“If I had to worry about public opinion I probably would have hanged myself a long time ago.” – Mark Boucher
Telford Vice | Cape Town
THERE’S a reason the breadless sandwich never caught on. And the perforated umbrella. Same applies to the square-wheeled bicycle. Similarly, the team South Africa were able to field against Pakistan is in the league of ideas whose time have yet to come.
As if sacrificing five key players to the Indian Premier League (IPL) after two of the seven matches wasn’t handicapping enough, they lost their captain to injury for the last four games and their most in form batter for two of them.
You can measure your depth in such circumstances but you cannot expect victory. So played seven, won two is a fair and predictable reflection against a side bristling with threats like Babar Azam, Fakhar Zaman, Mohammad Rizwan, Hasan Ali and Shaheen Shah Afridi. Take those players out of Pakistan’s XI and see how they fare.
Even so, it’s Mark Boucher’s job to make lemonade from the lemons he has been given. And they aren’t bad lemons. Aiden Markram reeled off a hattrick of half-centuries in the T20Is, where Lizaad Williams took seven wickets and added plenty of zest, and George Linde burnished his allrounder credentials. But the lemonade they made, now that’s another matter.
“Although we lost as a team there were some fantastic individual performances we can be very proud of,” Boucher told an online press conference on Friday after Pakistan clinched a T20I series in South Africa for the first time. “We can see the next group of players are a little bit rough around the edges. They perform well in certain pockets of the game. But in international cricket you’ve got to have more of an allround, polished game in order to win.
“We’ve lost a couple of series. There’s been reasons for that. I’m not going to make any excuses. We’ve still got to try and win with whatever side we put out on the park. It has been quite tough but there’s a lot of positives. I’ve got a fair idea of the enlarged squad we can look at. I’m pretty sure every player in that squad will be able to match international standards.”
All well and good, but this goes deeper than that. South Africa were in trouble long before Quinton de Kock, David Miller, Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi and Anrich Nortjé left for the IPL, and before Temba Bavuma and Rassie van der Dussen were injured.
There’s a narrative seeping through South African cricket that this is chiefly Boucher’s fault. Since he was appointed coach in December 2019 his team have lost eight of 11 series across the formats. That is an unimpeachable fact, but the bigger truth is that South Africa have been on the skids since the 2019 World Cup. Including that tournament, they have won only 16 of their last 45 completed matches. Or two of 14 series, if we include the World Cup.
And who has been the coach who has presided over those victories, South Africa’s sole successes in almost two years? Boucher. You won’t hear that, or any objective view of the performance of Ottis Gibson and Enoch Nkwe, the coaches who came before him, in the deluge of dishonesty that is being poured, disingenuously, over Boucher’s head. That wouldn’t fit the conspiracy theory that he was appointed solely because Graeme Smith is his big mate, and is being exposed as unfit for the job. Indeed, Boucher is the worst thing to happen to South African cricket since forever. It might be worth asking these people who really killed JFK, or who stands to gain the most from vaccinating the global population against Covid-19. Then again, maybe not. They would shout only one answer: “Boucher!”
The flags were flying at half-mast from these faulty ivory towers again on Friday, when Boucher’s press conference — publication of which was originally embargoed to 9.30am (IST) on Saturday — was pushed back to 8.30pm (IST). This was done at the request of reporters writing for Sunday newspapers, who hoped to have something fresher for their publications than comments that would be stale by the time their papers hit the streets. But no sooner had the embargo been changed than the reason for that happening was fictionalised on social media as some sort of official attempt to shield Boucher from criticism. The post was taken down, though without apology or explanation. And an untruth made it halfway around the world before the truth got its pants on.
The hate — and it is nothing short of hate — directed Boucher’s way is entwined with South Africa’s poisoned race politics. He is white, as is Smith. Most of the criticism coming their way emanates from black and brown quarters. South Africa have been poor in all three disciplines against Pakistan, but it seems only Boucher is to blame. Charl Langeveldt and Justin Ontong, the bowling and fielding coaches, have somehow escaped having their abilities questioned. Both are brown.
Other South Africans regards themselves, wholly erroneously, as the start and end of the game’s authentic establishment. They do so in much the same way as the MCC used to think it owned cricket. They are, in their own lunchtimes, gatekeepers pushing back against barbarian tendencies. They look straight past the losses South Africa have racked up under Boucher — maybe because it’s difficult to see straight when you’re rolling your eyes at the noisy infidels — and will not abide any questioning of Smith’s suitability as director of cricket. They are white.
Boucher is caught in this colour coded crossfire. “If I had to worry about public opinion I probably would have hanged myself a long time ago,” he said. “The pressure is going to be there no matter what. When you get to this level you must expect that. If you can’t handle it maybe you get out of the kitchen.”
So it serves him well that he is two steps ahead of both his haters and his hero worshippers: no-one is harder on Boucher than Boucher. “I take a massive amount of responsibility, and I should,” he said. “I don’t shy away from it. I’m extremely hurt at the moment, as is the rest of my management and coaching staff. We’ve put in a lot of hard work. But there’s no panic for me yet. I do understand we have been given some trying circumstances, and we will continue to put in the hard work. I’ll go back home now. I’ll sit around with my family for a while. After a week or so I’ll get back into it and be training with the guys and try to get them better.”
Boucher should use some of his break to find a better answer to why Kyle Verreynne isn’t getting more gametime despite the batting unit’s struggles. Verreynne was part of both the ODI and T20I squads but he played in only one ODI, and scored 62. In his two innings before that, for the Cobras in first-class matches, he made 216 not out and 109. To explain his omission with “he was selected as a back-up wicketkeeper”, as Boucher has done, is not good enough. It’s also unacceptable that the absence from the attack of Andile Phehlukwayo, who played in all four T20Is but bowled only four overs, is ascribed to a lack of confidence. How does it help his confidence that he is on the field but not bowling? Questions like these need to be asked and answered honestly, not through prisms of prejudice.
South Africa will gather again on May 28 for a three-day camp before they depart for the Caribbean to play two Tests and five T20s. Dates have yet to be confirmed, but by then the IPL will be out of the way and all existing injuries should be resolved. “We always earmarked this West Indian trip as when our full squad needs to be together and when we start learning how to play with each other, and learning different aspects of each others’ games.”
They should teach each other to juggle. That’s something else you can do when life gives you lemons.
First published by Cricbuzz.
Bulletproof Truth 