets took the Indians to 251/7. Midway through their reply, Bangladesh had lost four of their top five and were 3.52 runs behind the asking rate. Ariful Islam and Shihab James kept them in the game with a stand that grew to 77 off 118 — each of those runs heralded as if it had won the trophy itself — before Musheer Khan had Ariful caught behind to effectively decide the issue. Bangladesh needed 125 off 94 from there, and the required rate reached double figures after 40 overs. They were put out of their misery for 167 in 45.5. Saumy Pandey struck early and late in the innings to take 4/24.

Despite the result, and India’s clear superiority, a cry of “Bangladesh! Bangladesh! Bangladesh!” went up from the grass banks as the players trooped off the field. Soon Zola Budd Street and its surrounds were again as quiet as they usually are, but not in the same way as in the bad old days.

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It’s tough to bloom in Bloem

“Players now grow up knowing they will have to leave Bloemfontein, when previously they could have stayed here.” – Johan van Heerden, Free State Cricket chief executive

Telford Vice / Bloemfontein

BLOEMFONTEIN has a thing about pale grey brick. It’s everywhere from the walls to the pavements, lending the place a calming colourlessness. That said, this city of pleasant, polite, placid people wouldn’t be exciting even without its ashen moodboard.

It’s small, slow, quiet and flat; an oven in summer, a grave in winter; neither bustling nor burbling, but barely bumping along bang in the middle of the country. Take a deep breath of the still, clean air from its big, blue sky and sink deep into a featherbed of inconspicuousness.

You would need to go a long way from Bloem to find a nicer place. None of its attractions are singular or arresting, but it knows how to treat people with warmth and respect. It’s a pity cricket hasn’t reciprocated.

A combination of Paarl being awarded an SA20 franchise ahead of Bloem in October 2018, a 32% cut in CSA funding to their affiliates, and the relegation of Free State’s men’s provincial team in March last year has hit the game here like a hattrick of heartbreak. Bloemfontein, and Kimberley 164 kilometres away, would be forgiven for feeling as if they are places South African cricket has forgotten. Johan van Heerden, the chief executive of the Free State Cricket (FSC), didn’t argue with that: “There’s no doubt,” he told Cricbuzz on Friday. “Major businesses here ask what’s in it for them. It’s sad.”

Neither does it help that South Africa’s men’s team — cricket in the country’s major drawcard — don’t visit often. They played four ODIs against England and Australia here last year, but from the first men’s international in Bloem, an ODI against India in December 1992, South Africa have been to town for 35 matches across the formats. In that time, they have played at the Wanderers 97 times, and 88 times in Centurion. Newlands, Kingsmead and St George’s Park have had between 52 and 24 more games than Bloem.

Free State’s relegation “had a serious effect on us”, Van Heerden said. “I don’t believe the system is the right way to control domestic cricket, because the guys who got us in the mess all got contracts at other provinces. So what was the purpose of being relegated apart from putting a beautiful ground like this at risk?”

Van Heerden wasn’t being melodramatic. Cricket in the region is indeed facing an existential crisis. With money not coming in from the usual sources, the chance of the game out of business here was real. Until, that is, FSC sold the ground to a local developer. “The sale is not yet finalised, but it’s in process,” Van Heerden said. “If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have seen Free state Cricket survive. Our maintenance cost alone is R2.7-million [USD142,000] a year. We’re not out of the woods yet, but with the partner we’ve got we’ll get to 2027. Hopefully by then cricket would have normalised.” South Africa are due to host the men’s World Cup in 2027. For cricket in Bloem, it’s about hanging on until that ship sails in.

That didn’t mean Van Heerden had reconciled himself with Bloem being shut out of the SA20. “It still hurts”, he said. “Where do our guys develop? How do I keep Grey College and Saints [St Andrew’s School] on the go? Players now grow up knowing they will have to leave Bloemfontein, when previously they could have stayed here.”

Gerald Coetzee is a case in point. He was born in Bloem and went to both of the above schools, which are firmly among the elite institutions that fuel cricket and rugby with quality talent in South Africa and beyond. Coetzee played for Free State at under-13, under-15 and under-19 level, and made his first-class debut for the Knights — the Free State franchise under South Africa’s previous domestic system — in October 2019. All 14 of his first-class matches before he took his bow in Tests, against West Indies in Centurion in March last year, were for the Knights or Free State. He is as Bloem as Bloem boys get. But in May last year, after Free State’s relegation had been confirmed, he moved to the Titans.

“If we’re back in the first division and we have an SA20 franchise here, why would guys like Coetzee go,” Van Heerden said. “His family’s here, he wants to be here. But the system doesn’t allow him to be here.”

Given his express pace and ebullient showmanship, Coetzee could be seen as a successor to another of Bloem’s best. Cricket has undergone a revolution since Allan Donald played, but it bears pointing out that all 78 of his provincial first-class matches in South Africa were for Free State. He was involved — albeit sparsely because of international commitments — in two of the three first-class championships Free State claimed in the 1990s, and in five of their six one-day titles from 1988/89 to 1995/96.

Cricket was different then. Donald won six fewer Test caps than he played first-class matches for Free State. Coetzee has played more than three times as many white-ball games as his 21 first-class matches, internationals included. Of Kagiso Rabada’s 82 first-class games, only 20 — less than a quarter — were not Tests. Of Donald’s 776 senior representative matches, just two were T20s.

Ah yes, T20; the thing that’s eating cricket as we know it alive in realtime at a ground near you in South Africa. That’s if you aren’t near Bloemfontein. “If you look at the quality of the venues being used in the SA20, you can see they’re under strain,” Van Heerden said. “There’s too much cricket being played on those grounds, and here we sit with very little.”

Was it crazy to wonder whether some of the fixtures, even in the current competition, could be moved to Bloem? “We’ll be ready, if anybody wants to come and play here.”

As he spoke, Van Heerden stood at a window in his office at Mangaung Oval that afforded him a view of a glorious summer scene. Between a canopy of the bluest blue strewn with cottonwool clouds and a field of deep green velvet, the US and Ireland played a men’s under-19 World Cup match.

Watched by a smattering of Ireland fans in green — mostly the players’ family members — and a significant number of bussed-in schoolchildren, the Irish produced an aggressive bowling and fielding performance to bundle out the Americans for 105. Ireland won by seven wickets in the 23rd over.

Even so, Arya Garg, the US’ mop-topped, wiry, lively left-arm fast bowler made an impression with his pace and passion, and took 2/31 in five overs. Mostly, at home, he has to make do with whatever facilities he can find. What did it feel like to be able to roar in to the bowling crease on a proper cricket ground? “It makes a huge difference,” Garg said. “We feel a lot more energised here, because we’re used to playing on outfields that have really long grass. And we don’t have a lot of natural turf pitches.”

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the haves from the have-nots, especially in places like Bloem.

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In Bloem, everyone knows Labuschagne’s name

“I had to ask Marnus what he’d done to him,” – David Warner on Marnus Labuschagne’s verbal fuss with Tabraiz Shamsi.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

THERE’S something about Marnus. Maybe it’s that a bloke who in the view of the almost 60-million people in the country of his birth doesn’t pronounce his own last name properly lets his bat do the talking.

But not while words flew hot and fast during an explosive episode involving Tabraiz Shamsi in the second ODI in Bloemfontein on Saturday. What had Shamsi said to rile Marnus Labuschagne to that extent?

“I was just asking him whether he was looking forward to being in [Potchefstroom, where the series resumes on Tuesday]; I know he’s from that region,” Shamsi said after the match

That was an underwhelming explanation. What did David Warner, who was batting with Labuschagne at that stage, make of it? “I had to ask Marnus what he’d done to [Shamsi],” Warner said. “I didn’t know what was going on. It was every ball. Marnus is a quality player but he’s probably the wrong bloke to go after because he doesn’t normally say anything.”

It seems there was indeed more going on than Shamsi would admit to explicitly. “I find I play my best cricket when I’m in the contest,” he said. “It never crosses the line, it’s just a little bit of banter. It’s always respectful. South Africa and Australia, we’ve always played like that. I want to stick to the tradition. Things are hard out there, and I feel like we’ve got to fight fire with fire.

“If that gets me more focused and more charged up … we’re playing for our country. That’s the reason you’re going to see more of that for me. In the recent past that’s gone away from my game. I want to make sure I’m playing cricket on my terms and not on anyone else’s.”

Labuschagne is having a big weekend. He would have thought he had a quiet day/night ahead of him in the first game of the rubber in Bloemfontein on Friday. Then Kagiso Rabada concussed Cameron Green, who was replaced by Labuschagne — whose unbeaten 80 was key to Australia winning by three wickets with 9.4 overs to spare.

On Saturday Labuschagne’s 99-ball 124 helped set up the visitors’ 123-run victory, their second-biggest success in ODIs against South Africa. Labuschagne shared 151 off 124 with David Warner, who made a 93-ball 106 and also put on 109 off 72 with Travis Head, who hammered 54 of his 64 in fours and sixes.

South Africans know too well what Warner can do. His 10 centuries across the formats against them is more than he has taken off any other opponents, and his five hundreds in equals Sachin Tendulkar’s record in ODIs versus South Africa. Labuschagne is a newer face, but he has made a nuisance of himself nonetheless by scoring both his ODI hundreds against South Africa.

Warner was his combative, compelling, competitive self. Labuschagne batted like the recurring dream he probably has about delivering the perfect innings. This was as close to that as anyone should be able to venture. A familiar violence ran through Warner’s batting like a fiery river. Labuschagne’s strokes were embossed invitations to watch him bat, things of elegance and grace fuelled by something like obsession.

And still he wasn’t satisfied. “I thought I could have got us to 430, something like that,” Labuschagne told a television interviewer, perhaps a nod to the Wanderers in March 2006 — when Australia scored 434/4 and South Africa replied with 438/9 with a ball remaining in the deciding match of that ODI series. Klerksdorp-born Labuschagne, then 12, had moved to Australia with his family in 2004.

But that was then. On Saturday Australia made 392/8 and dismissed South Africa for 269 in 41.5 overs. The result means the home side have shambled to their fifth consecutive loss to the Australians, who won the T20Is 3-0 and need only one win from the remaining three ODIs to claim that series.

Worryingly with the World Cup looming in India in October and November, the South Africans have been starkly uncompetitive in all departments. They have been bowled out three times in the five games, and twice been beaten by more than a hundred runs.

“We’re going to have to take our licks,” Shamsi said. “We haven’t produced the results and we have to be accountable for our performances. But we have been working, and the people who have to do their work behind the scenes are doing their work. We’ve got to live with this. We’ve beaten Australia before. This time the shoe is on the other foot. We’ve got to put our hands up — we haven’t been good enough. It doesn’t mean we aren’t good enough. We’ve just lacked execution. That’s all it is.”

But Temba Bavuma’s team’s timing could be seen as perfect. Many of their nearly 60-million compatriots won’t have noticed how poorly they are performing, or even know that they are playing. All that matters is that the Siya Kolisi’s Springboks start the defence of their 2019 rugby World Cup triumph against Scotland in Marseilles on Sunday.

Even those who have turned out at the cricket are thinking about rugby, as proved by a scrawled poster held by one man spotted on the grass banks at Mangaung Oval on Saturday. His message was simple but powerful: “Siya tomorrow 17:00”.

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Bavuma brilliant, but Australia steal the show

“If I cramp, I’ll be cramping out there.” – Temba Bavuma

Telford Vice / Cape Town

IF this cricket gig doesn’t work out for Temba Bavuma he should consider scriptwriting. His Bloemfontein blockbuster on Thursday was, as they say in the movie business, awards worthy. It shimmered with the drama of dropped catches, the tension of tight bowling on a perfidious pitch, a ridiculous runout, a compelling comeback from a sluggish start, true grit in the face of rising cramp, and the spectacle of a century.

Even so the ending wasn’t happy for South Africa. Bavuma carried his bat for 114, more than half his team’s total of 222. But that wasn’t enough to stop Australia winning the first ODI by three wickets with two balls short of 10 overs to spare. Ah well, that’s what matinees are for: a few hours of make believe before reality rears like a monster on the horizon.

And that reality is the home side haven’t been good enough to win a match against these opponents, who reeled off three T20I successes while apparently expending about as much energy as they would have done standing in the queue for popcorn. Thursday’s performance offered evidence of improvement, but four defeats in as many matches sounds like the making of a rocky horror picture show. Especially with the opening credits of the ODI World Cup set to roll in India less than four weeks hence.

At least South Africans will always have Bavuma, who scored his third century in six innings that include an unbeaten 90. He was dropped by a diving Ashton Agar at backward point off Sean Abbott in the sixth over — when he had two runs from eight balls — and by Alex Carey off Adam Zampa in the 46th, when he had 88 off 127. Between those far apart poles Bavuma marshalled his team’s recovery from a powerplay of 25 without loss — the lowest yet in Bloemfontein — and in the face of exemplary bowling aided and abetted by a surface that bristled with variable bounce.

There was slapstick in the 12th, when Rassie van der Dussen drove Abbott to mid-off, hesitated, then called for a run and set off at speed. Bavuma, his back turned to his onrushing partner, didn’t leave his ground and lost his grip on his bat. Van der Dussen was closer to Bavuma than the crease from whence he had come when he turned like an 18-wheeler truck on an iced highway to try to scramble back to safety. He was run out by more than a metre, a fate he seemed to struggle to accept as he knelt where he had fallen for a long and tortured moment before sauntering off steaming.

Weighed down by disciplined bowling, a difficult pitch and the consequent tumble of wickets, Bavuma’s duty was to survive. Only after his team had been reduced to 185/9 in the 44th — when Bavuma had scored 79 off 118 balls with eight fours — and Lungi Ngidi, a No. 11 among No. 11s, had survived Zampa’s remaining four deliveries in that over did South Africa’s captain give himself permission to attack.

He took two boundaries and a single off the next over, bowled by Abbott, went to his century with a six and a four in the space of three balls from Zampa, and hit three more fours off Josh Hazlewood — who then ended the innings by having Ngidi caught behind.

“If I cramp, I’ll be cramping out there,” Bavuma told a television interviewer as he left the field, when he should have been on his way to the physio’s table to sort out the seized muscles that had hampered his movement and had him clutching at a hamstring towards the end of his heroic innings. Bavuma didn’t reappear for the start of Australia’s reply. He did in the eighth over but was soon back in the dressing room. Cramp, however, remains his stated issue.

When the lights came up for the interval not many in the small crowd would have imagined they would see a contest. This was a humble ODI, after all. Not a game of fantastic beasts playing quidditch. But a contest the crowd, huddling in the gathering cold of a place still wading through winter, duly had.

It didn’t seem that way while Travis Head and Mitchell Marsh were dismissing the bowling like King Kong swatted aircraft on the Empire State Building. They had shared 37 off 29 for the second wicket when Kagiso Rabada produced a pearler of an away swinger that found Marsh’s edge.

Rabada also engineered the turning point of the innings when he clanged Cameron Green on the earflap of his helmet in the 11th over. Marnus Labuschagne, something of a serial concussion substitute, replaced Green.

From there the Aussies lost five wickets for 75 runs to crash to 113/7 in the 17th. Bavuma aside, it was up to South Africa’s bowlers to keep their team in the game. And they did, with Rabada in particularly rasping form. But, on a pitch that demanded batting of Test calibre, the visitors had that in Labuschagne; a fantastic beast of sorts. He and Agar, secure in the knowledge that Australia needed just 110 off 33 overs, and were scoring at more than twice the required rate, put their team back on the straight and narrow with a stand of 112 to win the match.

The partnership might have been ended in the 34th with 32 required, when Labuschagne advanced down the pitch to Keshav Maharaj. He was well out of his ground when he edged the ball, but Quinton de Kock — his view obstructed by the batter — couldn’t do much to take the catch or break the wicket.

By then the South Africans’ heads were dropping. Having all but lost the game with the bat they fought back with the ball only to slip towards the wrong end of the equation against a team who refused to panic. They’ve been shot in that movie before and they could see the curtain coming down. If they play like this again, it won’t be the last time.

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Not for the first time, South Africa have De Kock drama to deal with

“Gone are the days when you are inflexible and fighting against that change.” – Temba Bavuma on the tussle for players between franchises and national teams.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

WELCOME back, prodigals. That’s you, Quinton de Kock, Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, Kagiso Rabada, David Warner, Cameron Green and Alex Carey. None were involved in the T20I series between South Africa and Australia. All are aboard for the ODI rubber, which starts in Bloemfontein on Thursday.

The South Africans will hope the return of their biggest white-ball names reroutes them in the wake of the 3-0 hiding they took in the T20Is, where the visitors dominated all avenues and won convincingly. The home side will also have to come to terms with Tuesday’s news that De Kock would retire from ODIs after the World Cup in India in October and November.

When did his captain in the format, Temba Bavuma, know? “I wasn’t in the loop as per his thinking or decision,” Bavuma told a press conference on Wednesday. “With ‘Quinny’, at times, you can expect anything.”

Indeed. It was left to Bavuma to clean up the mess De Kock left during the 2021 T20 World Cup when he left it as late as the bus ride to the ground to play West Indies in Dubai to tell his then captain that he would refuse to play rather than take a knee in support of social justice, as CSA’s board had ordered the players to do. Four days later, before the match against Sri Lanka in Sharjah, De Kock relented and duly knelt. Less than two months after that, in December 2021, De Kock announced the end of his Test career with immediate effect — in the middle of a home series against India.

Despite disruptive drama like that it would seem there are no hard feelings. “[De Kock’s ODI retirement] doesn’t change how we see the guy,” Bavuma said. “It’s always been a pleasure playing with Quinton. He’s an incredible player; talented, too much talent.

“He will be a big loss in ODIs. He is one of the guys I lean on from a tactical point of view. Not having him within the space is going to be a challenge but it’s something we will have to overcome. He has chosen the T20 route. All we can do is wish him the best.

“This year is the freest I have seen him be in and around the team; a lot more bubbly, always cracking jokes, starting banter with the guys. Maybe he made the decision a long time ago and it was about finding the right time to let everyone know.”

No such distraction dominates the other dressing room. Mitchell Marsh’s breezy take on the De Kock development was: “If it means we won’t have to bowl to him anymore in one-day cricket after the World Cup, that’ll be a nice change,” The Aussies’ perspective going into the series was uncomplicated enough for Marsh to be able to offer a quip about the weather: ”Haven’t seen a cloud yet. A few of us jumped in the pool this morning — it was about three degrees [Celsius]. I’d like it a bit colder, actually. It’ll be cold at night, so we’ll have to keep nice and warm. A few hand-warmers and we’ll be OK.” He joked that Josh Hazlewood would, if required, take guard at No. 11 on Thursday because he had “refused to bat at No. 10”.

Team composition nerds will keep a more serious eye on how an XI in which Marco Jansen has been designated the sole allrounder — although Aiden Markram might have something to say about that — fare against opponents who bristle with Cameron Green, Marcus Stoinis and Sean Abbott. Especially as the same goes for the teams’ World Cup squads.

When: September 7, 2023; 1pm Local Time (4.30pm IST)

Where: Mangaung Oval, Bloemfontein

What to expect: A pleasant, sunny late winter’s day with no chance of rain. And plenty of runs on a flat pitch and South Africa’s biggest outfield.

Team news:

South Africa: Sisanda Magala’s knee problem will keep him out of Thursday’s game but he should be available on Saturday.

Confirmed XI: Temba Bavuma (capt), Quinton de Kock, Rassie van der Dussen, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, Marco Jansen, Gerald Coetzee, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi

Australia: Pat Cummins, who is on his way back from a wrist injury, is in the squad but will only arrive in South Africa next week.

Confirmed XI: Travis Head, David Warner, Mitchell Marsh (capt), Cameron Green, Josh Inglis, Alex Carey, Marcus Stoinis, Sean Abbott, Ashton Agar, Adam Zampa, Josh Hazlewood

What they said:

“It’s become dynamic and it’s important for international teams to adapt to the ever-changing landscape, and try and find ways to stay ahead of that trend. There have been discussions around … making sure we have access to our best players, but also not compromising on players’ financial earning ability outside our shores. Gone are the days when you are inflexible and fighting against that change.” — Temba Bavuma comes to terms with cricket’s modern reality.

“There’s no doubt that the landscape of cricket is changing, but for me playing for my country has been an unbelievable joy and given me great pride. I’ll focus on that for as long as I possibly can. Players throughout world cricket will have decisions to make over the next few years, but I think international cricket is still the pinnacle.” — Mitchell Marsh offers a different view on the same subject, but from the perspective of someone who has grown up in a more stable and financially sound cricket economy.

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World Cup squad named between a rock and a hard place

“The pull on players to be available for national teams as well as league sides and the clash of those two, which is what we are seeing now, is inevitable.” – Rob Walter

Telford Vice / Cape Town

SOUTH African cricket is living in interesting times. The men’s team have crashed to a 3-0 T20I loss to Australia at Kingsmead, the same margin of defeat suffered by much the same women’s side — the retired Shabnim Ismail excepted — who reached the T20I World Cup final in February — in a T20I series against Pakistan in Karachi. And all in six days.

That marked only South Africa’s fourth winless shellacking in 44 bilateral men’s T20I rubbers. The women have been blanked five times in 27 series but never before by Pakistan. Laura Wolvaardt’s team were at least competitive, taking two matches into the last over and losing the other by six runs. Not so Aiden Markram’s side, who were hammered by 111 runs and with 5.1 and 2.1 overs remaining.

Rob Walter acknowledged the self-evident truth after the last match on Sunday: “To put it bluntly we were pretty much outplayed throughout the series in both departments.” In the third department Australia dropped one catch in the series, South Africa five.

Cricketminded South Africans will want to take refuge in the absence of the rested Quinton de Kock, Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, Wayne Parnell, Anrich Nortjé and Kagiso Rabada. But the visitors were without David Warner, Steven Smith, Glenn Maxwell, Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood.

Walter’s team will have to have learnt the lessons of all that by the time they take on the Aussies in five ODIs, the first of them in Bloemfontein on Thursday. Into that gloom on Tuesday emerged South Africa’s squad for the men’s ODI World Cup in India in October and November.

The closest thing to a surprise selection was Gerald Coetzee cracking the nod ahead of Wayne Parnell. “‘Parny’ was one of the tough decisions to make,” Walter told a press conference in Bloemfontein. “He would have formed part of that six-strong fast bowling group, but we went for Gerald as someone who has got a little bit of extra pace in relation to ‘Parny’. It was a tough call and it’s tough for him to miss out.”

Was Lungi Ngidi’s form a worry considering he had gone wicketless at an economy rate of 13.78 against the Australians? “I’ve seen the work Lungi has put in over the entire winter period,” Walter said. “T20 can be brutal, this series in particular. There is a different dynamic in 50-over cricket and I know he will find his feet soon enough. We must be careful to look at things in isolation. From a broader point of view, given what I have seen over the last three months, there is no real concern on my side.”

How about the omission of the cool kids, Tristan Stubbs and Dewald Brevis? “Sometimes selection doesn’t sometimes happen as quickly as people want. We have one back-up batter in our group [Reeza Hendricks]. Those guys [who have been picked] have been playing for South Africa. For them to be superseded would be unfair. That’s the important thing to understand about the ODI side — they have been playing good cricket for a while. That’s why the tried and tested names are there.”

None more so than De Kock, who seems to be retiring from the international arena in instalments. CSA said on Tuesday the World Cup would constitute his last ODIs, and that he will likely be available for the T20 World Cup in West Indies and the United States in June next year. That’s an improvement on De Kock’s abrupt departure from Test cricket in December 2021 — in the throes of a home series against India. The importance of De Kock to South Africa’s World Cup cause is illustrated by the fact that they have lost only two of the 17 ODIs in which he has scored a century.

“A player himself knows when it’s the right time to step out,” Walter said. “‘Quinny’ has been a magnificent player for South Africa in the 50-over format. He has got some unfinished business from a World Cup point of view. It’s great to have his energy directed towards these five one-dayers and then a World Cup to follow.”

At 30 and in prime condition, De Kock is a hot property on the franchise market. Walter and CSA know that, and also that De Kock makes exponentially more money in exponentially less pressured environments playing in leagues compared to when he wears a South Africa shirt. In countries like South Africa, where the cricket industry is impoverished from top to bottom, what used to be the dog — the international game — is now the tail. Far flung franchises are cricket’s new dog. So players like De Kock need to be accommodated.

“We are living in an ever-changing world where the league space is strong and becoming more powerful,” Walter said. “The pull on players to be available for national teams as well as league sides and the clash of those two, which is what we are seeing now, is inevitable. The most important thing is managing that situation, trying to understand the players’ needs and the needs of the South African side as we lead up to a World Cup.

“The benefit of it is that whatever happens our players will be playing T20 cricket, and strong T20 cricket, in the lead up to a World Cup. If we aren’t malleable and flexible in the way we manage things, the inevitable end point is that players will leave the international game and follow the leagues, which is the last thing we want.”

Did someone say AB de Villiers? Probably not. Walter was speaking at Grey College in Bloemfontein, where the squad was announced and unveiled, and De Villiers went to Affies; Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool in Pretoria. Both schools are in the highest echelon of the country’s elite player factories.

And in other areas. Grey has produced such disparate figures as Laurens van der Post — a charlatan guru who became close enough to Margaret Thatcher and then prince Charles to be knighted; Bram Fischer — a lawyer who chaired the South African Communist Party and was a prominent part of Nelson Mandela’s legal team; and Steve Hofmeyr — a croaky-voiced singer who has developed a sideline in often incoherent far right wing political rambling.

Eleven cricketers who went on to play for South Africa’s men’s team, across the formats, have graduated from Grey, an all-boys institution. None of them, of course, have helped South Africa win a senior World Cup.

But all of South Africa’s World Cup-winning rugby teams — in 1995, 2007 and 2019 — have included former Grey boys. It helps that 45 old Greys have become Springboks, more than four times as many as their international cricket counterparts, and that most of them have earned Test caps.

Walter will hope some of that accumulated greatness seeped into his players as they strode Grey’s hallowed halls on Tuesday. Given recent results they could use the kind of magic made by the almost 50 shades of Grey.

South Africa men’s World Cup squad: Temba Bavuma (capt), Gerald Coetzee, Quinton de Kock, Reeza Hendricks, Marco Jansen, Heinrich Klaasen, Sisanda Magala, Keshav Maharaj, Aiden Markram, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi, Anrich Nortjé, Tabraiz Shamsi, Kagiso Rabada, Rassie van der Dussen.

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The lack of loneliness of cricket’s long distance Saffers

Twenty-two South Africans are playing in the MLC. Ten of them are a subculture all of their own.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

THERE was something reassuring about Obus Pienaar, miked up for commentary as he spoke from the Grand Prairie Stadium’s outfield in the deep, dry and dazzling 41-degree Celsius heat of Texas on Thursday, sounding exactly like Obus Pienaar. You can take the boy out of Bloemfontein, but good luck taking Bloemfontein out of the boy.

Pienaar talked of how there was “so much [cricket] talent” in the United States, and how Morrisville in North Carolina, almost 2,000 kilometres to the east of Grand Prairie, was “close to the mountains and the sea” and “a good place to raise a family”. Clearly, the boy is no longer from Bloem.

A cricket migrant for much of his 33 years, Pienaar’s first journey was upward in the form of a growth spurt. That helped turn him into a left-arm fast bowler good enough to play 13 matches across the formats for South Africa’s under-19 team as an allrounder from January 2008 to January 2009. Stress fractures along the way led Pienaar to abandon pace for spin, all the while carrying his batting ability with him.

Cricket has taken him from his native Free State to South Western Districts and Northern Cape, and beyond to Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Westmoreland, Antrim, Dublin, Belfast, Amsterdam and Wellington, as in New Zealand. This month he has been playing for the Washington Freedom in the inaugural edition of Major League Cricket (MLC) in the United States, where he moved in May 2021.

Pienaar is among 22 South African-born players who have seen gametime in the MLC. A dozen of them are the usual franchise suspects: from Kagiso Rabada to Quinton de Kock, to Faf du Plessis, Anrich Nortjé and David Miller. But the other 10 are a subculture all of their own. Besides Pienaar, they are Cody Chetty, Justin Dill, Corné Dry, Andries Gous, Carmi le Roux, Dane Piedt, Calvin Savage, Rusty Theron, and Shadley van Schalkwyk.

Despite where they were born their profiles list all of them as US players. The pioneer among them was Van Schalkwyk, who rerouted a career that wasn’t going places in South Africa to the US in time to play in the 2021 edition of Minor League Cricket — the MLC’s forerunner.

Theron took his life to America several years before that, but not because of cricket. Rather, he went because of the lack thereof. Having played four ODIs and nine T20Is for South Africa — sometimes with explosive results — from October 2010 to March 2012, he was forced into retirement by knee injuries in October 2015. His decision to go to the US was prompted by a wish to become a teacher. But cricket had other ideas and Theron, now 38, resurrected his knees to earn 23 white-ball caps for the US from September 2019 to July 2022.

The most known member of the club is Piedt, who came through a selection struggle with Simon Harmer to play nine Tests from August 2014 to October 2019. Only to be relegated to the wings by Keshav Maharaj. He made the smart move to the US in March 2020.

Of the rest of the 10, Chetty, Dill, Dry, Gous and Savage all — like Pienaar — played for South Africa at under-19 level. This is testament not to the now threadbare trope of the country discarding too much of its talent, but to it producing more talent than it could exploit to the fullest.

South Africa is not alone in this tendency at the MLC, whose player rosters brim with players from outside the US — mostly Asia. Similarly, most of the spectators at the tournament’s matches are, evidently, Asian or of Asian heritage.

If this is the way professional cricket gains a foothold in the land of baseball, offered as a taste of what the people playing and watching used to call home, so be it. For the players, the MLC also offers more money than they could reasonably have expected to make had they remained where they were born.

Players like Pienaar. If you’re going to take a boy out of Bloem, it’s only fair to pay him properly for his trouble.

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