Nelson Mandela Bay Giants – Bulletproof Truth

By George, this Linde might have it

There’s a touch of a young Clint Eastwood to George Linde’s jib, and some of Kepler Wessels’ cussedness in his saunter.

TELFORD VICE | Paarl

This time last week George Linde was minding his own business in the bio-bubble, the odd man out in South Africa’s T20I squad. He had last played a match in the format almost a year previously, when he conceded 18 runs in the only over he bowled and was run out for two. Why did South Africa want him around considering they had Tabraiz Shamsi and Keshav Maharaj? Even Jon-Jon Smuts seemed ahead of him in the queue, albeit Smuts is more a batting than a bowling allrounder.

Linde’s performance was far from the reason the Cape Town Blitz lost to the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants at Newlands on December 6 — his most recent T20 before the current series against England — but you wouldn’t have thought he was on course for a place in South Africa’s side.

He played six matches out of a possible 10 in last season’s Mzansi Super League, took five wickets, was 24th in terms of economy rate among bowlers who had sent down at least 10 overs — and 14 places off the bottom of that list — and couldn’t score more than 63 runs in six innings, two of them unfinished. If Linde had potential to play in the shortest format at the highest level, it wasn’t self-evident.

So expectations weren’t high when he was named in the XI for Friday’s first T20I at Newlands, and had dwindled further when he came to the crease with eight balls left in an innings that had shambled to 161/5. But there’s a touch of a young Clint Eastwood to Linde’s jib, and some of Kepler Wessels’ cussedness in his saunter, and he didn’t seem surprised when he lashed the third ball he faced through extra cover for four. The seventh, a full toss, disappeared over square leg for six. Maybe this “kid” — he turns 29 next Sunday — could play the game at this level after. But the proof would be in his strong suit.

Accordingly, expectations perked when he stood at the top of his run holding the new ball. And peaked when Jason Roy leapt at the second delivery like a man taking a spade to a snake. Quinton de Kock held the edge, and Linde had made his case. It needed the skill and quick thinking of Kagiso Rabada, diving low and forward at square leg, to claim a catch from Dawid Malan’s scything sweep. But catch it Rabada did, and there it was: after nine deliveries, Linde had figures of 2/2.

South Africa lost, convincingly, a match that clearly was their first in almost nine months. They batted too boldly, bowled too breezily, and made too many decisions better suited to beach cricket. But Linde’s performance was a reason for them to be if not cheerful then at least cheered that attitudes were in the right place.

Would the second game of the series in Paarl on Sunday deliver more such evidence? Or was that too much to expect considering South Africa’s state of unreadiness, at least some of it due to lockdown regulations?

Certainly, unexpectedness was in the air in the hours before the match, what with a posse of riders from the Draconian Motorcycle Club — as their leather jackets proclaimed — forming part of the motorway traffic heading to Paarl on a hot, bright morning. The club’s Facebook page implores members to support efforts to raise awareness about what the racist right wing calls, falsely, an epidemic of farm murders in South Africa. All of 21,022 people were murdered in South Africa from April 2018 to March 2019. Only 57 of all the country’s murder victims in 2019 were farmers. The Draconians wore helmets, so it wasn’t possible to tell if some of their members were the white former players who have raised the same red herring in their criticism of cricketers espousing or supporting Black Lives Matter ideals.

About that, at Newlands two banners were affixed to the stands reading: “We stand in solidarity against racism and gender based violence. CSA stands for equality.” Neither of the banners made it to Paarl. Maybe there was too much motorcycle traffic on the motorway.

This time Linde took guard in the 14th over with South Africa having crashed to 95/5. He turned the first ball he faced off his hip, easy as you like, for two. He survived an appeal for leg-before by Jofra Archer, coming round the wicket, hit his team’s first four in 10 overs when he slapped Tom Curran through cover, and launched Curran’s next ball over long-on for six. Then he sent Chris Jordan’s attempted yorker scurrying through third man for four. He was run out for a 20-ball 29 to end a stand of 44, the biggest of the innings, he shared with Rassie van der Dussen.

Soon there Linde was again, standing at the top of his run, new ball in hand. Roy made another mad lunge, this time at the first delivery of the innings, and damn near edged it again. But there were no more wickets for Linde. Not yet, anyway. Even so, 0/27 from four overs is more than decent against a bristling batting line-up on a flat if slow pitch.

South Africa lost again, though less convincingly, and with that went the series. It’s unfair on Quinton de Kock considering his inexperience as a captain, but the fact is he now owns the worst record of all 11 leaders the South Africans have had in this format: played 10, won three.

But Shamsi, whose spirited bowling that earned him a return of 3/19 was another spot of sunshine in the gloom, wasn’t looking too deeply into all that. “We haven’t played together for nine months,” he said after that match. “So it’s going to take us a little bit of time to gel again. There’s no need to panic.”

Not to panic, but to be concerned going into the now irrelevant third match at Newlands on Tuesday. And, if that doesn’t go well enough, ahead of the three ODIs.

But while you have odd men out like Kepler Eastwood in the side, players who know how to get a job done even when belief in their ability to do so wavers, you have something. It’s called hope. You also have something else: a way to meet those pesky expectations.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Unpaid rights could sink MSL’s future

“Paarl Rocks! Paarl Rocks! Paarl Rocks!…” – the passion burns brightly in the Boland.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

IT delivered cricket worth watching, and a lot more. The Mzansi Super League (MSL) took the edge off South Africa’s 3-0 thrashing in a men’s Test series in India in October, and even helped the cricket-minded sections of the country think about something other than how badly the game is being run – into the ground, many would say – by Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) tragicomically inept board. It is no small feat that Russell Adams, CSA’s head of events, and his small army of committed, hard-working zealots made the tournament happen as well as they did despite everything that is wrong with cricket in South Africa.

So it is indeed a pity, then, that we may never see another ball bowled in the tournament. CSA should by now have been paid at least part of the R71-million owed them by Global Sports Commerce (GSC), who held the MSL bundle rights and sold them on. The money has been asked for repeatedly, but the closest CSA have come to getting it is the promise of a meeting on January 28. Cricbuzz have twice sought an explanation from Neekunj Todi, of GSC subsidiary ITW Consultants, who are dealing with CSA on the issue, asking why the money hasn’t been paid and what arrangements are being made to do so. He has not replied.

CSA do not have confidence GSC will cough up. That’s hardly surprising considering Sportsgateway, another GSC subsidiary, are facing an insolvency petition filed in India by FidelisWorld Group for failing to settle a US$4-million arbitration award over a breach of contract in their acquisition of Wisden India.

GSC got an awful lot more bang for their MSL buck than R71-million should have bought them, an indication of the shoddiness of the deal struck by Thabang Moroe, CSA’s now suspended chief executive. The economics of the game in South Africa are cockeyed further by CSA having to pay interim appointees as well as the seven permanent staff who have been suspended. Moroe, for instance, is understood to be on a monthly salary of R350 000, before bonuses, and an annual package of about R5.3-million.

Once production costs are paid, only R40-million of GSM’s cash would go into CSA’s coffers, but the absence of that money would push the MSL’s total losses past R150-million. And that would be damaging enough to prompt CSA to scrap the tournament.

There’s a fan in Paarl who was as happy a human being could safely be when the Rocks beat the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants on December 8, and who would have been happier still, no doubt unsafely, when his team won the final against the Tshwane Spartans on Monday. By the look of him, he didn’t have much in life besides that happiness. How do you tell him it’s gone and not coming back?

He must have been 140 years old. His dreadlocks were as grey as he was gnarled. His once boldly maroon West Indies shirt had faded to watermelon pink, its collar attached by a few threads. His slight, boney frame had all but been swallowed by the bulk of his wheelchair. And there was no escaping him.

“Paarl Rocks! Paarl Rocks! Paarl Rocks!…” His chants were fuelled by mighty shoves of his hands on the wheels of his chair, powering him forward at impressive speed. A collision was unavoidable. Would it be a full frontal clatter of metal on limbs? A knee knackered by a wheel hub? An armrest into the groin?

Happily, he had the skills to melt the moment into a high five, extending a vast hand whose leatheriness told of a life lived hard. That hand’s warmth was beautiful. With that he was gone, onward and upward and through the gaps between the thousands around him also celebrating victory, dispensing vast, leathery, warm, beautiful high fives as he went.

“Paarl Rocks! Paarl Rocks! Paarl Rocks!…”

The Rocks had scrapped their way to a 12-run win that sealed a home final and sent the Giants home to play in the eliminator against the Spartans. It was the drama that started with Faf du Plessis, the Rocks’ captain, talking about his XI at the toss: “One change. Hardus Viljoen is not playing today because he’s lying in bed with my sister [Remi Rhynners]; they got married yesterday.” It ended in a verbal altercation between players from opposing teams on the balcony that needed the intervention of cooler heads to stop the silliness from turning physical.

Clearly, players and public alike have come to care about the MSL. This year’s tournament began in front of only 2 800 spectators at the Wanderers on November 8, even though Kagiso Rabada, Chris Gayle and Quinton de Kock were in action, and took 10 games – three of them among the total of eight washouts – to draw a crowd of 5 000. It reached its climax with the approving roars of 7 500 delirious Rocks supporters who had come not to see the Spartans’ AB de Villiers but to cheer their team to the tree tops. There would have been exponentially more at the final, but that’s as many as Paarl’s picturesque but pintsized ground can hold.

“If the cricket world didn’t know of the Boland community from the Western Cape before, then they certainly do now with their enthusiastic support throughout this tournament,” Adams was quoted as saying in a justifiably rah-rah release.

The past few weeks have sparkled with snapshots like Tabraiz Shamsi conjuring magic tricks on the field in the afterglow of producing magical deliveries, Ben Dunk — can there be a more Australian name? — talking faster than he scored in his 54-ball 99 not out against the Spartans, and ancients like Dale Steyn and Imran Tahir bowling back the years.

The first tournament had been uncertainly received, like a second-hand car that doesn’t drive as well as it gleamed in the showroom. Just a year later fans own their teams like heirlooms to be passed on; particularly in Paarl and Port Elizabeth, which is part of Nelson Mandela Bay. The MSL shouldn’t exist considering its mounting losses, but it has become that elusive thing essential to its survival and, eventually, its prosperity: real.

First published by Cricbuzz.

‘Wow! How did you just do that?’ – Marco Marais scares himself. In a good way.

The MSL is a reckless drain on dwindling resources and a product of administrators’ ego and vanity. But we’ll always have Marais’ cut six over cover.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

MARCO Marais is the Spruce Goose of cricket, a puzzle in pads, an enigma of emphatic efficacy, a riddle on the run; a walking, talking mystery who shouldn’t be able to do what he does.

Just like the Goose. Howard Hughes’ eight-engined curiosity, built of birch and lumbered with an outrageous wingspan of 98 metres — longer than the Boeing 747-8 or the Airbus A380 — shouldn’t have been able to fly. It did: for 26 seconds and 1.6 kilometres at an altitude of 21 metres and a speed of 217 kilometres an hour at Long Beach, California on November 2, 1947. And that was that — the Goose has never again been on the wing.

Marais has gone airborne exponentially more than that, but never less explicably than he did at Kingsmead on November 30. Malusi Siboto bowls a pace and length that can make trying to connect properly with his deliveries feel not unlike using a shoelace to hit a marshmallow across a room. So when Siboto steamed in for the Durban Heat to the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants’ Marais in a Mzansi Super League (MSL) game last month, no-one foresaw what happened next.

Not even Marais: “I was quietly standing back while the fielder was fetching the ball and thinking, ‘Wow! How did you just do that?’. We do practise range hitting but it’s never over cover. And never off that length. But, having played against him before, that was the plan. When he went wide, I was backing my knowledge. Then instinct took over.”

Marais cut Siboto over cover for six. That’s the live scoring description. Closer to the truth is that what he wrought wasn’t so much a cricket stroke as an affront to the accepted ideas of triangulation, and of what could and should happen when ball meets bat. It had about it a natural born brutal elegance, as if hands, wrists, arms, shoulders, abdominals and hips were made for hammering bowlers’ offerings. Cut. Over cover. For six. It was flat, fluid and furious. It was a poetic shock, a dagger in a daydream. And it wasn’t the first time Marais had done the undoable.

“It was the same when I scored the 300.” Ah yes, that old thing. In November 2017 Marais made 300 not out for Border against Eastern Province in East London. Off 191 balls — the fastest first-class triple century on record anywhere. “There’s a misconception. People think I must have just tonked [slogged] everything to the leg side. That’s obviously not what happened, but that’s a story for another day. I’ve been labelled a white-ball specialist, so if you read the articles [on that innings] the comments talk about matchfixing, or they ask how many times I was dropped. There’s no recognition of, ‘Jissie [heavens], you were dropped but well done — you still had to push through; you didn’t give up the fight’. You do get dropped; once, twice — OK, I got dropped more than twice — it’s going to happen. But it still feels unreal. I’ve got a video of me hitting the 191st ball for one, and running. It was amazing. When I hit the ball in that innings it was either four, six, or just over the fielder. Every time I looked up I had 50, 75, 100 more runs. Every time I’d reach a milestone, 10, 20, 50 runs flew past. It was unbelievable.”

Marais spoke as if he was recalling an out-of-body experience, as well he might. At 1.85 metres tall and 84 kilogrammes heavy he looks more like a gangly medium pacer in the mould of his father, Rico Marais, who played 15 first-class matches for Boland and 11 list A games for the province and the composite Impalas from December 1988 to January 1991. The apple has fallen a considerable distance from the tree this time. Marais the elder had a highest score of 82, his only half-century, in 39 innings across both formats. Marais the younger — he’s 26 — owns six first-class tons, three of the list A variety, and two more in T20s. He is rawboned and rangy, which makes him seem blessed with too much lean distance between, say, shoulder and elbow to allow for the kind of sustained assault on the bowling that feeds the discipline needed to hammer 300 off 191 balls. Not that appearances should be allowed to count for much: batting isn’t as effortlessly aggressive as he makes it look.

“Sometimes I try to hit the ball too hard. I’m very fortunate to have a dad who also played first-class cricket, and the feedback I always get is, ‘Don’t try and hit the ball too hard, because if you try and over-hit the ball you don’t time it as well’. So the focus this season has been on trying to hit the ball as late as possible, and into the ground.” Not, presumably, when he’s cutting bowlers for six. Part of the method in Marais’ madness is not to allow his hands to stray too far from his body. “Your power zone is a bit further away but I try and play in a box — that I draw mentally for myself — for as long as possible and expand from there. I found that, inside that box, that’s a power zone that I hadn’t known existed.”

The crispness of his strokes is governed by their correctness. He is a strong argument that T20 batting doesn’t have to be about graceless hitting. That said, 18 players have scored more runs in this year’s MSL than Marais’ 138 in seven innings, and there have been 41 higher innings than his best effort of 40 not out. But no-one has been as rivetting to watch, even when he isn’t sending the ball screaming for six. And even when he is at the non-striker’s end, like he was in Paarl on Sunday when batting partner Heino Kuhn sent a pair of vicious drives thudding into each of his arms. The Rocks bowler, Isuru Udana, had the good manners not to run Marais out as he all but doubled over in pain well out of his ground.

Marais is a cult attraction in a Giants’ line-up who have scrapped their way into the MSL qualifier, which will be played in Port Elizabeth on Friday with a place in Monday’s final against the Rocks in Paarl on the line. The St George’s Park crowd deserve another chance to see their team. “After games, whether I fail or do well, the messages will come in continuously: ‘Marco keep going’, ‘Don’t worry; keep your head up’, ‘Next game’. You almost forget about your previous performance, regardless of whether you did well or not. Then, when you go out to bat, you can play with freedom. There are so many people behind you and the team. We’re not fighting just for each other anymore; we’re fighting for the whole of Port Elizabeth, the whole of East London, the whole of the Eastern Cape.”

The MSL is a fairytale for Marais, who is contracted by the Warriors but was playing at semi-professional level only two months ago. So he has licence to bubble forth: “We played against Morné Morkel the other night. We’re playing against AB de Villiers, Dale Steyn, Wahab Riaz … there’s so much talent here … Tom Curran. We’ve got the privilege of sharing a changeroom with Jason Roy, a World Cup winner, and Ben Dunk. The knowledge we’ve got in the team and the whole tournament is unbelievable. I mean, Gary Kirsten coaching the Durban Heat – it doesn’t get better than that …

“If the goal of this tournament is to progress the players who are on the fringe of playing for South Africa, then it’s serving its purpose. There’s no other T20 tournament that we can play in. Not all the franchise players want to play in the [semi-pro] Africa [T20] Cup, where you’re only allowed to play four franchise players. So this is the only tournament you have if you’re not fortunate enough to be able to go and play overseas. These are your 10 of 12 games in the year, then you’re done. Then it’s either four-day cricket or 50-over stuff.”

But, this being South Africa, it’s not all good. Marais shows us what the MSL could be if only it wasn’t what it is: a reckless drain on Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) dwindling resources and a product of ego and vanity rather than the work of administrators who act in the best interests of the game. The MSL has delivered decent, entertaining cricket. But it has done so despite fires raging just beyond the boundary and all around.

“I don’t want to say there’s nothing we as players can do about it, but CSA have all the say. We have representatives and we get regular updates, but it would be good for CSA to tell us what they’re doing so we can know whether we are packing it in or whether it’s worth still trying to make a living from cricket. So that guys don’t waste three, four, five years out of their lives in which they could have studied or gained work experience.

“If CSA employ the right people we have nothing to worry about. But I can’t do anything about that. What they say is final. We can score runs, we can take wickets, we can try and win games. And if that’s not good enough we can at least say, as players, we tried, and if you’re not on a national or a franchise contract next year, so be it. Then you pack your things and go on to greener pastures.”

Easier for Marais to say than for others. When he isn’t cracking incandescent strokes around the ground he farms cattle and sheep near Stutterheim, some 90 kilometres from East London. You wonder, then, if his six off Siboto could be called agricultural batting. Just as you wonder what level of desperation thumps in the chests of his many peers who, unlike him, need CSA to grow up and run the game properly if they are to keep earning a paycheque playing cricket.

If you’re in McMinnville, Oregon, make a trip to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum to see the Spruce Goose, still stark and stately after all these years. So what? So sooner rather than later, if things keep going the way they are, the relic of what we have for many years called South African cricket will be similarly displayed.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Du Plessis goes to bat for SA cricket’s new deal

“It’s time for us to look ahead from all this crap that’s been happening behind the scenes.” – Faf du Plessis

TELFORD VICE in Paarl

FAF du Plessis has endorsed South Africa’s new power structure, which was installed less than three weeks before he is due to the his team in a men’s Test series against England. And he is mindful that not much time remains to stop the rot that has afflicted the wider game from leaping the boundary.

Cricket South Africa named Jacques Faul in an acting capacity on Saturday to replace suspended chief executive Thabang Moroe, and they hope to confirm Graeme Smith as their director of cricket on Wednesday.

But the board have stubbornly refused to take the blame for the crises that have befallen the game under their watch, including a slew of questionable governance practices and an estimated loss of USD 68.3-million by the end of the 2022 rights cycle.

Amid all that uncertainty, at least Du Plessis’ continued captaincy would seem assured, even though South Africa do not currently have a selection panel and are strewn with interim appointments. So it will come as good news that he approves of the new deal: “Jacques [Faul, currently the Titans franchise’s chief executive] is obviously a very experienced CEO, a doctor [of sport business studies], so I am sure he is pretty clever. But it’s about experience; getting people in that can take this great game of ours on the right track again. There’s too much negative stuff that has happened over the last four, five weeks. Our cricket is too strong to have so many issues all the time. We are too proud a cricketing nation to be talking about this stuff all the time. The attention needs to be on the cricket and making sure we will build ourselves as a team and ourselves as an organisation to be great again.”

Du Plessis could hear the clock ticking towards his team’s four-match rubber against Joe Root’s side, which starts in Centurion on December 26: “There’s not much time before the English series, so now it’s about putting our focus back on to the team and making sure that the Test team gets all the things that are required for them, or for us to be successful. It’s been a little bit paused for the last two or three weeks, which is already too late. So we need to make sure in the next week that things start unfolding to make sure the Test team gets the most attention over the next week. The last two weeks there hasn’t been much attention on that so that is what we will try and drive over the next week.”

Du Plessis made his debut under Smith’s captaincy, played in the latter’s last 14 Tests, and would doubtless welcome his appointment. But he was also determined to keep his gaze on matters on the field: “I am a firm believer that it’s time for us to look ahead from all this crap that’s been happening behind the scenes. It’s about making sure that the players are focused on to what is the cricket side of things. The players have got absolutely nothing to do with what’s happening behind the scenes. For me its important to separate that from a player’s point of view, and if it needs me to be dealing with some of these things then that’s OK. It’s about getting focus on what’s really important now, which is a a Test series against England. As I said before, it’s already a little bit 99 [11th hour] and things haven’t happened as they should have. But now we can start getting things on the right track.”

Du Plessis spoke after leading the Paarl Rocks to a tense 12-run win over the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants in a Mzansi Super League fixture that confirmed the Rocks’ place in the December 16 final, which they will play at home.

The tournament, which has been of a high standard and has delivered close finishes more often than not, is the among few positives in the game currently. But, as Du Plessis said, soon the spotlight will be back on the real world of international cricket. England are coming, ready or not.

First published by Cricbuzz.

MSL’s heavy hitters lead log

The Giants and the Rocks will stay on top regardless of the result of Thursday’s game between the Stars and the Heat.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

EIGHT times in the 10 match days in this year’s Mzansi Super League (MSL) the team at the top of the standings have been either the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants or the Paarl Rocks.

And so it was after the top-of-the-table clash between the teams at St George’s Park on Wednesday. Times two.

The Giants suffered their first defeat, by 31 runs, in their six matches in the campaign at the hands of a Rocks side who have also lost only once.

But the home side managed to deny the visitors a bonus point — which means both are in first place on 19 points each.

Whatever happens in Thursday’s game between the Cape Town Blitz and the Durban Heat at Newlands, that can’t change.

Victory for the fourth-placed Blitz will put them two points behind the leaders, but they would claim the Tshwane Spartans’ third place.

The Heat — the only remaining winless team still in contention, who have had three of their five matches washed out — can’t get out of fifth spot even if they win.

The Rocks wasted chances to go top alone on Wednesday, which they would have done had they limited the Giants’ total to less than 133.

In the 19th over of their reply to the Rocks’ 166/7, the Giants slipped to 128/9 and looked in danger of conceding the bonus point.

But, in the same over, Hardus Viljoen couldn’t hold a difficult chance in his follow through and Tabraiz Shamsi lost another in the lights.

That put the Giants on 132/9, and the first ball of the next over — bowled by Ferisco Adams — slipped down the leg side for a wide to take the home side to the magic number.

The Blitz’ Janneman Malan, who is fifth among the runscorers with a best effort of 99 not out, and the Heat’s David Miller, who is eighth despite having had only two innings, look like the key batters at Newlands on Thursday.

Durban’s Keshav Maharaj, one of only 10 bowlers in the tournament who has an economy rate of less than 6.5 runs an over, and Cape Town’s Dale Steyn, who with Junior Dala tops the wicket-taking lists with 10 strikes, seem the best options for keeping the runs down.

Another important stat will come from the stands, which have been conspicuously empty for the first two MSL games played at Newlands.

Only 3 671 — less than 15% of the ground’s capacity — turned up for the first of them, against the Jozi Stars on November 14.

And that despite the fact that only seven of the 22 players in action were not internationals, and that stars like Quinton de Kock, Steyn and Chris Gayle were involved.

It’s a sobering reality that South Africa’s franchise T20 matches frequently drew bigger crowds than the supposedly superior MSL.

First published by TMG Digital.

Giants, Rocks show what MSL could be

Can it be a happy accident that these teams play in front of two of the most animated crowds in the country? And that those spectators are drawn from smaller centres?

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

FOR the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants, Wednesday’s game against the Paarl Rocks at St George’s Park is just another top of the table clash in the Mzansi Super League (MSL).

Jon-Jon Smuts’ team have been first in the standings after six of the competition’s nine match days and second after two others.

Only once have they slipped to third, and that was seven match days ago.

The closest the Giants have come to losing any of their five games came when rain decided the issue in Centurion on November 13.

And a good thing, too, for the Tshwane Spartans — who were 33/4 after 7.1 overs.

The Rocks haven’t been as dominant. They were in first or second place after the first three match days, but spent the next five in third or fourth.

They played themselves back into second position with their exciting two-run win over the Cape Town Blitz at Newlands on Sunday. The Giants are, of course, in first place.

Can it be a happy accident that the Giants and the Rocks play in front of two of the most animated crowds in the country? And that those spectators are drawn from smaller centres?

With its brass band and festive atmosphere, whatever the time of year, St George’s Park is among the most welcoming and pleasant places in world cricket.

That warmth has been rewarded with tight victories, achieved with four balls and one ball remaining, over the Blitz and Durban Heat, along with a less memorable 24-run win over the tournament whipping boys, the Jozi Stars.

The Rocks are based at the venue with the smallest capacity, which despite that has boasted the event’s biggest attendances — not least through innovative marketing ploys like a dance competition and surely the most vibrant stadium music yet heard in this country.

In a tournament that is struggling for relevance among the cricketminded public there are lessons to be drawn from what Paarl, in particular, has achieved.

Attempts are being made to learn those lessons. The first 1 000 spectators at the Heat’s match against the Giants at Kingsmead on Saturday will get in for only R1. At Newlands, tickets to Blitz’ games cost just R30 during the league phase.

If that sounds like desperation it probably is considering most crowd figures have been embarrassingly poor.

But at least the fans will have new blood to cheer for on Wednesday.

Netherlands international Ryan ten Doeschate has replaced the injured Farhaan Behardien in the Giants squad, with promising allrounder Ruan de Swardt stepping in for the hamstrung JP Duminy for the Rocks.

Their presence won’t put a dent in the R100-million loss the MSL is expected to make this year, which is R20-million more than the competition is believed to have lapsed into the red last year.

By all that makes sense, the MSL shouldn’t exist. Even so, it does.

And that’s enough for those who only cricket know.

First published by TMG Digital.

Townships could be just the ticket for MSL

“Currently the MSL is the second-most watched T20 league in the world behind the IPL.” – Thabang Moroe talks a big game.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

IF you live in a township, the Mzansi Super League (MSL) could be coming to a ground near you.

The troubled tournament, now in its second edition and still without a headline sponsor or the prospect of breaking even, is currently playing out to mostly empty stands in the country’s major stadiums.

Except in Paarl, where the ground is part of the eastern suburb of Amstelhof, a disadvantaged coloured part of town.

A crowd of 5 500, the MSL’s biggest so far this year, attended the match between the Paarl Rocks’ home game against the Cape Town Blitz on Sunday.

That’s almost twice as many as the 2 844 who saw the Jozi Stars play the Nelson Mandela Giants at the Wanderers last week — despite the facts that the game was played on a Saturday and that it featured drawcards Chris Gayle, Kagiso Rabada and Jason Roy.

Only 3 104 were at St George’s Park on Wednesday to see the Giants beat a Cape Town Blitz side studded with Quinton de Kock, Dale Steyn and Wahab Riaz in a thrilling contest that was decided with only four balls to spare.

Paarl is undoubtedly a cricketminded place, so there’s no need to convince the locals to turn up.

But it wouldn’t have hurt that there are, comparatively, fewer entertainment options there than in bigger centres; neither that the competition appears to have been better marketed in Paarl than elsewhere.

Those factors haven’t gone unnoticed.

In an interview with television channel Newzroom Afrika on Thursday night, Cricket South Africa chief executive Thabang Moroe said: “We have to look at the Paarl Rocks and their stadium in the Boland and the number of people they are attracting.

“They’re people who’ve been hungry for cricket content — the stadium is in a township, and access is one of South African people’s problems.

“Not many people can afford to get to the stadiums and leave as late as the matches finish, and not everybody’s got access to a car to make it to the ground.

“Those are some of the things we need to work on to make sure we get those bums on seats, and help in getting people back home.”

Moroe said the MSL was “a perfect competition” to “take to the people”.

“We need to go back to the drawing board and look at our strategy and say, are we taking it to the right stadiums?

“And what would be the right answers in terms of moving matches around?”

A challenge to the noble aim of taking the MSL to the people is that every township ground beside Paarl’s would likely require a significant upgrade before it could host events of that size.

That’s a searing indictment of CSA, considering unity was proclaimed 28 years ago.

The blame for that can’t be laid at the door of Moroe, who admitted that swathes of empty seats was “not a good look” and correctly countered with “we need to look at previous domestic competitions, where attendance has been just as poor”.

Also, the weather hasn’t been a cricket fan, what with a third of the dozen games played so far washed out.

But Moroe made the stunning although unexplained claim, which was not interrogated on air, that the MSL was “currently the second-most watched T20 league in the world behind the IPL”.

Why then, besides the valid reasons Moroe has given, are so few people interested in seeing it first-hand?

And why, if the MSL is such a hot property, do almost no potential backers want to put their money where the tournament’s mouth is?

“We had a lot of work to get through in terms of commercial agreements that we needed to work on and sign in order to get the league over the line this year,” Moroe said.

“From the commercial side of things, there really isn’t that much work left to do.

“Except working hard on getting sponsors in.”

Maybe CSA should have done that first.

First published by TMG Digital.

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.

MSL? Meh. Fans tell the taxi to go somewhere else

“You need to play good cricket for people to come out and watch. People don’t want to watch average cricket.” – Dean Elgar talks as straight as he plays.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

A crowd of 5 500, five scores in the 80s, three bowlers who have half-a-dozen wickets each, another three who are conceding less than a run-a-ball after three games, seven who have claimed three scalps in a match.

Five totals of more than 180 — one past 200 — two matches decided by fewer than 20 runs, another in the last over, and, not before time, the weather doesn’t get in the way of a game in Durban.

But not all the news from the first 10 matches of the Mzansi Super League (MSL) has been good.

It’s taken that many games, three of them washed out, to finally get more than 5 000 people in the ground.

There they were, in all their purple glory, for the Paarl Rocks’ home game against the Tshwane Spartans on Sunday.

Vast swathes of empty seats and stands has been the unhappy constant for most of the tournament so far: if it’s a MSL game, tell the taxi to go somewhere else.

Credit, then, to Rocks captain Faf du Plessis for not trying to duck the truth at his press conference in Paarl after Sunday’s match.

“It is disappointing when you look around the country; there are not a hell of a lot of supporters,” Du Plessis said.

“We’ve got to make sure everyone puts in the time and effort to market this tournament as much as possible.

“It’s really important for cricket in South Africa that this tournament succeeds, so whatever we can do to get the fans in.”

Sunday’s match was the kind of tight contest the competition needs if it is to earn the attention of more eyeballs, whether at the ground or on SABC screens.

The Spartans chased down the Rocks’ 185/6 with eight wickets standing but only five balls to spare and with Dean Elgar’s unbeaten 84 taking them home.

The required runrate was in double figures for seven of the last 11 overs, and it needed Heinrich Klaasen to smash sixes off the last two balls of the penultimate over — bowled by seamer Kerwin Mungroo — to draw the sting from the contest.

Elgar had it damn straight when he said: “You need to play good cricket for people to come out and watch. People don’t want to watch average cricket.”

That hasn’t been the case often enough. In Paarl last Sunday the home side dismissed the Cape Town Blitz for 84 to win by 86 runs, and it doesn’t help that the most uncompetitive side are also the defending champions.

The Jozi Stars, last year’s winners, have played four, lost four — one, to the Blitz at Newlands on Thursday, by 57 runs, another, to the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants at the Wanderers on Saturday, by nine wickets with 65 balls remaining.

The Stars’ cause isn’t aided by the fact that the country’s most prominent bowler, Kagiso Rabada, isn’t firing.

Rabada has taken 3/132 from 15 overs for the tournament, and is 23rd on the list of economy rates, 30th in the averages and 31st in terms of strike rate.

It’s a similarly sad story for another of the Stars’ non-stars, the self-proclaimed “universe boss”.

Chris Gayle has looked like nothing more than the 40-year-old he is playing the 20-year-old’s game that is T20 cricket for his return of 46 runs from four innings.

Nineteen players have scored more runs than him — 10 of them in fewer trips to the crease — and 39 efforts have been higher than his best of 18.

Gayle is being shown up by Jozi teammates Reeza Hendricks and Temba Bavuma, whose aggregates of 161 and 160 mean they are, weirdly considering their side’s fortunes, the MSL’s highest runscorers.

The disciplined, aggressive Junior Dala looked the business for the Giants against the Stars on Saturday for his haul of 3/19, which — with his average of 10.16, economy rate of 6.77 and strike rate of 9.0 — has made him the competition’s leading bowler.

Most impressively of all, after two washouts in Durban rain managed to stay away from Kingsmead long enough for all 40 overs to be bowled for the Heat’s game against the Blitz on Sunday.

Alas, for the long-suffering home crowd, the Blitz won by 10 runs.

Welcome, Durbanites, to the reality of the MSL — overrated and underwhelming.

First published by TMG Digital.

Weak welcome for MSL at Newlands – and almost everywhere else

“Logistically it’s been awesome, and the standard’s right up there.” – the Cape Town Blitz’ Liam Livingstone is among the MSL’s few fans.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

BUT for the road closures and the glowing floodlights, few would have known there was a game on at Newlands on Thursday.

Not much more than regular weekday afternoon foot traffic was visible outside the main gate, and an hour before the start it seemed more people were on the field than in the stands.

Around 2 800 saw Kagiso Rabada bowl the first ball for the Jozi Stars to the Cape Town Blitz’ Janneman Malan in the latter side’s first home match of the second edition of the Mzansi Super League (MSL).

That swelled to a final figure of 3 671, or less than 15% of Newlands’ 25 000 capacity.

It didn’t help that a blustery but sunny day had given way to an evening greyed out by thick cloud tumbling down the slopes of Table Mountain, coddling the scene in a dampening mizzle.

Neither would prospective spectators have been coaxed off the couch by the fact that getting to the ground for the 5.30pm start would have meant, for many, taking on Cape Town’s traffic at its most snarled.

Most of the legions of younger fans T20 is designed for were no doubt, if they knew what was good for them, pouring over their books preparing for upcoming exams.

Even so, considering 15 of the 22 players involved were internationals — among them major drawcards Quinton de Kock, Dale Steyn and Chris Gayle — where were the hoards who would, the theory goes, be drawn by the prospect of seeing the stars in action?

Or had they decided to take advantage of the unusual luxury of being able to watch the game on the free-to-air SABC, which is beamed into exponentially more homes than subscription service Dstv’s SuperSport?

Unlikely, given that the state broadcaster has done precious little marketing for the tournament.

Six games into the competition, the same drab spectacle has played out more often than not.

Pre-match ticket sales have sometimes not reached 1 000, and only 4 480 saw the opening game between the Stars and the Blitz last Friday.

That seems reasonable, except that the match was played at the Wanderers — which was thus 86.88% empty.

The Durban Heat’s first two games, both at Kingsmead, were washed out. As were the Tshwane Spartans’ first two, one on the back of a 40-minute power failure.

There is, of course, nothing organisers can do about the weather beyond crossing chronically rain-ruined Kingsmead off the fixture list forever.

But the dowdy atmosphere at most MSL matches, evident both at grounds and on television, is unmistakable.

The exception has been in Paarl, where the tournament seems to be promoted on almost every lamppost and billboard hoarding

A crowd of 3 000 turned out for the Rocks’ home game against the Blitz on Sunday — which doesn’t seem impressive, but represents almost half the small ground’s capacity.

That match started at 10am, which isn’t the best idea for Paarl’s sizeable cricketminded but also churchgoing community on a Sunday.

Significantly more spectators are expected in Paarl this Sunday, when the first ball in the Rocks’ match against the Tshwane Spartans — or, you might say, against AB de Villiers and 10 comparative AN Others — will be bowled at 2pm.

The lesson, surely, is that if the money-bleeding, unloved, unlovable MSL must be played it would do better in smaller centres.

That’s looking from the outside in. From the inside, perspectives are different.

“It’s been absolutely brilliant,” Stars coach Donovan Miller said after Thursday’s game, despite his team, the defending champions, having crashed to their third defeat in as many games.

The Jamaican has coached in the Caribbean Premier League and Canada’s Global T20 League, so he has the credentials to say: “It’s a very good league and probably right up there with some of the best T20 competitions in the world.”

England T20 player Liam Livingstone, a veteran of the Indian Premier League and the Pakistan Super League, concurred: “I’ve been around a few different competitions and the environment we’ve got at the moment is as good as I’ve seen.

“Logistically it’s been awesome, and the standard’s right up there.”

But he did hope that “we get a few more people coming out to watch us next time”.

Livingstone is unlikely to ask himself why Thursday’s attendance was poor.

He didn’t have to fight the traffic to get to Newlands at an inconvenient time, nor tear himself away from more important matters, nor put up with the SABC’s dismal commentary.

Better yet, he’s being paid R1-million for his trouble.

Livingstone says the MSL is a winner?

He would, wouldn’t he.

First published by TMG Digital.