Bedingham bye-bye prompts Prince pout

“The reality is that we can’t keep pretending there is nothing wrong.” – Ashwell Prince

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

ASHWELL Prince has come out swinging like he never did in his years as a circumspect Test batter in the wake of David Bedingham agreeing to play for Durham for the entire 2020 season. Prince now coaches the Cape Cobras, Bedingham is one of his players, and the county complication means he will miss South Africa’s 2019-20 franchise one-day competition.

“It’s about opportunity, it’s about uncertainty for the players,” Prince was quoted as saying in a Cobras release on Friday. “We tried everything to keep David here. In my honest opinion he has a better chance to play international cricket for South Africa if he had to stay. It’s high time that CSA [Cricket South Africa] sit down and look at things a little bit closer and get to the fact of the matter of why players are leaving. Don’t beat around the bush. That’s where we’re at. I have a good understanding why he left. If anyone at CSA has spoken to him, they will also understand the reason.”

Cricbuzz has learnt that the matter was indeed raised with CSA acting director of cricket Graeme Smith — who in December talked Dwaine Pretorius out of signing a Kolpak deal with Nottinghamshire, which would have precluded him from playing for South Africa. But Pretorius, then uncapped, was in South Africa’s squad at the time and has since played three Tests. Bedingham, 25, has played for the country’s Colts and under-19 teams but has yet to attract the attention of the national selectors.   

“If I have to criticise, people who can play at the highest level cannot just be seen around every corner; you just don’t see it — it’s 1% of players who can play at the highest level,” Prince was quoted as saying. “Yes, there’s no guarantee that David could go on to play at the highest level. But in my opinion I feel that he had a good chance to play international cricket. Some people might say he has not done enough yet, but you can argue that he should be around the South Africa A squads at the very least and he hasn’t had an opportunity at that level. The reality is that we can’t keep pretending there is nothing wrong.”

Like Pretorius, Bedingham is white. And in terms of CSA’s selection policy teams for franchise matches must include three black African players and three more who are generic black: typically of mixed race — or “coloured” — or of Asian descent. South Africa’s demographics mean the Cobras have an abundance of homegrown coloured players to choose from but struggle to groom black Africans. And when they find them, white players could lose out. So Prince’s issue is likely with the quota for black Africans — though he didn’t spell that out in his comments, perhaps because that would provoke outrage in black cricket circles.

The ink was still wet on the news of Bedingham’s imminent departure when it emerged that Durham had also acquired Farhaan Behardien’s services in a Kolpak deal. Unlike Bedingham, Behardien is coloured. Also unlike Bedingham, Behardien is 36 and in the autumn of his career. But South Africa’s structures can ill afford to forego the knowledge and experience he has amassed in 114 first-class matches, 59 ODIs and 38 T20Is.

Bedingham averages 45.75 with seven centuries in his 55 first-class innings. In 23 trips to the crease for the the upper tier Cobras he has made three hundreds and averages 50.42.

In an interview with SA Cricket Magazine in November he was quoted as saying: “My dream is still to play for my country. Once you believe you can’t play for your country, though, you do have to look at options like Kolpak. There is obviously money and security abroad, as guys like Simon Harmer and Duanne Olivier [who have signed Kolpak deals] have shown. One doesn’t always know how they will fare abroad, though, with the different conditions, pitches, lifestyle, etcetera. It’s different for everyone. Some are happy to take the risk to earn the money. Others are more family-orientated and might need to decide otherwise. I’m not there yet, but if I do get there, I’ll look at all the aspects with perspective and decide accordingly.”

Bedingham’s decision to sign as an overseas player rather than a member of the Kolpak crew means he may yet be back to stake his claim to a place in South Africa’s team. But he is now a big step removed from doing so.

First published by Cricbuzz.

The velvet violence of Vernon Philander

“He’s taken the coaching of fast bowling to the next level of thought.” – Fanie de Villiers on Vernon Philander.

TELFORD VICE in Johannesburg

VERNON Philander is too easy to caricature. You know the type: off-duty night club bouncer. Hardness in the eyes. Doesn’t say much. Suggestion of a life lived hard. Somehow lacking couth. And black. Or, as we say in South Africa, coloured, which is how most of our compatriots of Philander’s race and culture self-identify. Something else we say in South Africa — or, more usually, think — when we see someone who has Philander’s skin colour and swagger is: gangster.

Ravensmead, the Cape Town suburb Philander is from, has its own “gangwatch” Facebook page that urges readers to “say no to crime” and “expose them”. But Philander is a long way from someone who has fallen in with the 26s or the 28s, gangs that started in prison and have developed a subculture involving complex hierarchies, justice systems, codes of conduct, their own languages, and tattoos that denote allegiance and rank. Even so, and especially if we’re in Cape Town, where coloured gangsterism is acknowledged by all as at once a major cause and a major effect of social strife, we assume people like Philander must have dodged a bullet not to have fallen victim to this social disease. We particularly assume this if we’re white. Let’s call lumping Philander into that bracket what it is: racist.

That’s not all about him that is misunderstood. In a cricket culture strewn with fast bowlers of the big, booming variety, Philander is neither big nor booming nor even particularly fast. What separates him from the rest is skill and subtlety, accuracy and an acute awareness of line and length, and just enough movement to cause trouble. That isn’t always appreciated in South Africa, not least because it isn’t often seen.

Fanie de Villiers was one of those big, booming fast bowlers, a man who looked like a galloping scarecrow as he attacked the crease, but who played with a heart at least as big as his boots. In retirement, De Villiers has positioned himself among the conservative voices in the ever ongoing transformation debate, and has sometimes been less than complimentary about Philander. So it was startling to ask him one question on Wednesday and receive almost four minutes and more than 500 words worth of undiluted adulation as an answer: “You’ve got to tick a few boxes, if you look at fast bowlers from a fast bowler’s point of view. There’s an energy-saving box. You need to have a wow factor. You need to be able to get wickets not just with lbws but with balls moving away and balls moving in, which is difficult for a lot of bowlers. And, on top of that, you need a bowler who can think about the game. You could probably put a fifth category in there — muscle endurance levels, or the show horse kind of fast bowler you get. That’s probably the only box that Vernon doesn’t tick too well.

“The wow factor in him is that he lands right next to the stumps, which allows him to get wickets if the ball moves just a centimetre. Most of us who land far away from the wicket — in other words putting the ball far away from off stump’s line [as it leaves the hand] — need to do so much more with the ball to get a wicket. That’s probably his biggest attribute. In the 30 years that I’ve been watching the game, Glenn McGrath and Shaun Pollock were the only other two guys who could do that. He hasn’t got a quick run-up because he closes up [his action] so much that he can’t really follow through.

“The second factor is that, if you deliver a ball that goes towards the slips, which is as good as an away-swinger, you’ve always got a chance to take a wicket. Those two categories are probably the most important of the lot, because that gives you the opportunity to get more wickets than anybody else. Landing close to the wicket is maybe 70% of his success, bowling a ball that moves away is another 15 to 20%, and you can throw in the lbws earned by balls moving back in.

“He’s never been a show horse athlete, let’s face it, like the Dale Steyns or the Glenn McGraths of the world. But he doesn’t need to be. He doesn’t need to have pace either. He gets it right with landing close to the stumps. If he bowled a foot outside off stump having landed a foot outside off stump, he wouldn’t have played for South Africa, I reckon. That’s how important the technical part of the game is. He’s proven — as have Pollock and McGrath — you don’t need big swing. If you can land close to the stumps you can take wickets in any part of the world.

“Dennis Lillee and those guys, they needed raw pace, they needed a hell of a long run-up, they needed an energy-burning capacity that’s terrible for fast bowling. How much energy does Vernon use when he bowls? He’s not even building up a sweat. He’s jogging in and delivering, and going back to jog in again. And he’s more effective than most in the world. He’s taken, I reckon, the coaching of fast — or faster — bowling to the next level of thought. Sometimes somebody ticks two of the boxes and they are world beaters. He’s one of those.”

Now the world is about to see him go. The fourth Test between South Africa and England on Friday will be Philander’s 64th and last. But he could bow out with a bang: the 39 wickets he has taken at 15.69 in his seven matches in Johannesburg make the Wanderers his happiest home hunting ground in terms of average.

Philander began his career under Graeme Smith, now South Africa’s acting director of cricket, who said on Wednesday: “His skill against left-handed batsmen was a huge thing. He was effective and he got us into games, allowing other people to be more aggressive and attack more, because we always know ‘Vern’ was going to be reliable and give us what we needed. I think the one thing that always gets missed about him is that he’s a fantastic competitor. He’s got the bit between his teeth and he gets into contests. And his ability to front up. We are all put under pressure in the international game. It’s how you regroup and front up again that matters. ‘Vern’ was fantastic from that perspective. An element of that needs to come back into our national side — how guys front up under pressure and perform when needed; when the moments are right. He was outstanding.”

That hasn’t always been how Smith has spoken of Philander. During South Africa’s series in England in July and August 2017, after Philander withdrew from the fourth Test at Old Trafford with a lower back strain, Smith said on the BBC’s Test Match Special: “He can’t seem to make it through series; his body is maybe not fit enough. It’s been an issue but it’s becoming serious. You’re trying to build a team and if your senior players can’t get through tours then you’ve got a problem. He took a blow [on the hand while batting in the first Test] at Lord’s and it took a crane to get him back onto the field. There’s been too many times where you’re fighting to get him onto the field.”

On Wednesday, those sentiments were missing from Smith’s approach. But he still had unfinished business with Philander, mostly in a good way: “I would have loved to see him progress more in the short formats. My argument with ‘Vern’ has always been has he always got to that level of talent that’s he’s had? Has he worked hard enough, at times, to get there? Certainly what he’s produced in the Test format for us, his record speaks for itself. He can be proud.

“Now the conversation is how do we keep him in the system, because his knowledge on bowling and his skill is something we cannot afford to lose. As CSA [Cricket South Africa] we lose too much intellectual property all the time. Even post my 11 years of captaincy no-one sat down and said, ‘What did you learn? What are the systems?’. It’s an area we’re not very good at. So we’ve got to try and keep all this knowledge of international cricket and quality players in the system to hopefully develop the next heroes.” 

Philander will end his career under Faf du Plessis, who only had good things to say on Thursday: “We would like to see Vernon leave the game in the way he deserves. I want to see him get the storybook ending that he deserves. He has been such a great bowler for this Test team. Hopefully he can sign off on a high. He deserves respect. He has been one of the most skilful bowlers in the team.

“It was great to know as a captain you can give the ball to someone with control. Test cricket is all about control. When the ball is moving around it feels like he can get a guy out at any stage. If the wicket is a bit slow I know I can get control out of him. I know that ‘Vern’ gives me that. He’s a banker.”

Understandably, Joe Root was less inclined to afford Philander what Quinton de Kock on Wednesday called “a good goodbye”. Asked what makes facing Philander difficult, Root said: “He’s very accurate. He gets the ball to move off the straight. He hits the seam and he asks good questions for long periods of time. He’s a proven performer everywhere he’s been and he’s got a very good record here. So from our point of view it would be nice to keep him quiet for this last Test match, and I’m sure he’ll have a very good time down at Somerset.”

That’s where Philander will be playing in a few months’ time, having agreed one of the least controversial Kolpak contracts yet signed. He will turn 35 in June and is clearly past his best at international level, having gone 16 innings without taking five wickets: in his first 16 innings he had six five-wicket-hauls. But he promises to be lethal at county level on English pitches, and Taunton should be happy to have a man so admired in his own country — albeit in qualified language — and beyond. And, please, don’t confuse him with a gangster.

First published by Cricbuzz.  

MSL catches fire in PE

As a window into what the MSL could be if major players in the sponsorship and broadcast world were able to have confidence that it was a good place to spend their money, it was bittersweet.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

THE Mzansi Super League (MSL) took the edge off its problems by delivering the closest game yet in this year’s competition at St George’s Park on Wednesday.

Plagued by inadequate sponsorship and broadcast revenue, ineffective marketing, little prospect of breaking even, and tiny crowds, the MSL doesn’t have much going for it.

But, for three or so hours while the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants and the Cape Town Blitz conjured a contest for the ages, none of that mattered as acutely.

The Blitz put up a decent 186/9 — the Warriors’ 189 against the Cobras in April is the only higher T20 first innings at this ground, and remains the record total — and the Giants reeled it in with five wickets standing and four balls to spare.

Janneman Malan and Quinton de Kock shared 72 for the first wicket for the second time in the tournament in scoring 31 and 39, and the rest of the visitors’ top five — Marques Ackerman, Liam Livingstone and Asif Ali — added another 87 to the total.

But the Giants fought back, taking 5/22 to limit the damage effectively.

Chris Morris, Junior Dala, Imran Tahir and Onke Nyaku claimed two wickets each with Tahir’s 2/26 and economy rate of 6.50 the standout showing.

The Giants seemed sunk without trace after only nine balls, what with openers Matthew Breetzke and Jason Roy gone with just three runs scored.

But captain Jon-Jon Smuts stood tall through partnerships of 53 with Ben Dunk, 46 with Heino Kuhn and 48 with Marco Marais before slashing a catch to backward point to go for a 51-ball 73.

Smuts’ gutsy effort included a reprieve for a no-ball dismissal by Wahab Riaz and surviving a lengthy review for a catch by George Linde at short fine leg off Sisanda Magala.

His exit, forced by a near no-ball from Wahab, left Marais — the cleanest, crispest, hardest hitter in South African cricket since Rassie van der Dussen — and Morris to get the job done, which they did by clattering 37 off 18 balls.

Morris clinched it in soap opera style with a mighty heave off Magala, which Linde, diving for all his worth on the midwicket fence, almost caught.

Instead the ball was deflected onto the boundary cushion, which cost the Blitz six runs, the match, and their position at the top of the standings — a spot now occupied by the Giants.

As a game of cricket it was the stuff of dreams: dramatic and intensely competitive with a fair sprinkling of quality individual performances.

As a window into what the tournament could be if major players in the sponsorship and broadcast world were able to have confidence that the MSL was a good place to spend their money, it was bittersweet.

Reality resumed, and with it an interview Hashim Amla gave to Pakistani website PakPassion.

“I find it very amusing whenever this whole subject of Kolpak and its effects on South African cricket are brought up,” Amla was quoted as saying.

“Kolpak has been around for a long time, and so it’s surprising to me that it is been touted as the reason for all evils only because we lost the recent Test series to India [3-0 in October].

“I do not want this idea to become a convenient excuse for what basically were bad performances against India.

“When I was playing domestic cricket, we had quite a number of Kolpak players in our domestic teams also but then there was no talk of this subject.

“Let’s be honest about it, India are a really good side and they will probably beat all teams at home and the fact is that we did not play that well during the tour.

“Now one may argue that I am saying this because I have signed to play for Surrey next year as a Kolpak player but my story is slightly different as I have a few years of international cricket under my belt.

“The fact remains that this whole issue has gained importance just due to recent bad performances.”

Amla spoke from the United Arab Emirates, where he is playing for the Karnataka Tuskers in the Abu Dhabi T10 — a fact that on its own is indicative of some of South African cricket’s problems beyond Kolpak.

Having served as the Blitz’ batting consultant, free of charge, Amla has done his bit for the MSL.

But, if the game was in better shape at home, wouldn’t he prefer playing in the MSL to some gimmick far away?

You didn’t need to be at St George’s Park on Wednesday to answer that question.

First published by TMG Digital.

Sharks circle SA cricket

How can South Africa’s logic vacuum not affect Faf du Plessis and his team?

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

IF a fish rots from the head, the fish that is South Africa’s men’s team limping home across the Indian Ocean on one battered fin is cursed with a rotting head at each end.

At one end, the damage caused by a bumptiously aggressive, arrogant administration that wouldn’t know reality if it smacked it upside the head with — as we say here on the sharp tip of Africa — a wet fish.

At the other end, the hurt of a broken bunch of players who, in the wake of South Africa’s worst performance in a series in living memory, could use some aggression or even arrogance and have had far too much reality for their own good.

India has been the undoing of many of cricket’s finest teams. This South Africa side, wounded by the still fresh retirements of Hashim Amla and Dale Steyn, and with the scars left by the excision of AB de Villiers and Morné Morkel yet to heal, was not among the best.

But they should have done better than become the first South Africa team to suffer innings defeats in consecutive matches since 1936.

India dominated every aspect of the series to such an extent that the South Africans didn’t know where to look. Not that they knew beforehand.

If they gazed upward they saw those bilious board members and execrable executives cheerfully chugging their way through another few million in losses. If they cast their eyes downward they saw a domestic system dangerously eroded by the inexorable exodus of players and coaches.

The South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA), the country’s professional player body, estimates Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) losses will amount to around US$6.8-million by the end of the 2022 rights cycle. We know this because the figure is in the court papers for the legal action SACA are taking against CSA over a plan to restructure the domestic game that will double the number of teams in the top flight, which, perversely, could lead to 70 players losing their jobs.

And yet CSA are blithely — or even blindly — lurching ahead with planning for the second edition of the Mzansi Super League (MSL), the T20 competition in which money flows down the drain faster than runs hit the scoreboard.

How can that kind of logic vacuum not have an effect on Faf du Plessis and his team? If the people who call themselves the custodians of the game don’t have enough custodial sense between them to recognise the MSL for what it is — a terrible, wasteful, stupid idea — what right do they have to hold the players to a competent standard?

It is no longer even a mild surprise when a prominent player abandons their dream of making it at international level in favour of a Kolpak contract or moving to England, New Zealand or Australia. The surprise is that more have not gone that route. Yet. Now coaches are following their lead. Even administrators — the better ones — are jumping ship.

Cricket is as much at the mercy of a weak currency as every other industry in South Africa, a challenge not eased by the endemic corruption at the highest levels of a society that once gave the world reason to believe evil could be conquered.

But Nelson Mandela is dead, as is South Africa’s hope for a future in which the legacy of apartheid has ceased to be the everyday reality for millions of its citizens.

Infect that already poisoned scenario with a middle class that refuses to see the cruel folly of the assumption that the privilege it was born into is its right, and it isn’t difficult to understand why the country is shambling towards becoming a failed state in which a good day is when the power company sticks to the schedule of rolling blackouts.

That same middle class claims cricket as its cultural property, a beacon of its superiority over the common masses, the great unwashed, the dreaded Them. You know — soccer people.

Efforts to right the wrongs of the past are sneered at by people who don’t want to know, or have wilfully forgotten, that South Africa have never chosen their cricket teams on merit. For the first 103 of their 108 years as a Test-playing nation — not considering the 22 years of their isolation — the quota was 11 white players.

Attempts to undo that crippling disadvantage have not succeeded nearly as well as hoped, and have indeed damaged the cause by sewing doubt and suspicion: proof of how debilitating the past was for the game.

This thing runs deep down our country’s roots, far further than the turf under a cricket pitch and into the gold mines themselves. Where there is money to be made there is badness to be done, and there was a lot of money to be made in South Africa. Hence a lot of badness was delivered in the form of brutal laws enforced by murderous authorities.

Apartheid still stinks in South Africa’s streets: in those where black people endure life with hardly any delivery of the services the politicians they vote for — in decreasing numbers — promise to provide, as well as in the streets that gleam with affluence where the few black people to be seen are gardeners and maids.

The other edge of the sword of South Africa’s inequality between rich and poor, which the World Bank has estimated to be the worst in the world, is the greed and cynicism that lurks to exploit that gap for all its worth. How difficult is it to tell poor people they should be angry with their lot, and that they should take out their frustrations on those even worse off than them?   

Welcome, South African cricket, to all that. Actually, the game has been central to all that for as long as it’s been in South Africa. It arrived as part of the colonial experiment, was nudged into the post-colonial experiment, and then subverted into the mythology of the apartheid experiment. Now it is a small but visible part of the pseudo-democratic present, a minnow in an ever-shrinking pond.

“Being a fish out of water is tough, but that’s how you evolve,” Kumail Nanjiani, the Pakistani-American comedian, said.

Or you become a casualty of evolution; a victim of bigger, stronger but not necessarily better forces. If you’re limping home on one battered fin, both your heads rotting, good luck surviving the sharks.

First published by firstpost.com — https://www.firstpost.com/firstcricket/sports-news/india-vs-south-africa-proteas-cricketing-freefall-an-apt-reflection-of-countrys-socio-economic-crises-and-administrative-apathy-7540391.html

Leading Edge: Cheer up, SA cricket. You aren’t Zimbabwe. Yet …

The end of the Kolpak era could prompt South Africa’s players to give up on cricket as a career altogether.

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE in South Africa

IT’S tough being a cricketminded South African. But cheer up: you could have been Zimbabwean, Zambian or Croatian.

The administrative bodies from those countries have been suspended by the International Cricket Council (ICC), so Zimbabwe, Zambia and Croatia cannot play in tournaments. It gets worse for Morocco, who have been expelled from the ICC.

That the game is in trouble in South Africa is beyond doubt. On the field and off, the challenges mount by the week.

Some of this is beyond cricket’s control. The game is a victim of a faltering society that is at the mercy of a shaky economy.

Cricket cannot be immune from the effects of those factors. It doesn’t help that enough players are able to export their skills to accelerate the hollowing out of the game in our country.

That could change, what with English counties having been warned by the England Cricket Board that their Kolpak players would be ineligible if the United Kingdom (UK) leaves the European Union (EU) without negotiating a deal.

No deal has yet been agreed. So as things stand the UK — now under the control of reckless idiot Boris Johnson, the new Trumpian Prime Minister — will crash out of the EU on October 31.

So all current Kolpak players, and all wannabe Kolpak players, could be out of a job after the 2020 English season.     

Which sounds like a reason to be cheerful: players will no longer be syphoned off by the county system’s better salaries and England’s better working and living conditions.

Except that the end of the Kolpak era could also prompt South Africa’s players to give up on cricket as a career altogether.

With the Indian Premier League having apparently fallen out of love with our players and no more chance to catch a county’s Kolpak eye, better to find a proper job rather than put up with the ailing franchise system.

Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) plan to scrap that arrangement in favour of doubling the number of domestic sides may or may not have been shelved — it depends who you ask, and which day you ask them — but doubtless it would only hasten the disappearance of skills and experience from the talent pool in favour of more grown-up ways to earn a crust.

So cricket’s biggest challenge in South Africa isn’t Kolpak, whether or not it survives the joke who is Johnson and his merry pranksters. Instead, it’s avoiding the Zimbabwefication of the game.

Cricket north of the Limpopo is rarely not in crisis. It’s landed itself in the dwang this time because the government of mini-Mugabe Emmerson Mnangagwa, in the shape of the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC), a state agency, forbade Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) from electing their own board.

The election went ahead anyway, and the new board and their acting chief executive were promptly prevented from assuming their posts by the SRC. ZC complained to the ICC about government interference. The ICC concurred, and so ZC were suspended.

Think that kind of thing can’t happen in South Africa? Think again. As we speak, what a source called “messy, sly” efforts are afoot to keep the president of one of CSA’s most influential unions in office because he is aligned to powerful figures at the level above.

Hark: where there are suits there is also a bad smell.

Markram makes good first up, as do Kolpaks

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in London

AIDEN Markram has made a solid start to his month in the county championship, as have several of South Africa’s Kolpak brigade — two of whom are captaining their teams.

Markram will be an overseas professional with Hampshire until early May, and will doubtless gather valuable experience of English conditions ahead of the World Cup.

He made a decent first impression by scoring 63 against Essex in Southampton in his only innings in the opening round of championship matches, which ended on Monday.

Markram batted at No. 3 for more than two hours, faced 96 balls and hit nine fours.

But he was upstaged by a compatriot two places lower in the order: Kolpakian Rilee Rossouw, who needed 30 fewer deliveries to make 76, only a dozen of them not smashed in fours and sixes.

Another of the breed, Simon Harmer — Essex’s appointed captain this summer — took 2/134 and then suffered a first-baller as his team followed on 361 behind with still another Kolpak kid, Kyle Abbott, taking 2/38.

Harmer enjoyed a longer stay in the second dig, scoring 62, but Abbott claimed 5/77 and Hampshire won by an innings and 87.

Duanne Olivier, the 43rd and latest South African to sign a Kolpak contract since the practice began in 2004, hit the headlines by taking 5/96 for Yorkshire in the first innings against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge, a haul that included trapping Stuart Broad in front for a second-ball duck.

But Broad was all the rage on Monday, when his first delivery to Joe Root clattered into the England captain’s helmet.

That probably wasn’t Broad’s intent — Root ducked into a ball that didn’t rise as high as he guessed it would — but the thought that that was the fast bowler’s response to being left out of half of England’s six Tests last season duly pinballed around the pressbox for the best part of eight minutes.

That was how long play was held up while Root was brought another helmet and examined for symptoms of concussion.

“You’ve got to make sure you know what day of the week it is and everything, so it was just making sure you tick the boxes and for the physio to make sure there was no danger,” Root told the Daily Telegraph.

“The only thing that was really hurting was my ego, letting Stuart hit me like that.

“You expect someone with 400-plus Test wickets to come hard at you like that to do anything he can to get you out. Fair play to him, he got it right on the money, didn’t he?”

The match was drawn, but down south in Taunton, Heino Kuhn, also a Kolpak defector, was nursing his own eina after his 18 and second-ball duck became part of Kent’s 74-run loss to Somerset.

Kuhn is captaining Kent in the temporary absence of regular skipper Sam Billings and vice-captain Joe Denly, who are playing in the Indian Premier League. 

Markram’s Hants stint will worry South Africans

“He’s certainly a player that we’ve kept a close eye on for the last couple of years.” – Giles White, Hampshire’s director of cricket

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in London

THE news that Aiden Markram has signed for Hampshire will shock cricketminded South Africans, but it’s not what it looks like.

Unlike Kyle Abbott and Rilee Rossouw, who turned their backs on international cricket by taking up Kolpak contracts to play for the same county, Markram is going as a temporary overseas professional and will thus soon be back in a South Africa shirt.

Even so, what’s between the lines won’t make for reassuring reading for South Africa supporters still sore about Duanne Olivier’s Kolpak defection to Yorkshire last month. 

“[Markram] will arrive in time for the start of the county championship curtain-raiser against Essex [in Southampton on April 5], and will feature in both domestic red-ball and white-ball competitions until early May,” Hampshire said on their website on Friday.

So he remains in the mix for South Africa fr the World Cup in England, which starts on May 30, and will have first-hand experience of the prevailing conditions to boot.

“He’s certainly a player that we’ve kept a close eye on for the last couple of years and he’s had a great start to his international career in that time — he’s one of the best young talents in the world at this stage in terms of top order batsmen,” the site quoted Hampshire’s director of cricket, Giles White, as saying.

Markram has indeed made his own way, scoring four centuries and six 50s in his 31 Test innings. But his good fortune could be construed as the upshot of Sri Lanka becoming the first Asian team to claim a Test series in South Africa, which they did by winning at Kingsmead and St George’s Park in February.

Dimuth Karunaratne, who led the Lankans to their famous victory having arrived in South Africa unheralded as Dinesh Chandimal’s replacement as captain, was to have been Hampshire’s overseas pro.

Now Sri Lanka’s suits consider him much too vital to the national cause to disappear for a stint of county cricket, particularly so close to the World Cup.

There’s no need then, for South Africans to fall into the same kind of funk that followed the announcement of Olivier’s decision.

But there will be pangs of anxiety. Clearly, Hampshire are in the market for Kolpak players. And it will ring alarm bells

that they have “kept a close eye on” Markram “for the last couple of years”.

So they might well previously have tried to reel him in using a Kolpak lure, and there’s nothing to stop them doing so again — which would seem to be easier now that Markram will be in their dressingroom for several weeks, at least.

“[Markram’s] availability following this period will then be determined by his involvement in South Africa’s World Cup campaign, with the opportunity for Karunaratne to return in his place should the Sri Lankan captain’s playing commitments allow,” the website said.

It also won’t help that Markram has good memories of Southampton, where he scored 102 not out for South Africa A in a first-class game in 2017.

“[Southampton] and its facilities are brilliant and I have always wanted to go back after touring there with South Africa A, so I am grateful for the opportunity,” Markram was quoted as saying.

In less fraught times, that would be seen as a harmless platitude. But these are particularly fraught times, and this space will be closely watched.

It’s no longer “we”, it’s “they” for Duanne Olivier

Would you rather work for Yorkshire or the muppets who made a mess of establishing their own T20 tournament?

Times Select

TELFORD VICE in London

DUANNE Olivier is a nice kid; properly brought up in that regte egte Afrikaans way. So it’s not difficult to imagine him deferring to good manners when he tried to explain to the man from the not so nice Daily Mail, in a piece published on Wednesday, why he didn’t factor his chances of playing in the World Cup into his decision to sign a Kolpak deal with Yorkshire.

“I made my ODI debut only this year, and over those couple of games I think they were seeing what I could offer,” Olivier was quoted as saying. “Personally, I don’t think I would have been in the World Cup squad as they have enough bowlers.

“I wasn’t looking too far ahead at World Cup spots being up for grabs, it was just taking it day by day. I thought about everything and while sitting down with my wife we discussed what were the pros and cons.

“This was not about looking back and allowing external factors to influence us. It is what my wife and I feel and what we want to achieve going forward.”

The logic of Olivier’s argument is sound. Would he be picked for the World Cup ahead of Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi or Dale Steyn? No. Or a newbie like Anrich Nortjé? Unlikely. Would he pick himself ahead of any of them? By the sound of him, probably not.

But a four-letter word that is distinctly impolite, in terms of modern team dynamics, lurks in Olivier’s attributed comments; a word loaded with the perspicacity of Andile Phehlukwayo’s slower bouncer.

“ …  they were seeing what I could offer …”

“ … they have enough bowlers …”

“They”? Less than a month ago, when Olivier bowled what became his last deliveries for South Africa, in the second Test against Sri Lanka at St George’s Park, that would have been a firm and proud, “We”.

Supporters talking about teams they say they will support forever invariably refer to them as “we”, nevermind that they never have and never will play for those sides. Former players turned commentators, too, slip easily into “we” and are just as easily forgiven the slip by broadcasters who should know better. Reporters who fall prey to “we” when discussing the teams they cover are — or should be — derided as fans with laptops.

As of a few weeks ago Olivier is indeed a former player, and so entitled to use the unroyal “they”. But it will sting many who remain, for now, his compatriots that he has chosen to do so with the wound of his leaving still raw.

It is wrong to consider Olivier opting to abandon his erstwhile team an act of anti-patriotism. But there can be no denying South Africans their unhappiness over what he has done — which is, simply, to change jobs. And good luck conveying that truth effectively to people who can’t say “Proteas” without also saying “we”.

Those people should suspend their criticism for a moment to wonder what they would do were they to be presented with Olivier’s choice, and that’s apart from reconsidering his commitment to living in a country that is struggling — and failing — to keep the lights on.

He was offered exponentially more money by a company respected throughout the global cricket industry for knowing what they’re doing and for doing it properly — Yorkshire have won the championship 33 times, including one shared title, and have done so twice in the past five years.

Would you rather work for them or for the muppets who made a mess of establishing their own T20 tournament — as close as cricket gets to organising a piss-up in a brewery — whose ideas of corporate governance are raising eyebrows and not in a good way, who are alienating their employees, and who have projected a loss of more than R600-million for the next four years?

In short, would you rather work for British Gas or Eskom? Tough choice. Not.      

The thrust of the Daily Mail’s piece on Olivier was that he harboured a desire to play for England once he had served his three-year qualification period, when he will be a still eminently marketable 29. But don’t take everything you read at face value, sportslovers. Particularly if you read it in the tabloids.

Here’s how this works …

The question Olivier would have been asked probably was something like: “Are you comfortable with not playing international cricket, and do you think you might one day return to that level with England?”

And here’s his actual answer, as quoted: “I accept that my Test career is over for South Africa but if I do well, hopefully in the future, I can play for England … Yes, it will be a goal to play for England one day and it would be amazing but for now my pure focus is on Yorkshire and just doing well for them.”

A reporter writing for an English newspaper was bound to ask English cricket’s most high-profile recent signing if he wanted to earn an England cap. Just as the player being interviewed couldn’t have answered in any other way than Olivier did.

At least he doesn’t put “England” and “we” into the same sentence. Not yet, anyway.

Kolpak as unpopular with ECB as in SA

Fewer English players in county cricket mean weaker England teams.

Times Select

TELFORD VICE in London

KOLPAK isn’t a swearword only in South Africa. It’s as unloved in English cricket except by the counties, who keep the stream of Saffers and other pseudo-Europeans flowing onto the circuit.

The issue rose like a stink again last week when Duanne Olivier became the 43rd South African to take up the option, signing a contract with Yorkshire that will stop him from playing for South Africa for at least the next three years.

Kolpak deals used to be sought mostly by cricketers nearing the end of their careers, but Olivier, 26, has become part of a worrying trend of younger players choosing that route.

Like Kyle Abbott and Rilee Rossouw, who went Kolpak in 2017, Olivier has interrupted his career for South Africa despite being a regular member of the team.

They have been lured by the security offered in a system that could pay them more than they would earn even as leading players in South Africa and without the pressures that come with having to perform at international level.

More are likely to follow for as long as the United Kingdom (UK) remains part of the EU, which is uncertain.

In 2016 the UK voted to leave the bloc and it is due to do so on March 29 this year. But whether that will happen is far from decided — a postponement or a second referendum have been mooted even as the EU continue to say the UK are out at the end of the month.  

Other countries see Brexit, as the UK’s separation from the EU has been dubbed, as a looming catastrophe.

But, for the England Cricket Board (ECB), it could be the most effective way out of a problem that has only grown since Claude Henderson became the first Kolpak player in 2004: at too many county matches you can’t see the wood of the English players for the trees of those from everywhere else.

Andrew Hall, who went Kolpak for Northamptonshire in 2008 and now heads sport at Milton Keynes Preparatory School 90 kilometres north-west of London, remembers being part of a game against Leicestershire that year in which 13 of the 22 players were not eligible for England.

They included HD Ackerman, Boeta Dippenaar, Henderson, Nicky Bojé, Lance Klusener and Johan van der Wath, along with Jamaica’s Jermaine Lawson, Ireland’s Niall O’Brien and Kepler Wessels’ Australian-born son, Riki Wessels.

There have been other twists to this tale. Johannesburg-born and raised Grant Elliott had played his last game for New Zealand when he used his South African passport to turn Kolpak for Warwickshire in 2017.

Andre Mehrtens was born in Durban to New Zealand parents who moved back home after four years. That was enough to prompt the former All Black flyhalf to obtain a South African passport so he could join Harlequins, who employed him as a Kolpak for the 2005-06 season.

The counties are willing and able to pay foreigners handsomely for their services, but the ECB are less than happy about trying to field competitive international teams from a smaller pool of homegrown players.  

“They’ve been trying to stem Kolpak signings for years; since I was playing for Northants,” Hall said. “So it may end abruptly. But while the uncertainty of your future is still so big for a lot of younger players coming onto the scene in South Africa, the Kolpak option is there.”

Money talks, and pounds talk louder than rands. And there’s little the ECB can do about the fact that the law is the law.

So four years ago they imposed what amounted to a tax. Counties would be paid £1 100 — R20 600 in today’s money — less per match for Kolpak every player they picked. And a change in the work permit regulations meant that before players could sign on the Kolpak line they had to have earned at least one Test cap in the preceding 12 months, or five in five years, or appeared in 15 white-ball internationals in the previous two years.

Did it work? No: Olivier was the 21st player to Kolpak since the new rules were adopted. Yes, it’s become popular enough to be used as a verb.

But for Francois Brink, a player agent with One World of Sport, the storm may be passing.

“I think Kolpak might’ve reached a saturation point,” Brink said in the wake of Yorkshire’s news on Olivier.

“[There are] Not many players left who qualify, [and] not many counties left that can afford it.

“I’ve yet to meet a South African player whose primary ambition isn’t to play for the Proteas. Kolpak is a very personal decision depending on where the player believes he is in his career.”

From his lips, cricketminded types in South Africa and England will hope, to the game’s gods’ ears.

Kolpak: Selling your soul or buying your freedom?

“It’s there, it’s lucrative and people can do it. So they will.” – Justin Kemp on Kolpak.

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE in London

WHY have 43 South Africans taken up Kolpak contracts since 2004, thus turning their backs on the supposed pinnacle of playing international cricket?

Because, no matter how much artificially flavoured patriotism it’s drenched in, you can’t eat a Proteas badge — which is also no good for helping Eskom keep the lights on, nor for making South Africa’s increasingly febrile political and social realities seem fit for human purpose.

But don’t expect South African to agree, especially those who look to sport to ease the load of dealing with those realities.

As Ryan McLaren said: “If you’re a chartered accountant and you get an offer to go and work for a bank in New York, everyone says it’s a great opportunity. But if you’re a cricketer and that happens everyone says you’re stabbing your country in the back.”

Justin Kemp concurred: “It’s there, it’s lucrative and people can do it. So they will.

“Players are well looked after in South Africa, but to go and play county cricket for five or six years and have the option of getting a British passport are attractive options.”

Morné Morkel took up that theme on Cricket Australia’s website: “[Cricket South Africa] have to sit down and come up with plans because they’re going to lose a lot of players in the near future and they need to protect against that.”

Faf du Plessis joined the refrain talking to reporters in Johannesburg yesterday: “It’s a problem that CSA will face; not because of what they’re doing wrong themselves. We need to put in structures to keep our players otherwise we potentially will lose more.” 

Duanne Olivier became the latest back-stabbing opportunist this week when he signed a three-year Kolpak contract with Yorkshire reportedly worth R2.7-million for each of its three years; rather more than the R900 000-a-year, two-year deal CSA apparently counter-offered.

“Brace yourself — he’s not going to be the last one to do it,” Kemp said.

The news hit cricketminded South Africans hard, not least because Olivier took 24 wickets against Pakistan in January. The seven he claimed against Sri Lanka last month helped him break into the top 20 ranked bowlers in the world.   

“I want guys to be the best they can be internationally because that’s the legacy that you leave — your international career,” Du Plessis said. “I’m very disappointed that he didn’t live out the expectation I had for him.”

Kemp went Kolpak for Kent in 2008, at 30 and months after he knew he had played his last game for South Africa. Morkel announced his international retirement in February after a stellar career, and is now on Surrey’s Kolpak books.

McLaren signed a Kolpak deal, also with Kent, in 2007 because “I was seventh or eighth in the [South Africa] queue, behind [Jacques] Kallis, [Shaun] Pollock …”. He returned to the fold two years later to play 66 white-ball internationals and two tests.

Olivier’s situation is different. He is 26 and has played in all five of South Africa’s home tests this season. So he would seem to have a successful international career within his grasp.

“Questions will be asked when you’re in the test team and you still pack your bags,” Kemp said. “I would have found it very difficult to leave if I was a first-choice player, but every circumstance is different. 

“Players are well looked after in South Africa, but to go and play county cricket for five or six years and have the option of getting a British passport are attractive options.”

And not only for the white players who are invariably cast as victims of South Africa’s transformation policies who resort to a Kolpak future: six of those 43 South Africans have been black.  

In Olivier’s case, despite his current form he couldn’t be sure of staying in the international mix what with rivals for his place of the calibre Lungi Ngidi coming back from injury. Indeed, of South Africa’s 25 tests since Olivier made his debut, he featured in only 10.

“We look at the last month or two and we go, ‘How can you sign Kolpak? You’re playing and you’re doing well’,” Du Plessis said. “But I think his decision was made a lot sooner than that.

“What unfolded over the summer was great for him but by then he was already, without us knowing it, halfway committed [to Yorkshire].”

Actually, it goes back further. Olivier took 31 wickets in seven first-class games as an overseas pro for Derbyshire last winter.

When he returned, his Knights teammates — McLaren included — “could see there was something different: the ball was coming out of his hand much better and he was bowling much better”.

In the five tests before Olivier went to Derbyshire he took 17 wickets at 23.12. In the five he played after his stint there he took 31 at 17.13.

English cricket helped make Olivier the bowler he is. Maybe they deserve a piece of him. Now they have it.

What is Kolpak?

The European Court of Justice ruled in May 2003 that the German Handball Association’s rule preventing TSV Ostringen from picking Maroš Kolpak — a goalkeeper from Slovakia living and working in Germany — fell foul of the law.

Slovakia was not then a member of the European Union (EU), and German teams weren’t allowed to field more than two players from outside the bloc.

But Slovakia did at the time have an Association Agreement with the EU. That, the court decided, was enough to give players from countries like Slovakia the same rights as citizens of EU states to play for clubs in the EU.

In June 2000, South Africa was among 78 African, Caribbean and Pacific nations to sign the Cotonou Agreement with the EU, which bestowed on the people of the former the same right Kolpak had won to be between the sticks for Ostringen.

That enabled counties to sign players from those 78 countries without filling the limited quota for overseas professionals.

Forty-three South Africans, six Bajans, five Zimbabweans, three Jamaicans, two New Zealanders and one each from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago have taken up the offer.