CSA miss own deadline on Cobras transformation issue

“I can’t comment on what goes on right at the top but I can certainly say there’s great talent in South Africa.” – Robin Peterson focuses on the positive.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

CRICKET South Africa (CSA) seem set to miss their self-imposed deadline for getting to the bottom of a transformation target transgression last month.

The Cobras’ XI for their first-class fixture against the Warriors at Newlands included seven black players — one more than the stipulated number.

But only two of them, fast bowlers Thando Ntini and Tladi Bokako, were black African — one fewer than the target.

“CSA has noted the submission by Western Cape Cricket [WCC] in lieu of a request for a deviation from the administrative conditions,” a CSA spokesperson said at the time.

But, according to Cobras coach Ashwell Prince, there was nothing “in lieu” about how he had approached the issue.

“I followed the protocol,” Prince told TMG Digital.

CSA also said they would “launch a further enquiry into this incident and will consider all the related and relevant information in order to arrive at a decision about the strength and the validity of the argument by WCC”, and that, “It is anticipated that the investigation may take up to 14 days.”

That was on October 29 — the 14 days expires on Tuesday.

Asked on Monday night whether CSA had reached a decision, a spokesperson said only, “We will announce the outcome once we have concluded the matter.”

Pressed for a better answer, he became defensive.

The Cobras squad contains four other black Africans — batters Aviwe Mgijima and Simon Khomari, and fast bowlers Akhona Mnyaka and Mthiwekhaya Nabe — while another, spinner Tsepo Ndwandwa, has played for them this season.

None were injured when the game against the Cobras started at Newlands on October 28.

Mgijima has scored just 39 runs in five first-class innings this season while Khomari made two and four in his only match of the campaign.

Mnyaka took 1/30 in the nine overs he bowled on his debut in January, his only first-class match to date.

Nabe also last played for the Cobras in January, and has taken 47 wickets in 31 first-class games at an average of 43.27.

Ndwandwa has claimed three wickets in the two first-class games he has played for the Cobras this season.

In cricket terms, none of those players are banging down the door for a place in the Cobras team.

Who might have been left out to make room for another black African is another consideration.

Five members of the top six who played average more than 30 this summer, with Kyle Verreynne topping the list at 70.66 and Matthew Kleinveldt weighing in at 56.00.

The only merely black — not black African — fast bowler in the side, Dane Paterson, has taken 18 wickets at 21.55 in four games.

The other three members of the team, Zubayr Hamza, George Linde and Dane Piedt, the captain, were all freshly back from South Africa’s poor Test series in India.

It was thus in the national interest that they played. 

And in the Cobras’ interest: before that match they had lost to the Lions and drawn with the Titans and Dolphins.

The game against the Warriors was also drawn, leaving the Cobras second from bottom in the standings.

There was, therefore, no good cricket case to be made for forcing an out-of-form player into a side that needed a win at the expense of someone better equipped for their role.

But, as the Springboks proved emphatically at the men’s World Cup in Japan, quotas can lead to triumph because they open eyes that were previously closed.

There’s a good argument to be made that the Boks would not have done as well as they did had teams not been forced to pick black players.

Decades of selection bias — consciously or not — robbed black players of their opportunities.

With their presence guaranteed, they could not be unfairly sidelined.

And, what do you know, they turned out to be among the best players South Africa had.

That Siya Kolisi, Makazole Mapimpi and Cheslin Kolbe merit their places is beyond question.

As is the likelihood that, without quotas, they would never have been given the chance to prove it.  

It’s a happy ending cricket is still chasing, and the dwindling confidence in CSA’s current leadership won’t bring it any closer. 

Perhaps that vital task should be left to people who know what they’ve doing, like Warriors coach Robin Peterson.

“I can’t comment on what goes on right at the top but I can certainly say there’s great talent in South Africa,” Peterson told TMG Digital during the now controversial Newlands match.

He is about 18 months from completing a Masters in sport directorship at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Peterson hasn’t yet decided what his dissertation topic will be, but he has an idea.

“Maybe I’ll do it on ethical transformation,” he said. “Is there such a thing as ethical transformation?

“I’m living in a situation I can write about, so why not.”

Given South Africa’s past and present, Peterson won’t want for research material.

“It’s very difficult to heal wounds, but if this is your only skill in life it’s very difficult to kill people’s dreams.

“You have to give them opportunities if they’re good enough to play.”

It seems a simple statement, but South Africans will know just how complex it is.

First published by TMG Digital. 

Use it or lose it: we won’t have this moment again

Celebrate, the beloved country. You’ve earned the right to feel better than you have since Thabo Mbeki fell off the bus. But don’t waste this triumph.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

ONLY once has the points margin in a rugby World Cup final loomed larger than it did in Yokohama on Saturday.

But never before have a team won the World Cup after losing a pool game.

Never have the Springboks scored more points in a final.

Never have they lost a final, a distinction only they enjoy among the five finalists.

Never had they scored a try in a final.

Never, still, has a try been scored against them in a final.

Never have a team won more World Cups.

Never have a side won the southern hemisphere championship and the World Cup in the same year.

Never have …

Bugger all that. 

Nevermind the objective facts of the matter.

Never have a team looked more determined to win than Siya Kolisi’s unstoppable band of blood brothers.

Never have their opponents looked more devastated at that determination than England.

Never did anyone, least of all England, imagine the previously dour, methodical, predictable, defensive South Africans would throw it all in the air like they just didn’t care and play the kind of joyous rugby they did when they were barefoot and 10 years old with no-one watching.

Never, from the opening confrontation until the final gong, was the result in even a smidgen of doubt.

Never have more happy, happy, happy tears been shed by South Africans in the cause of mere sport.

Never did South Africans expect to see so many of those tears flowing from the hard, unflinching, shard-shaped eyes of Daniel Johannes Vermeulen.

Duane Vermeulen, the Boks’ matchwinning No. 8, stood there — the sweat he had won from the contest shining like a medal on the vast slab of his forehead gleaming some 1.93 metres in the sky, his mighty arms attached to meaty hands now clasped behind a massive, hairy, bearded head — and sobbed. Openly and proudly and fok julle almal.

Vermeulen’s tears disappeared into his muddied, bloodied jersey. And into the hearts of all who shared his passion, where they will stay forever.

You could tell this story just as well in short, sharp exclamations as in long and winding sentences: 32-bloody-12! Two tries to none! A scrum that was an irrisistable force and an immovable object all in one! Makazole Mapimpi’s bulletproof confidence! Cheslin Kolbe’s otherworldly brilliance! Handré Pollard’s pulseless precision! Kolisi’s serene selflessness! Rassie Erasmus’ sangoma sensibilities! Jérôme Garcès hitherto unseen competence!

But why wouldn’t you want to linger on this triumph as long as you could, and then a little longer? Celebrate, the beloved country. You’ve earned the right to feel better than you have since Thabo Mbeki fell off the bus, and you’ve earned it the hard way.

You can’t eat the World Cup or live in it or wear it or have it pay you a living wage.

Winning it won’t bring back the people we murder every few years because they have come from somewhere else in Africa, nor resurrect the women we murder every day for daring to think how they live their lives shouldn’t be controlled by men, nor stop us from preying on children for reasons too sick to get into.

Rugby won’t rid us of the wilfully, brazenly useless government we elected — yes, that’s our fault — nor spare us a shamelessly illiberal opposition that stands for nothing except whatever it is the government is against — thanks, the middle class, for nothing — nor stop the only vaguelly left-wing party from becoming an ever unfunnier joke — it’s hard to laugh at seething hate.

The World Cup won’t make Eskom do their jobs, nor will it convince the people we need to convince of the bleeding obvious — that we need a better plan for making sure we have enough water than simply praying for rain.

The privileged will still be privileged. The poor will still be poor. The zombie that is apartheid, dead only for the time it takes people to bother to vote, the rest of the time rudely alive in every real sense, will still be out there. 

For all that, what happened in Yokohama on Saturday could change things. It kindles a small flame of hope that, just maybe, South Africa isn’t doomed to be remembered as the country that betrayed itself.

What chance this will make the homed see the homeless as the fellow human beings they are and not, as too many of them do currently, as filth to be swept into someone else’s streets?

Or that those who have too much will understand why they are despised, and do something about it?

Or that the powerful will become accountable to those who lend them — not give them — that power?

Like we said, that flame of hope is small. But, for now, it lives.

In 1995, when we lived in some kind of Disney movie, and in 2007, when we still thought everything would be OK, winning the World Cup wasn’t what it is now.

It’s already a cliché that the champions of 2019 are significantly more black than their predecessors, that they look a lot more like the nation the marketing people say they represent.

Fair enough. But we’re in real trouble if we still need to make the point that South Africa does not have a future if that future is not, mostly, black. Let’s hear all those arguments against affirmative action selection now. And let’s see if anyone has the balls to admit that quotas work, that without them what happened in Yokohama on Saturday would never have happened, that all Kolisi needed to be what he is was the genuine opportunity to be it.

Moments like this don’t come often. For some, they don’t come at all.

You must be blessed indeed, Mzansi, for this is your third chance to get this right.

Never, surely, will you have it again.

This time, don’t waste it.

First published by Times SELECT.