KES – Bulletproof Truth

David Teeger has been Jewish all his life. His publicised views on Israel are far younger …

Something has changed since Teeger was CSA’s under-19 captain of choice just weeks ago, and it’s not his Jewishness.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

DAVID Teeger was born Jewish. He was Jewish when he first passed through the gates of King Edward VII School (KES) in Johannesburg, where prominent Jews like Ali Bacher, Ronnie Kasrils and Richard Goldstone have also walked. He was Jewish when he was named KES’ head boy and captain of the first XI.

Teeger was Jewish when his non-Jewish KES teammates walked with him from his home to cricket matches on a Saturday, when he was keeping Shabbat. He was Jewish when he made his debut for South Africa’s men’s under-19 cricket team — as the captain — in Bangladesh in July last year.

He was Jewish on November 10, when CSA’s under-19 structures decided he should keep the leadership for the coming World Cup, which starts on Friday. He was Jewish when CSA said the same thing on December 8, when the final squad for the tournament was named with him as captain. And he was Jewish last Friday, when the same CSA stripped him of the privilege of leadership citing security concerns. Few believe that is the real reason.

Teeger is, as he has always been and likely always will be, Jewish. South African cricket has known this for as long as he has been part of the game. Just like they know his father, James Teeger, who played seven first-class matches for the team now called Gauteng — then Transvaal — is Jewish.

Yet CSA have been accused of antisemitism for taking the under-19 captaincy away from Teeger, of demoting him “because he is a Jew”. Did CSA also appoint him “because he is a Jew”? Of course not. Could they have, by not making him captain “because he is a Jew”, averted the bother they have caused? Of course, and that would have been antisemitic to a degree obvious to semites and non-semites alike. Is what has happened an act of antisemitism? As is the case in all other accusations of racism — and antisemitism is this cancer’s most ancient form — the victims are the only legitimate arbiters of the question.

Clearly, something has changed since Teeger was CSA’s under-19 captain of choice just weeks ago. Was the switch flicked by Teeger’s decision — his alone — to express a view that millions worldwide would find abhorrent, especially coming from one so young? If you decline to take seriously CSA’s vague and unsubstantiated explanation, was he sacked because of what he said he believed?

CSA have denied that Teeger’s comments led to his axing. To believe that assertion you would also need to believe their claim about security concerns, which they have yet to turn into something close to believable. If you’ve had to put up with CSA, particularly their board, for long enough, you would be forgiven for lumping this saga on the heap of their other disasters.

Yes, Teeger has freedom of speech. He also has a responsibility to countenance the consequences of exercising that freedom. That he should punch down on people who are defenceless and under extreme attack will strike many as despicable. Yes, he was just 18 when he made his feelings known. Most of us who have seen 30 would shudder if our 18-year-old views came back to haunt us. But most of us have not been entrusted with a duty of care at the same level as Teeger.

What did Teeger say? This, at a ceremony where he accepted a Rising Star award at a Jewish Achiever Awards function in Johannesburg on October 22: “But more importantly, yes, I’ve been awarded this award, and yes, I am now the rising star, but the true rising stars are the young soldiers in Israel … So I’d like to dedicate this award to the South African family that married off one son whilst the other is still missing. And I’d like to dedicate it to the state of Israel and to every single soldier fighting so that we can live and thrive in the diaspora.”

When Teeger spoke, Israel had slaughtered 4,651 Palestinians in Gaza in bloody vengeance for the 1,139 Israelis murdered by Hamas during a cowardly terrorist attack on October 7. More than 200 were taken hostage, many of whom have been brutally raped and mutilated. Teeger didn’t deplore the overall violence. He picked a side; the wrong side in the view of the legions of all creeds and cultures who consider the Israel Defence Force an occupying force doing the bidding of a dangerous regime.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s feared and loathed right wing government have pushed Israel so close to the edge of civilisation that South Africa have brought a case of genocide against them at the UN’s International Court of Justice. South Africans didn’t need their government’s prompting to be disgusted by Israel’s behaviour, but many have been heartened by this rare bolt of integrity from their leaders.

In that context, Teeger’s words can only have had a disastrous impact on his perceived ability to lead people from different backgrounds. As Zizi Kodwa, South Africa’s minister of sport, rightly told the squad on Friday after Teeger learnt of his axing: “Whatever you do now, you are no longer yourselves. You are ambassadors for South Africa.” How could Teeger, considering what he had said, be considered fit to captain?

Did Teeger say what he said because he is Jewish? No. Kasrils, a stalwart of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid, would not have agreed with him. On November 28, at a meeting in Johannesburg to finalise plans on the eve of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Kasrils described Hamas’ massacre, in which the elderly were gunned down as they waited at bus-stops and homes were set on fire because they were occupied, as “a brilliant, spectacular guerrilla warfare attack. They swept on them and they killed them and damn good. I was so pleased and people who support resistance applauded.”

In September 1992 Kasrils was among the leaders of a protest in the Eastern Cape at which 28 were shot dead by soldiers. A judicial commission found that Kasrils’ reckless decision-making was instrumental in the catastrophe. The judge who led the probe was Kasrils’ KES contemporary: Goldstone.

Formerly a judge on South Africa’s highest court, Goldstone would also likely not be of the same mind as Teeger. In his report for the UN on three weeks of violence in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 during which more than 1,430 were killed, Goldstone accused both sides of targeting civilians and of possibly committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. In a piece for the Washington Post published in April 2011, Goldstone wrote: “If I had known then what I know now the Goldstone report would have been a very different document.” But he stood by his report.

Wim Trengove, a renowned barrister, was given a less taxing brief than Goldstone when CSA — having received formal complaints, not all of them from Muslims — asked him to decide whether what Teeger said breached their code of conduct. CSA revealed Trengove’s report on December 7. It didn’t say Teeger had “been cleared of all wrongdoing”, as has been reported. It did say he had not violated the code of conduct. The next day, CSA named the under-19 World Cup squad. Teeger’s name was at the top of the list as captain.

And that despite, in his responding affidavit to Trengove, Teeger apparently not understanding why he had angered enough South Africans to justify an investigation: “It was therefore hurtful to read that my personal reflection on 22 October 2023 of Israel’s response to the Hamas attack has been equated to supporting genocide or condoning hatred based on race, ethnicity or religion.

“Judging the conduct of the different sides during this war is a highly contested and complex matter with strongly held views on both sides. My personal and honestly held view is that Israel and its soldiers have not committed genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. In addition, this view is held by many people and democratic governments around the world, like the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, India, Australia and many countries in the European Union. Thus, my statements were not in support of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity because in my view Israel is innocent of all these allegations.

“On the other hand, I accept that many people and governments, including the South African government, hold an opposing view. Disagreeing in a respectful manner on a contested and emotionally charged matter is a fundamental pillar of our democracy and Constitution. I respect the right of others to disagree with my view on Israel.”

There is no acknowledgement in those words that perhaps he got this wrong, no attempt to learn, no recognition that he should be relieved he wasn’t booted out of the squad. By Tuesday, the Gaza death toll, which was already climbing when Teeger originally spoke, soared past 24,000. And still he has said nothing, publicly, that might make us think he has empathy. He’s only 19 — his birthday was the day before he discovered he had been sacked — but how old do you have to be to say you feel for your fellow humans?

CSA would have been within their rights to relieve Teeger of the captaincy immediately they became aware of his October 22 comments. Nobody, as Quinton de Kock and Dean Elgar would attest, has a lock on the leadership of South Africa’s teams. That logic wasn’t apparent during a South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) press conference on Tuesday, which followed a SAJBD meeting with CSA. The presser was billed as an opportunity to “discuss [CSA’s] decision to strip … Teeger of his captaincy”. His captaincy? There is no such thing. The leadership of all teams under CSA’s aegis is theirs, and theirs alone, to bestow and remove as they see fit.

Teeger isn’t exempt because he is Jewish, just as he shouldn’t be sacked because he is Jewish. Tuesday’s presser offered no evidence of the latter. It snowballed into bombast about political interference, bald accusations of antisemitism wielded like weaponry, and shrill threats of further action. It took us no closer to the truth. Instead it veered into hubris: you might have thought Teeger was the next Donald Bradman, not someone who has played only eight 50-over games for South Africa’s under-19 team and passed 50 just once.

The truth will only be known if CSA explain why they retained Teeger even after what he told Trengove. The vacuum left by their failure to lead has been filled by fuel for a fire. It could burn long after the under-19 World Cup.

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Teeger cleared for Israel military comments, but the saga goes on

“The right to freedom of expression requires them to respect his right to express his opinion however offensive they might think it to be.” – Wim Trengove

Telford Vice / Cape Town

EXPECT to see David Teeger’s name at the top of the list when South Africa’s men’s under-19 World Cup squad is announced on Friday. That prediction, as banal as it is, will fuel competing fires that have leapt cricket’s boundaries.

Some will celebrate the continuation of Teeger’s tenure as captain, should it be confirmed. Others will be disgusted that he remains in the squad. Both sides of the argument will be driven by South Africans who have been fighting this fight for weeks. The ongoing altercation could spill over into contending demonstrations and protests at or near matches in the under-19 World Cup, which will be played in South Africa from January 13 to February 4.

On Thursday an independent investigation cleared Teeger of breaching CSA’s and Gauteng’s codes of conduct — which are identical — for making this statement: “But more importantly, yes, I’ve been awarded this award, and yes, I am now the rising star, but the true rising stars are the young soldiers in Israel … So I’d like to dedicate this award to the South African family that married off one son whilst the other is still missing. And I’d like to dedicate it to the state of Israel and to every single soldier fighting so that we can live and thrive in the diaspora.”

Teeger said this in Johannesburg on October 22 after being presented with the Rising Star Award at the Jewish Achiever Awards function. His comments were published by Jewish Report four days later. Three weeks after Teeger spoke, the Palestine Solidarity Alliance (PSA) lodged a complaint with CSA. The PSA called Teeger’s views — which alluded to Israel’s sustained bombardment of Gaza in the wake of the October 7 attacks by Hamas — “a provocative and inflammatory political statement”.

Many were aghast at Hamas’ vicious assault on Israeli civilians, which robbed 1,200 of their lives and facilitated the taking of more than 200 hostages. Many others have voiced alarm at Israel’s response, which has killed more than 17,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 44,000. Gaza’s infrastructure has been crippled in the process, and more than 1-million people have sought shelter in United Nations facilities.

Rarely are those who cast Hamas’ actions as terrorism able to recognise Israel’s reaction as disproportionate, brutal and inhumane. Neither do most who hold up Hamas as heroes of a struggle that started in 1948, when the creation of the Israeli state forced Palestinians off their land, acknowledge that Israel should even exist.

It is an intractable struggle that the world’s best diplomatic and political minds have been unable to resolve. What chance did an 18-year-old schoolboy have of not getting it wrong, thereby angering much of South Africa’s muslim community of around 1-million? What chance did he have of his words not being seized upon and amplified by the ethno-nationalists firmly in Israel’s corner among the 52,000, or so, jews in this country? A far smaller chance, on both counts, than if he hadn’t made his impromptu but also unprompted remarks.

But, you will hear it said, freedom of speech is protected in South Africa, along with freedom of religion. That the first of those freedoms comes with responsibilities and consequences — including for 18-year-old schoolboys — is less often noted, and still less that freedom from religion — rather than of religion — in the public realm is a right every democracy should pursue.

On the face of it, Teeger is a worthy recipient of the prize he won. From July he has scored three half-centuries in seven one-day innings for South Africa’s under-19 side and a South Africa Emerging players side. He is head boy at King Edward VII School in Johannesburg, an elite institution that has produced Quinton de Kock, Graeme Smith and Ali Bacher. But none of that has mattered since October 22. How could it when this has become about so much more than mere cricket?

On December 3, Business Day, South Africa’s last remaining serious English-language daily newspaper, published a letter from Mandy Yachad, a rebel-era cricketer and religiously observant jew. “As much as I was looking forward to attending the upcoming Test between South Africa and India at Newlands, and some of the T20s and ODIs, and while I will continue to support the Proteas (including those players who have shown support to Palestine and the Palestinian people), I will not be there (nor at any other match that falls under the auspices of the CSA),” Yachad wrote. Note that he expressed his displeasure not at what Teeger had said nor the furore that had been sparked — but at CSA’s decision to investigate.

Two days later in the same newspaper, another letter, from Nezaam Luddy, a muslim former Western Province and South African Schools player, pushed back: “What Yachad fails to understand is that Teeger supported oppression by the apartheid state of Israel. If I was expected to play under Teeger’s leadership, I would have refused to do so, as he symbolises apartheid ideologies. It could be a matter of not being properly educated regarding what is occurring in Palestine, and has been occurring for more than 75 years. The reality, though, is that Teeger is a role model for our current and future children who also aspire to represent the Proteas. He is young and talented, and my hope for the outcome of the investigation is for him to be properly educated, rehabilitated and afforded the opportunity to issue an apology to all concerned.” Luddy signed off tartly with: “No-one will miss Yachad at Proteas matches.”

Teeger’s statement quoted above amounts to 78 words. Wim Trengove, the respected silk appointed to analyse it, its fallout and decide what to do about it, spent 5,462 words in the cause. Here’s a pertinent chunk: “[Teeger] spoke to the Jewish community and not to the members of other cricket teams. He spoke of matters entirely unrelated to them. They might find his statements offensive because they fundamentally disagree with him. That is entirely understandable. But it is again an occasion on which the right to freedom of expression requires them to respect his right to express his opinion however offensive they might think it to be.”

Cricbuzz asked Wendy Kahn, the national director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, whether demonstrations of support for Teeger would be seen during the under-19 World Cup. “We love to support all our sports stars and wish him and the team the best of luck for the World Cup,” Kahn responded.

Asked whether there would be protests at Teeger’s presence, Nazim Adam, a PSA coordinator, said that was a “distinct possibility”. He told Cricbuzz: “Legally Trengove is correct but morally there is a challenge.” Like Yachad, he disapproved of CSA’s handling of the issue: “They didn’t want to deal with the division it has caused and the hurt and pain.”

It’s not much, but at least a muslim and a jew agree on something in this saga.

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Elite schools new target for raiders of South Africa’s talent

96.43% of high schools that offer cricket in South Africa have produced only 5.78% of Test players.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

ANTON Ferreira’s phone beeped the arrival of a message: “Debut today for another Saints boy.” It was July 30 this year. Because of Covid-19 and the off-season, no cricket had been played at significant level in South Africa since March 15. It would be November 2 before the game resumed. The last time a South Africa team of any description had been at a ground was March 12, when the first ODI of the men’s tour of India in Dharamsala was washed out entirely.

The other two games of that series were among the first of the 61 senior women’s and men’s internationals cancelled because of the pandemic before England and West Indies hit the reset button in a Test in Southampton on July 8. It would be almost four months until South Africa played again.

So which boy who had gone to St Stithians, an elite school in Johannesburg known locally as Saints that has produced Kagiso Rabada along with Wiaan Mulder and David Terbrugge — and isolation-era notables Roy Pienaar and Dave Rundle — was making his debut on July 30?

Here’s a clue: Saints has also given cricket Michael Lumb, Grant Elliott and Brandon Glover, all of them Joburg-born internationals. None of them have played for South Africa at senior level, but they have represented England, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

To that list add Curtis Campher, who made his international debut for Ireland in an ODI against England in Southampton. On July 30. Ferreira had been sent that message by Wim Jansen, Saints’ director of cricket. Campher, now 21, had attended the school and developed his allround game there. He played at junior provincial level for Northerns and Gauteng, and for South Africa’s under-19 team.

Playing for an Easterns and Northerns Combined XI against Ireland in Pretoria in February 2018, Campher made Graham Ford, Ireland’s coach, sit up and take notice when he dismissed Andy Balbirnie. Campher also hit 38 of his 39-ball 49 in fours and sixes. Before the match was over Ford had established, by talking to the opposing coach, no less, that Campher had an Irish grandmother. And thus an Irish passport. The wheels to secure his services were in motion before the bus that took Ireland back to their hotel had pulled out of the parking lot.

Devon Conway has followed a similar path, albeit later in his career, to a place in the world more than 19,000 kilometres from Ireland, and without much help from his foreign friends. Also born in Johannesburg and schooled there, at St John’s, he played for Gauteng’s junior and senior sides, and for KwaZulu-Natal Inland, the Dolphins and the Lions. In March 2017 he batted for more than seven hours to score an undefeated 205 for Gauteng against Border at the Wanderers. Two days later, in a one-day game at the same ground and against the same opponents, he was bowled for a fifth-ball duck. It proved to be his last innings in South Africa. In August that year what he had discussed with his partner, Kim, on the golf course became true: they sold almost everything they owned and moved to New Zealand. Sporadic playing opportunities was a key factor in Conway’s decision.

Three years and three months later, minutes after he made 157 for Wellington against Auckland at the Basin Reserve, selector Gavin Larsen told him he was in the New Zealand squad to play three T20s against West Indies in a series that starts on Friday. At 29, he had cracked the nod.

To the strands of their stories that connect Campher and Conway, consider the fact that they both attended schools noted for turning kids into cricketers. St John’s counts Clive Rice, Mike Rindel, Russell Endean and Bruce Mitchell among its own.

No player has a chance of making their way in cricket without talent, but in South Africa that isn’t the most striking factor among those who get to the top. What matters more is which schools they attend. And, because of the imminent end of the Kolpak era and the stirrings of cricket entrepreneurship in the United States, it’s directly from those schools that many of the next generation of South Africa’s best could find their way to other countries — without bothering to announce themselves as senior players at home.

All 110 of the country’s Test caps since readmission in 1991 went to 56 of the approximately 700 high schools in South Africa that offer cricket, according to data provided by SA School Sports, a magazine and website. So, for the past 28 years, all of South Africa’s Test players have gone to 15.71% of the country’s cricket-playing schools. Seventy-one of the 110 went to only 25 schools. That means the other 96.43% of the cricketing schools can lay claim to just 5.78% of Test players, and that 64.54% of the players come from only 3.57% of the schools.

Other fine players those schools produce do not try to make their way in South Africa, because those privileged enough to be able to attend top schools are disproportionately likely to have access to a life elsewhere. “At the moment I can’t say to a kid, ‘Don’t go overseas’,” Alan Willows, a left-arm spinner for Sussex in the 1980s and now the head of cricket at South African College School — widely known as SACS and firmly in the Ivy League — in Cape Town, told Cricbuzz. “I’ve got boys whose parents have British passports. Would I tell a boy not to go play county cricket knowing he’s on a British passport? He’s allowed to be English, so it wouldn’t be a problem for him.”

In the past 10 years 54 cricketers born in South Africa have played for other countries. Only two of them also played for South Africa.

At the other end of the country in Johannesburg, another noted nursery, King Edward VII School, or KES, faces similar challenges. “There are a lot of youngsters that haven’t come through the senior provincial and franchise systems, and have gone straight to England,” Ferreira, the man who received the message about Campher and KES’ director of cricket, said. “We keep hearing about them. Their parents get transferred, they go there, they join a club, it’s a global village. I had a dad phone me recently saying he’s trying to get his son to New Zealand. They’re all trying to play at the highest possible level, and there are only so many opportunities in South Africa.”

Ferreira, a big-hearted allrounder for Warwickshire and what was then called Northern Transvaal from 1975 to 1982, joined the school in April 2018. Before that, he spent 18 years at CSA as director of the national academy, the national under-19 men’s team head coach, and the manager of coaches’ education.

He remembers Kevin Curran, the Zimbabwe international, contacting CSA about the possibility of his then young sons, Tom and Sam, playing for South Africa: “They didn’t want guarantees, but they didn’t want to commit themselves and then find out that they weren’t going to play. They had the option of going to England.” Which, of course, they did.

“The problem at schoolboy level, I think because of the instances of this happening over the years, is that every parent and every kid who hears that some guy has gone all want to go, too,” Ferreira said. “Sometimes their expectations are unrealistic. They don’t know how the system works. But it’s also true that a lot of these kids know what’s going on. Their parents find out what they can do, where they can go, and they apply for bursaries. And especially if they are linked to a British passport.”

South Africans know this kind of story only too well. According to Andrew Samson, the guru of cricket statistics, in the past 10 years alone, at least 54 cricketers born in their country have played for Australia, the Cayman Islands, England, Germany, Ireland, Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Thailand, Scotland, and the United States. Only two of them, Rusty Theron and Roelof van der Merwe, also played for South Africa.

Given the danger of the country’s cricket industry shrinking because of the way the game is being run in a struggling wider economy, many more aspirant professionals could be lured away. Would you risk your future in a market in which it is increasingly unclear whether cricket will survive for much longer as a career option? Especially if you have the choice to go elsewhere?

The way to New Zealand is as open as ever, but the Kolpak window will close when the United Kingdom leaves the European Union at the end of this year. That will block one of the drains out of South Africa’s system. Already the ECB has punched a new hole by allowing counties an extra overseas player from next year, and there is nothing to stop the counties barring their foreign players turning out for their national teams while they are on their books — as they did with Kolpak players. And then there’s that other part of the world.

“A lot of agents are now shifting their focus to the US, where there is an emphasis on growing the game,” Chris Cardoso, a player agent based in Pretoria, said. “The Americans are looking to recruit players from a young age on three-year contracts — and in some cases as long as five years — to play in the Minor League T20 competition they plan to roll out, with the Major League to follow in the next year or two. These players will be put on a path to obtaining a green card and, eventually, citizenship. There’s a big drive from the organisers to recruit the most talented young prospects.”

How young? Of the 391 players who have signed for the 24 city-based teams spread across the Minor League T20’s four geographically organised conferences, at least 68 are teenagers. Eighteen of them — more than a quarter — are only 16 years old.

So those 25 schools should expect the levels of attention on them from outside their walls to heighten, and to find their alumni in unfamiliar places. Because how to get to the top and even what constitutes the top are changing. And not in a good way for the future of the game in South Africa, where chronic mismanagement and maladministration have damaged confidence in cricket’s ability to run itself viably. “I don’t know what CSA is going to do,” Ferreira said. “I’m loyal, I love the game, I love my country and I want to see us do well. But what we’ve been reduced to is scary. It’s worrying.”

CSA is unlikely to convince those who already have an eye on greener pastures to stay. But it can, and has a duty to, try to make sure more than only 25 schools are able to produce Test players. The focus schools programme aims to do that by supplying, in the words of a presentation at the domestic season launch last month, “varying levels of guidance as well as assistance in areas such as coaching and facilities”. The project started with 16 schools in 2016/17. By 2019/20 there were 33. They counted 83 players who were selected for representative girls’ and boys’ cricket weeks last year, up from 68 in 2018.

But these schools are a long way behind the ranks of the gilded 25, not least because the significant advantages most of the latter enjoyed as whites-only establishments under apartheid have endured into the modern, integrated era. Schools in historically black and brown areas have nothing like the facilities at SACS, the country’s oldest high school — which has given South Africa’s Test team Peter Kirsten, Alan Dawson and Dane Piedt — and KES, which lays claim to Graeme Smith, Quinton de Kock, Neil McKenzie, Stephen Cook, Dane Vilas and Adam Bacher. KES’ website says the school boasts “eight rugby pitches, four cricketpitches, three astro hockey pitches, five tennis courts, a rifle range, an athletics track and seven artificial surfaced cricket nets. At St John’s there are “five cricket grounds and an indoor cricket centre, staffed by professional coaches”.

“Even at schoolboy level, winning becomes so important. Everyone wants to be the No. 1 cricket school in South Africa, and it’s wrong.” – Alan Willows, SACS head of cricket.

Other formerly white schools are also ahead of the black and brown pack, and sometimes in interesting ways. Höerskool Waterkloof in Pretoria has produced the Malan brothers — Pieter, Janneman and André — and Hardus Viljoen. Willie Ludick wore the same blazer and played for South Africa in the 2016 under-19 World Cup. But he made his first-class debut for the Central Stags against Wellington at the Basin Reserve in March 2018. In June this year Ludick announced he was off to the US to try his luck in the new T20 tournament. Five other South Africans have also signed up. They include Piedt, who went to SACS.

How long before South Africa’s best players come from more than 25 schools? CSA can’t say it is making the most of the available talent until that happens. If it happens. “It’s spiralling,” Willows said. “There’s more and more distance between the so-called good cricket schools and the less good schools.”

Even in the leading institutions there are problems of culture. “We’ve moved away from the love of the game to thinking about what we can get from the game,” Willows said. “A lot of kids today are at fault, maybe because of their parents. They see guys in the IPL and in county cricket making lots of money. But how many of the guys in the schools are going to be at that level? Not many.

“As coaches, we’re at fault as well. Rankings become important. So you go out and find the best players in the surrounding areas. But you’re diluting all the other schools. The cream of the players go to the cream of the schools, and the rest get left behind. That’s not how it should be. I wish we could cap the number of players going into top schools. It’s difficult because parents want the best for their children, but what they forget is that they’re there to love the game of cricket.

“This country has special cricketers at its schools. What they have to do to keep them here is to understand what’s required. At the moment all they see is that they’re not getting into the provincial set-up. So they go overseas.

“Even at schoolboy level, winning becomes so important. Everyone wants to be the No. 1 cricket school in South Africa, and it’s wrong. It’s nice for parents, but they forget the love of the game. My job is to give the boys a love of cricket so that they will continue to play when they leave school.”

To help make that happen, Willows would like to see the returning Kolpak players deployed in clubs: “CSA has never had a better opportunity to put in place a project to move cricket forward. If you’re going to build the next generation of players, you’ve got to make club cricket strong.

“The guys I have who are good enough to play SA Schools [the South African Schools XI] will find their way into provincial cricket. It’s the other guys we’ve got to keep playing, and that’s where club cricket is so important.”

As a conduit to the higher levels of the game in South Africa, club cricket has fallen off the radar. Officials often refer to it as “recreational cricket”, a description as revealing as it is insulting. Many clubs struggle financially, not least because memberships are dwindling — a fact no doubt influenced by another: the Jacques Kallises of the day don’t play club cricket, as Kallis did before becoming a full-time international.

It is, perhaps, easier for Willows to talk this way than it would be for others. SACS is indeed the No. 1-ranked cricket school in South Africa this year, and as an Englishman he has that trusty British passport to fall back on. As does his son, Greg, an opening bat who was in SACS’ first XI but struggled to make the Western Province junior side. So he did what many before him have, and doubtless will. “I take my hat off to Greg,” his father said. “He was bitterly disappointed but he decided that, because he hadn’t made it in this country and he loves playing cricket, he was going overseas.”

Willows junior had a game for England’s under-19 side in July 2018, and if he hadn’t been injured he might have played against South Africa at that level in the same month. He has become a regular for Gloucestershire’s second XI and made his list A debut for the senior team against Australia A in June last year. Now 21, he would seem to have the talent to carve a career in cricket. In England, he should have the opportunity to do so. And, of course, he went to a good school.

So did Ali Bacher, the former South Africa captain and veteran administrator, who was pleased to report that some things hadn’t changed. At least, not for the worse: “The school is in such good shape; the gardens the fields. The boys still say good morning to visitors.” Bacher attended KES, where his nephew Adam’s son is now a pupil. Bacher’s grandson is at Bishops, another noted cricket school, in Cape Town.

“The players are good and they’ve got good coaches and good support structures. It’s all run professionally. It wasn’t like that when I was there: the standard is better now. That’s our saviour. As long as schools like those are alright and that base is good, we’re OK.”

But, in different ways, other things are not the same: “I went to watch Adam’s son play at KES, and I saw the team — nine whites, one black African, one Indian. Around 35% of KES pupils are black, but they are not going for cricket. They’re going for basketball. Cricket takes too long; a whole day. The world’s changing.”

It is. But not in every sense: of the 38 South African cricket figures mentioned in this piece, only two — Rabada and Piedt — are not white. And it’s still true that talent isn’t what matters most for a young South African keen on a career in cricket. Where they go to school means more. They know it, their parents know it, and cricket knows it. So do those, from near and far, committed to searching out that talent.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Some of South Africa’s players are from Mars, others from Venus

An Ivy League of about 25 schools have, still do, and are likely to continue to supply the bulk of South Africa’s male players.

TELFORD VICE in Paarl

STRANGE symmetry struck across the Indian Ocean last Sunday. Within the same minute, Quinton de Kock hoisted Adam Zampa to Mitchell Starc at mid-off and Dané van Niekerk slapped Sophie Ecclestone to Tammy Beaumont at point. Both De Kock and Van Niekerk were captaining South Africa in a T20 and both were opening the batting. But they were more than 22 yards apart. South Africa’s men’s team were playing Australia at St George’s Park. The women’s side were up against England at the WACA. Port Elizabeth and Perth are 8,112 kilometres from each other. So South Africa’s teams might as well have been on Mars and Venus. But that’s the case even when they’re in the same city.

King Edward VII School — otherwise known as KES — Afrikaanse Höer Seunskool — or Affies — Maritzburg College, Grey College, St Stithians and Hilton were the schools attended by De Kock, Faf du Plessis, David Miller, Pite van Biljon, Kagiso Rabada and Lungi Ngidi, who were all members of Sunday’s XI. Those institutions are likely to feature in the past of any South Africa men’s XI. As well as De Kock, KES has given cricket Ali Bacher and Graeme Smith: one school, three South Africa captains. And a host of mere internationals aside. Along with Du Plessis, Affies has produced AB de Villiers, Kruger van Wyk and Neil Wagner, among many others. The school’s website doesn’t bother listing alumni among first-class players: “Scores of Affies old boys currently play for senior provincial teams.” Graham Ford, Jonty Rhodes and Kevin Pietersen went to Maritzburg College, and Kepler Wessels, Hansie Cronjé and Ryan McLaren to Grey College. As did too many other prominent players to mention. The same is true of the rest of an Ivy League of about 25 schools that have, still do, and are likely to continue to supply the bulk of South Africa’s male players.

Those schools used to be reserved exclusively not only for whites but for the most privileged among them, and their status as cricketer factories is undiminished even in the modern, racially more equitable era. Soon after Makhaya Ntini was discovered in the impoverished village of Mdingi he was packed off to Dale College in King William’s Town. Geographically, that’s a journey of eight kilometres. In every other sense, it’s as far as Venus is from Mars. Ngidi followed a similar path to Hilton, and Andile Phehlukwayo to Glenwood High. So the school sport system has, in a handful of cases, proved a more effective mechanism for pulling blacks out of the economic and social deprivation they were assigned by dint of their race than almost 26 years of post-apartheid life. Cricket has helped propel them into the middle class.

But the homogeneity of that process means men who play cricket at a high level in South Africa have grown up with largely the same set of values and a similar regard for discipline and tradition, which would be recognisable to anyone who has been to an elite alma mater of the British or colonial sort. Apartheid tried to ensure that Mark Boucher and Ntini would live in starkly different worlds. But, thanks to cricket and the schools, that is not the case. Much of Boucher’s worldview would have been formed while he was still at Selborne College. So the authority he wielded, both as a senior player and now as South Africa’s coach, was and is readily understood and accepted.

That is not the reality in the South Africa women’s team. Sport is a major factor in maintaining the prestige of boys’ and co-ed schools. But in girls’ institutions academic performance matters far more than anything else. Hence no girls’ schools have a track record for producing top class cricketers. Rather, girls have to work their way into the game, vaulting prejudice as they go. They were accepted into the boys’ soft-ball cricket programme at a particular Cape Town co-ed junior school. But only for training: they weren’t allowed to play matches. Their parents objected, and won the right for their daughters to appear in games. When the players progressed to hard-ball cricket, the girls were again excluded. Another argument ensued, another victory was won. Cricket South Africa have made moves towards gender parity, but cricket as played by girls and women struggles to be taken anywhere near as seriously as that played by boys and men. Below international level women’s cricket structures are not as established as they need to be, and unlike on the male side of the divide the only women paid to play cricket in South Africa are in the national set-up. Consequently, in another departure from the men’s game, women’s teams are collections of contrasts. They haven’t been inculcated with uniform values that cut across race, class and religious lines. So Mars and Venus are in the same dressingroom.

The least conventional aspect of Mignon du Preez’ life would appear to be that she plays cricket for a living. She is married. To a man: Tony van der Merwe. Who is an urban planner. Without trying to be snide about Du Preez or Van der Merwe, that’s about as mainstream as modern life gets. Van Niekerk and Marizanne Kapp are also married — to each other. Shabnim Ismail and Trisha Chetty are in a long-term relationship. Sometimes. Laura Wolvaardt has put a career in medicine on hold to see how this cricket gig works out. Some of the players don’t need to know the price of a pair of batting gloves. Others wish they didn’t know. Still another knows the price of illicit drugs well enough to have fallen prey to substance abuse. None of the above would be accepted in a prominent men’s team in South Africa, much less the national side.

Imagine Rabada marrying Keshav Maharaj. That would be unfathomable to some, even those who know it would be legal and that they wouldn’t blink should two men whose names they didn’t know announce their engagement. They would also acknowledge that, statistically, some male players have to be gay. Steven Davies, who played 13 white-ball games for England between March 2009 and February 2011 and 225 first-class matches, most of them for Worcestershire and Surrey from May 2005 to September last year, came out as homosexual in February 2011. But there are none in his league of bravery in South Africa and few in the wider world, as there are in other sports considered central to sadly conventional ideas of masculine identity.

Are lesbians in sports like cricket tolerated by the majority of game’s traditional audience because the assumption is they are trying to be like men, and are thus hopelessly harmless to what is considered the norm? Would that ilk of cricket follower denigrate male gay players if they knew of them, because they would threaten the perceived manliness of the status quo? Does that traditional audience not give a damn about women’s cricket anyway, so they don’t care who plays it? The answer to all of these questions is, probably, yes.

For a minute last Sunday, none of this mattered nearly as much as De Kock and Van Niekerk getting out at awkward stages. Both their teams recovered well enough to win narrowly. While the joy was shortlived for De Kock’s lot — their loss at Newlands on Wednesday confirmed their fourth consecutive series defeat — the women have secured a place in the T20 World Cup semi-finals.

Infamously, South Africa have yet to win a World Cup. Deep inside every cricketminded South African a small thought is growing: what if the women get there first? For some, that comes from a place of fear and insecurity. For many more others, it is a spark of wonder waiting to catch fire. If that happens, cricket in South Africa — regardless of who plays it — will never be the same.

First published by Cricbuzz.

The ugly, hollow ring of South Africa’s reality

Should Temba Bavuma get his place back from Rassie van der Dussen at Newlands?

TELFORD VICE in Centurion

IF Rassie van der Dussen was playing in the real world he would feel confident that he has had a decent enough debut to keep his place for the Newlands men’s Test against England. But this is South Africa. Reality is another country.

Here, we spent centuries denying black people their humanity in ways vicious and insidious — including refusing to accept the truth that they play cricket. Now, we pretend apartheid is dead even as its zombies stalk our society. We also refuse to see the obvious struggling of a player if that player is black.

Born a year before Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, Van der Dussen would have known all that when he walked to the crease at Centurion on Thursday. He faced 34 balls for six runs in a flinty but futile innings. Nothing about South Africa’s unreality had changed when he took guard again an hour before stumps on Friday. But something about Van der Dussen had changed — he found the gumption he showed at the World Cup to rap a fluent 51 that made him the first player to score half-centuries on debut in all formats.

By the close on Saturday he had dropped two catches at first slip, not least because Quinton de Kock had dived across him. But that didn’t dent the likelihood that he would be in South Africa’s XI when hostilities resume in Cape Town on Friday. Hold fire. This is South Africa. Things don’t work like that here …

Van der Dussen cracked the nod because Temba Bavuma was ruled out of the match with a hip flexor injury. Bavuma has gone a dozen Test innings without reaching 50, and he has only one century to his name after 65 innings in which he averages 31.24. His place in the side should be under threat. Indeed, Van der Dussen’s success would, in the real world, displace Bavuma. But this is South Africa, remember.

Van der Dussen is white. Bavuma is black. In times past, the law would have prevented them from being considered for the same team. Now, black players need the protection of quotas — the suits prefer to call them targets — if they are to be given the opportunities, both in quantity and quality terms, that whites are still afforded more readily: despite the fact that whites comprise less than 10% of the population they amount to 63.64% of the XI at Centurion.

Where would South Africa be without Makhaya Ntini’s 390 Test wickets, nevermind the eternal flame of his spirit? How much has Hashim Amla’s massive patience and presence taught us a nation? Exponentially more than what his 9,282 runs were worth to the cause. What would South Africa have done for a proper Test spinner — after Imran Tahir, Dane Piedt and Simon Harmer had tried and failed to fill the vacancy — had Keshav Maharaj not been unearthed in the apparently barren wastes of franchise cricket? Who was surprised that Kagiso Rabada and Vernon Philander took seven wickets between them in the first innings at Centurion. No-one. All mentioned here, Harmer excepted, are black.

Even so, a large number of South Africa’s whites who hold the irrational view that the game belongs to them are resentful of its darkening. And too many blacks are desperately protective of Bavuma, the only black African Test batter produced since cricket’s hopelessly optimistic and deeply flawed proclamation of racial unity in 1990.

So much so that the door has been opened to the kind of reactionary poisoning of the body politic that has propelled racists and bigots to the leadership of supposedly First World countries. Enter the Black African Cricket Clubs (BACC), whose representatives, in a conversation with reporters at Centurion on Thursday that followed a meeting at the Wanderers the same day, held up Bavuma as a shining example of success despite his increasingly clear difficulties to come to terms with batting at the highest level. Not for the BACC the option of standing Bavuma down to work on his game out of the glare of the public eye. Like a battle-scarred flag, he must be paraded.

That said, the appointment of a bevvy of former major players to important positions in the past weeks will alarm blacks, and with good reason. They could well be the best people for their jobs, but they are all white. Blacks have only recently thrown off the yoke of white oppression but continue to live daily with the scourge of white privilege. What have whites done to earn blacks’ trust? Nothing, but earn it they must if our society is to heal. So blacks are only doing their due diligence to wonder whether cricket is trying, surreptitiously, to turn back the clock.

Are the legions of the recent appointees’ similarly hued supporters in this country and others celebrating the return of expertise or of whiteness? The validity of the question is only enhanced by the fact that the new brooms have followed the stumbling of black figures, notably Cricket South Africa chief executive Thabang Moroe, who was suspended on claims of misconduct on December 6.

But where were the BACC while Moroe was, not to put too fine a point on it, running cricket into the ground by making one disastrous decision after another and grabbing ever more authority as he went? Were they interested in what was good for the game, or only in what was good for black people in the game? “What has happened in the last two weeks has just brought forward this meeting [at the Wanderers],” BACC chairperson Ntsongo Sibiya said. “This meeting was long overdue.”

That rang ugly and hollow. As did the assertion by another BACC member, Lewis Manthata, that South Africa’s men’s under-19 team losing all seven of their one-day matches against Pakistan in June and July mattered less than the fact that the coach, Lawrence Mahatlane, was black African and had “flooded” the team with black players. “That’s not the issue,” Manthata said of the embarrassing series scoreline. “You cannot talk meritocracy in a country where there’s inequality. You first have to fix the inequality. You first have to make sure the transformational targets are reached, and then we can talk winning.” Manthata is, of course, correct. But at what cost to the futures of the young players being piled onto 7-0 scrapheaps while we’re blustering bloodlessly?

Another truth, that Moroe and Graeme Smith — who has been appointed CSA’s acting director of cricket — both attended the elite King Edward VII school (KES) in Johannesburg, was evidence that Moroe’s failures couldn’t be simplistically blamed on a deprived upbringing, was deflected with Kafkaesque illogicality: “Where were the KES old boys in supporting [Moroe]? They support every other captain of industry. They could have put him through training and support. Where were they?”

Having astounded their audience, the BACC proceeded to insult them. Why, they wanted to know, had none of us reported at the time of the rebel tours on the wrong being done by Ali Bacher and his cohorts? We pointed out that none of us had been reporters in the 1980s. One of us had yet to be born.

Manthata demanded that we read his Masters thesis, and reporters who have been at the forefront of writing about the importance of transformation for years were told their publications were getting it badly wrong on that front. Not that the BACC seemed able to match the reporters to their publications.

They were, in short, a joke. But soon South Africa will have to turn their attention to the entirely more serious business of what to do if, as expected, Bavuma regains his fitness in time to play at Newlands. Van der Dussen does not deserve to have to make way, but he has spent a good chunk of his first-class career opening the batting and — if Bavuma does come back — he could be bumped up the order to replace Aiden Markram, who is out of the rest of the series with a broken finger. But how is that fair on the uncapped Pieter Malan, who is in the squad as specialist opener?

It’s tempting to ask for answers from the real world. Perhaps we should instead strive to make our world more real.

First published by Cricbuzz.