Elgar says 2015 spit spat with Kohli resolved over drinks

“If you do that again I’ll fucking poes you with this bat. I will absolutely knock you out on this field.” — Dean Elgar to Virat Kohli.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

DEAN Elgar alleges Virat Kohli spat at him during South Africa’s Test series in India in November 2015. Elgar says the two made up over a drink in India’s series in South Africa in January 2018. That wasn’t the only striking claim made as the cameras rolled.

Elgar, who played the last of his 86 Tests against India at Newlands earlier this month, made the incendiary allegation during a panel discussion led by Nick Rabinowitz, a comedian. Chris Morris and Jean de Villiers, a former captain of South Africa’s men’s rugby team, were the other participants.

“I came in to bat, and I was holding my own against Ashwin and Jadeja,” Elgar said. “Kohli spat at me, and I said to him, ‘If you do that again I’ll fucking poes [a South African profanity meaning hit] you with this bat. I will absolutely knock you out on this field.’”

Elgar said AB de Villiers, Kohli’s RCB teammate, confronted India’s then captain: “AB went up to him and said, ‘Bud, why are you spitting at my teammate? That’s not on.’ Two or three years later we’re playing in South Africa, and [Kohli] calls me aside and says, ‘Can we have a drink together at the end of the series? I just want to apologise for my actions.’ The punchline is we drank until three in the morning.”

Kohli is famously difficult to reach, even for senior Indian journalists. Cricbuzz asked the Virat Kohli Foundation whether they could confirm Elgar’s allegation or direct the question to someone who could. No response has been received. 

The discussion, billed as “Banter, [sic] with The Boys”, is “presented by” the SA20’s title sponsor and available online. In it, Australia’s explosive Test series in South Africa in March 2018 is revisited, and Elgar says off-field issues played a role in his decision to retire from the international game.

In 2018, Steve Smith — then Australia’s captain — David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were fined and banned, and publicly shamed at home after they were caught, during the third Test at Newlands, using sandpaper to roughen the ball. During the first Test at Kingsmead, Quinton de Kock retaliated to hours of on-field verbal abuse by Warner by insulting Warner’s wife in a stairwell altercation with her husband. That prompted Warner to threaten to assault De Kock. Spectators and CSA staff at the second Test at St George’s Park wore face masks to taunt Warner.

Morris, who was in the squad for the last two of the four matches, said tensions had been heightened by events in Durban: “That switched the South African team on properly. I remember AB saying, ‘Ons gaan hulle nou seermaak.’ [‘Now we’re going to hurt them.’] AB is usually placid and relaxed when he’s batting; he does his thing. But in that [Newlands] Test he was in such a zone.

“When it [the exposure of ball-tampering] happened AB was batting with Aiden Markram. AB blocked the ball and the big screen showed what had gone on with the sandpaper, and that’s when the crowd got involved. AB didn’t hear a thing. He was so focused on fucking the Australians up, because they were abusing him.

“Aiden walked down the wicket and said, ‘Abbas, something’s gone on here.’ AB said, ‘What do you mean?’ As he said that, it played on the big screen, showing Bancroft with the ball and putting it [the sandpaper] away. AB blocked the next ball. Bancroft came to pick it up. AB looked at him saying, ‘Hey! Cameron! Hey!’ Bancroft sheepishly looked up and made eye contact. AB went, ‘You’re fucked now, mate.’”   

Elgar said he had sympathy for the Sandpapergate three: “I felt sorry for the players, especially because of what happened afterwards. Watching Steve Smith be escorted out of the airport with 30 cops around him. He didn’t rape or kill someone.”

According to Elgar, he was assaulted by Andrew Symonds after the St George’s park Test in that series: “We went to the casino. It was two o’clock in the morning. The late Andrew Symonds was there. He was upside down [drunk]. He saw a great opportunity to give me a peek. For nothing. He smacked me. I looked at him, and I looked at AB. And AB said, ‘Oh no — don’t do this.’ I went forward [to punch Symonds] and AB pulled me back.”

Of his retirement, Elgar said: “I should have done it ages ago, really. I’m not totally retired — just from international bullshit. I’ve still got a lot of good years left in me. Unfortunately it’s not going to be on our shores. It’s going to be God Save the King [in a three-year contract to play for Essex].”

Elgar led South Africa in 18 Tests and was replaced by Temba Bavuma in February last year. But he ended his career back in charge because Bavuma was ruled out at Newlands with a hamstring injury. “It’s amazing when you get axed as captain and they want you to fill in and do the job again,” Elgar said. He was South Africa’s captain during the tumult that came with CSA’s administrative meltdown in 2020, during the 2021 allegations of racism running deep in the game, and when it became clear that South Africa’s presence as a Test entity would diminish. On top of that, Shukri Conrad, South Africa’s Test coach since January last year, has denied reports that he and Elgar do not have a good relationship. 

“There’s a lot of external things that I could get into, but I’ve got to choose my words,” Elgar said about his international retirement. “It’s been a tough two or three years of playing for the national side. It’s been hectic with off-field things that have taken time away from me and my family. And when you play Test series you want to play against the best in the world and you want to play four Tests, not two.”

Asked by Morris whether “at any stage did it become a las [drag] to play for the country”, Elgar said: “There were times when it became a lot of hard work and you lose your enjoyment. Playing for your country is the greatest honour, but I had to deal with a lot of stuff off the field — especially with the captaincy role.

“We had a new board and a coach [Mark Boucher, who was cleared on racism charges] who was going through a lot of scrutiny in South Africa, if not the world. You take all of that on board and you lose your focus. Your focus is actually to go out and play and score runs and win games. My focus shifted a lot. You wipe the shit out of your eyes and two years have gone by. And you’re like, ‘I’ve wasted two years of energy.’ I’ve got about a hundred thousand more grey hairs. Why put yourself through that?”

Elgar answered that question when he walked away at Newlands. As he did so, having been caught at first slip off Mukesh Kumar in his last Test innings, a familiar figure embraced him warmly. Maybe Kohli was keen on another drink.

Cricbuzz

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Arise opener Steven Smith

“I don’t know what they’re thinking with ‘Smithy’ in the T20s.” – Michael Clarke on Sky Sports Radio.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

“PLEASE welcome Australia’s opening pair, Steven Smith and David Warner.” Several ifs and buts would have to be settled before that could become true, but it would be remiss not to raise the prospect as the Australians’ white-ball tour of South Africa looms. And not only because of the long, lingering shadow cast by Sandpapergate.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Smith has never opened the batting in his 358 international innings across the formats. But he will, selection chair George Bailey said on Tuesday, do so in the three T20Is against South Africa at Kingsmead on August 30 and September 1 and 3. Warner, who has taken guard at No. 1 or 2 in all but a dozen of his 438 trips to the crease for Australia, has been rested for the rubber. There is thus no chance of Smith and Warner opening the innings in the T20Is.

But both are in the squad for the five ODIs, which will be played in Bloemfontein and at Centurion and the Wanderers from September 7 to 17. As is Travis Head, who has opened in 18 of his last 22 ODI innings. Head scored 89 runs in three innings in India in March, but banked 240 in three games at home against England in November — 152 of them in a stand of 269 with Warner, who made 106, in the third match at the MCG.

Australian conditions are closer to South Africa’s than India’s, which adds to Head’s already decent argument to keep his place at the top of the order. But will that remain the case should Smith shoot the lights out in the T20I series? How could that not make him a candidate to open in the ODIs? Wouldn’t Australia want to have a look at him in the role before the World Cup in India in October and November?

Smith has, after all, batted only one place lower in 76 of his 126 ODI innings, among them his most recent 22. He has scored three centuries in those 22 games — after taking guard in the 28th, 23rd and fifth overs. In six more of those innings he has been summoned to the crease between the second and the sixth overs, and scored 53, 61, 76, 85, 94 and 98. So there can be no argument about his abilities facing the new ball. 

Despite that making a case for Smith to open, especially in T20Is, would have been outlandish until January. Getting him into the XI seemed difficult enough. He has played in only 63 of Australia’s 150 T20Is from his first in February 2010. And for good reason: this is his least impressive format.

Only Joe Root has scored more Test runs than Smith’s total of 9,320 from the Australian’s debut in July 2010. He has 32 centuries in Tests and 12 in ODIs. His Test average is 58.61 — it topped 60 before a series in India in February — and 44.49 in ODIs.

But all he has to show after 51 T20I innings are four 50s. Of Australia’s 33 current players in the format 14 have higher strike rates than Smith’s 125.21. He was overlooked for four of Australia’s five matches at last year’s T20 World Cup. In 155 innings in other T20s before January he had scored one century — 101 off 54 at No. 3 for Rising Pune Supergiants against Gujarat Lions in Gahunje in the 2016 IPL, a tournament he hasn’t graced since 2021.

That Smith’s T20 fortunes were about to change didn’t seem apparent when he drove off the back foot and was caught at extra cover for 36 in the eighth over of a Big Bash League match at the SCG on January 15. But something had changed: Smith had opened the batting, with Josh Philippe, for the Sydney Sixers.

Two days later, against the Adelaide Strikers in Coffs Harbour, Philippe and Smith opened again. Smith hammered 101 off 56. Four days after that the same pair walked out at the start of a game against the Sydney Thunder at the SCG. Smith’s unbeaten 125 came off 66.

He followed that with 66 and 18 in away matches against the Hobart Hurricanes and the Perth Scorchers, but by then the narrative had shifted — after spending most of his international career as a meh T20 option Smith will come to South Africa having been given a platform to dismiss that perception.

“It was pretty exhilarating, [Smith’s] innings in the Big Bash, and I thought it highlighted the skill set he has and what he can do,” Bailey told reporters when he announced the squad. “The way he played, that’s something we want to see replicated internationally. So it’s important that he gets an opportunity to have a crack.”

Michael Clarke wasn’t convinced. “I don’t understand [Smith’s selection] … that to me is embarrassing for the selectors,” Clarke said on Sky Sports Radio on Tuesday. “They had him in the World Cup squad last year and he couldn’t make the XI. Selections over the past 15 months have been absolutely confusing. Smith not playing in that World Cup, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There’s just no accountability. It’s just swept under the carpet. I feel like I’m just watching a different game.

“I don’t know what they’re thinking with ‘Smithy’ in the T20s. I don’t think he’s playing any other T20 cricket around the world. He’s not getting a gig in the IPL, didn’t get picked up there. He must still want to play though.”

Maybe Clarke missed the Big Bash. Maybe he needed a hook on which to hang Bailey and his co-selectors, Andrew McDonald and Tony Dodemaide. Maybe Smith will make Clarke’s opinion look silly. Maybe not.

Nothing would be uncertain about the ire vented at Smith and Warner if, somehow, they do open in the ODIs in South Africa, where the crowds will never let them forget their central roles in the 2018 ball-tampering scandal. But the howls of outrage would ring with hypocrisy.

South Africa were done for ball-tampering three times between October 2013 and November 2016. In each instance the players concerned — Faf du Plessis twice, once while he was captain, and Vernon Philander — were defended by CSA. They were also largely supported by the public. So stones thrown, metaphorically, by South Africans at Smith and Warner would come from the front yard of a house made entirely of glass.

What happened in Australia in 2018 couldn’t have contrasted more starkly with South Africa’s embrace of their own ball-tamperers. Anger came down from on high in the shape of then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who weighed in hammily. Smith and Warner, then Australia’s captain and vice-captain, as well as the third stooge, Cameron Bancroft, were banned by CA and head coach Darren Lehmann resigned in tears.

The difference in the effect prompted by the identical cause made you wonder whether South Africa and Australia were on the same planet, nevermind in the same hemisphere. But let’s not let logic get in the way.

The crass crescendo would rise in South Africa’s stands despite Smith and Warner having already batted together in the country since Sandpapergate. They shared 50 for the second wicket in a T20I at St George’s Park and put on 26 in an ODI in Paarl, both in February 2020.

To be fair to the fans it’s one thing for Smith to join Warner in the middle after the fall of a wicket, quite another for them to stroll out together ordained to open the opera that is an innings.

Not that South Africans need prompting to take aim at Aussies. Many of them cannot understand the self-harming fuss made in Australia over the 2018 debacle. How, they ask, could Australians have been surprised when their team were exposed as cheats? The rest of the cricket world have held this to be self-evident for years.

So Smith and Warner opening in the ODIs in South Africa next month, admittedly a long shot, would stir old ugliness. But it could be worth the bother — and not only to hear what the Wanderers, where thoughts become words or approximations thereof unfiltered except through beer, thinks about that.

Cricbuzz

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Roll up for the history tour

“For us to open old wounds would probably bring Australia closer together.” — why South Africa aren’t talking about Sandpapergate, courtesy of Malibongwe Maketa.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

RARELY can history have hung so heavily over a Test series. Cricket in Australia seemed on the edge of implosion in the wake of the 2018 Sandpapergate scandal. South Africa did the undoable in Adelaide last month and lost to the Netherlands to crash out of the T20 World Cup, a supernova result that blasted through the barrier between formats.

And here we are, on the cusp of the first Test between the teams since 2018 and South Africa’s first match since unarguably the most calamitous performance in even their pockmarked history.

Add the shaky form of David Warner, Sandpapergate’s antihero-in-chief, and concerns over the mental and physical well-being of Temba Bavuma, the rock of the middle order, and the subplot becomes at least as compelling as the big picture. Warner was limited to 102 runs in four innings by West Indies in the past two weeks. Bavuma was alarmingly if understandably crestfallen after captaining South Africa to catastrophe at the World Cup, and has faced only 92 balls since because he was rested and then suffered a flare-up of a lingering elbow issue.

There’s yet more distraction in the shape of unseemly public skirmishes between Australia’s hard bastard old guard, headed up by disgruntled former coach and now prominent television pundit Justin Langer, and the less instinctive, more intelligent approach espoused by captain Pat Cummins. Warner, a cricketer cut from Langer’s cloth and playing under Cummins, surely cannot avoid being caught in the middle. Particularly not with the angry heat of abandoned attempts to overturn Warner’s Sandpapergate-sparked life ban from leadership positions still hanging in the air.

It isn’t often that South Africa, who have become adept at shutting out the chronic ineptness of their dysfunctional suits and the poisonous idiocy spouted by their racially divided cricketminded public, head into a series with less damaging noise in their ears than their opponents. This is one of those times. An improved relationship between the players and CSA’s board is one reason. Another is the soap opera cricket in Australia seems to have become.

Meanwhile in other news focused on events on the field, the pre-series narrative has settled on a scenario of a pair of unconvincing batting line-ups struggling to survive against a couple of crack attacks. It’s more complicated than that.

Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith are the top ranked batters in Test cricket with Travis Head and Usman Khawaja at Nos. 7 and 8. Dean Elgar, at No. 16, is the only South African in the top 30. On the bowling front, Cummins and Mitchell Starc are at Nos. 1 and 9 with Kagiso Rabada at No. 7. Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood — who won’t play at the Gabba because of injury — and Keshav Maharaj are also in the top 30.

Australia have lost only one of their last dozen Tests, while South Africa have gone down in four of their most recent 12. South Africans’ would retort that while the Australians have mostly been afforded decent batting conditions — seven of those 12 Tests have been played on their sound home pitches and another three on Pakistan’s benign surfaces — Elgar’s team have had to be content with various degrees of craziness in 10 of their last dozen Tests, including the five they have played in their own backyard. The exceptions were the two Tests they played, and won handsomely, in St Lucia last June.

But who needs to check the tightness of nuts and bolts like those when you have arching bridges of history, real, imagined and projected, at which to marvel? How, or indeed if, the teams navigate from one side of their abyss to the other will make fascinating watching. History in the making always does.

When: Saturday, 10.20am Local Time

Where: The Gabba, Brisbane

What to expect: Little chance of weather interruptions. And more runs than Australia’s swingiest Test ground is credited with yielding. As is the case in Sydney and Adelaide, six of the 30 totals of 400 or more made in Australia in the past 10 years have been scored in Brisbane.

Team news:

Australia: Josh Hazlewood is still out with the side strain that prevented him from playing in the Adelaide Test against West Indies. Pat Cummins also missed that match because of a quadriceps problem but has been declared fit for the Gabba.

Possible XI: David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith, Travis Head, Cameron Green, Alex Carey, Pat Cummins (capt), Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Scott Boland. 

South Africa: Rassie van der Dussen, who missed the Oval Test in August with a broken finger, is likely to fill the gap left at No. 3 by Keegan Petersen, who is not in the squad because of a hamstring injury.

Possible XI: Dean Elgar (captain), Sarel Erwee, Rassie van der Dussen, Temba Bavuma, Theunis de Bruyn, Kyle Verreynne, Marco Jansen, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortjé, Lungi Ngidi .

What they said:

“We’ve buried that. It’s something of the past. I don’t think either team’s going to delve into that.” — Marnus Labuschagne on Sandpapergate, which exploded seven months before he made his debut.

“When you come through those situations sometimes it galvanises the team. For us to open old wounds would probably bring [Australia] closer together as a unit.” — Malibongwe Maketa, South Africa’s interim coach, explains why the visitors are making forgive and forget noises about the 2018 ball-tampering scandal.

Cricbuzz

Cultures collide when cricketers clash

“What happened was un-Australian. We play hard but fair. Always have, always will.” – an Australian on Sandpapergate.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

TWO days before it became a blaze of light and sound befitting last month’s men’s T20 World Cup final, the MCG sprawled and soared silently into the night. Less than 5km away along the tram route, in a common or garden pub nestled on a corner in Hawthorn, last rounds were called above the rattle of chatter.

Plenty of beer had been soaked up by three young Australian men leaning heavily on one of the pub’s tall tables. They were cricket people but, importantly, not T20 people: “Nah mate. Not that crap.” So a World Cup final happening down the road in the coming days mattered less to them than where their next drink might come from, and not only because Australia weren’t involved. And even if England might be beaten.

What did matter? “Test cricket mate. Boxing Day, we’re there.” This December 26 Australia’s opponents will be South Africa, who haven’t played a Boxing Day Test in Melbourne for 14 years. The series, which starts at the Gabba next Saturday, will mark the first time the teams have clashed in the format since their momentous rubber in South Africa in March 2018.

That drama started with David Warner and Quinton de Kock almost coming to blows in a stairwell at Kingsmead. It spun off kilter at St George’s Park, where spectators degraded Warner’s wife in cowardly fashion. That was also where Kagiso Rabada’s shoulder made what was initially adjudged to have been illegal contact with Steve Smith. The ban that decision triggered was overturned on appeal. At Newlands, Cameron Bancroft, in a plot masterminded by Warner with Smith’s knowledge and acquiescence, was caught applying sandpaper to the ball. Australians, including their then prime minister, took the dimmest view of the latter.

That that should stoke the ire of a certain kind of Aussie the most said more about them than they should want being said. They seemed less disturbed by the behaviour of one of their senior players. And by the shameful treatment of one of their citizens — who was blameless into the bargain — by boors in the bleachers. What swept them into high dudgeon was the exposure of their hagiography for what it was. Their hubris couldn’t stand up to scrutiny.

The shock in Australia that their players could do such a thing — “Ball-tampering?! Us?! But we’re Australians! We don’t do that!” — was met everywhere else by a dearth of surprise: “Ball-tampering? You? Of course: Australians are born cheats.” More than four years on, at least some of those feelings are undiluted, even by a long day’s drinking. Asked what he had made of Sandpapergate, one of the three young Aussies in the pub in Hawthorn said: “I was disgusted. I still am. What happened was un-Australian. We play hard but fair. Always have, always will.” It seemed cruel to disabuse him of the notion, despite the open and shut case to the contrary.

That thread stretched to Brisbane on Monday, when Dean Elgar gave his first press conference of South Africa’s tour. Most of the engagement focused on what one reporter termed “the infamous 2018 series”, perhaps to seek from Elgar an acknowledgement that the Australian response to Sandpapergate was justified. That was not forthcoming. Many South Africans considered the hue and cry a massive over-reaction, and sat back and watched smug with schadenfreude.

Or maybe Monday’s prize was a line from the famously combative Elgar that could be barbed and baited and hooked into a headline ahead of the first Test at the Gabba, which starts next Saturday. Or both. Fair dinkum: that’s what reporters do, whether or not they’re Australian. That, too, was not achieved.

Did the South Africans harbour ill feelings towards the home side? “None at all,” Elgar said. “It was a very tough time for all of us, even though we weren’t the guys who took the brunt of everything. But we were part of that. They were sad events, but I don’t have animosity towards the players involved or CA. They were unfortunate scenes but that period has long elapsed and we’ve moved forward.

“I wish things could have been a lot different. The history, when it comes to Test cricket between South Africa and Australia, is so rich. The competitive nature [between the teams] is very similar. We both want to go out and play a brand of cricket that our countries can be proud of. It was extremely juicy, even building up to that game in Cape Town. They were interesting times.”

What did he want to see this time? “Hopefully there’s no antics going on on the field that anyone gets busted for. But there’s always a bit of spice. We love playing against Australia. We’ve got a heap of respect for Australian cricket.”

Was he peeved at the players who had served their bans and resumed their careers? “Not at all. Smith and Warner are two cricketers I’ve played against for over a decade. There’s definitely no bad blood.”

On Tuesday, at an exclusively South African press conference, Sandpapergate came up again. Once. Malibongwe Maketa, who was South Africa’s assistant coach in 2018 and is now in charge on an interim basis, said: “A handful of us were involved in that series. I know it changed people’s careers but for us, on the other side of the spectrum, it was an unfortunate incident. And, where we are now, it’s way back then.”

Not in Australia, where it’s big news again. On Wednesday Warner abandoned his attempt to have his life ban from serving in leadership positions overturned because the hearings would not be held in private, which would amount to a retrial. “They want to conduct a public spectacle to, in the [independent review] panel’s words, have a ‘cleansing,” Warner wrote in a statement. “I am not prepared for my family to be the washing machine for cricket’s dirty laundry.”

Maybe Australians should listen to Elgar and Maketa, who essentially told them they aren’t special. That they had and would again stoop to the same sillinesses as the rest of us, in sport and everything else. That sometimes they would advance fair, other times not. South Africa, for instance, were done for ball-tampering three times between October 2013 and November 2016.

On each occasion CSA and most of the public defended the players involved — Faf du Plessis, twice, and Vernon Philander. There was no thought of punishing them to a greater degree than the ICC, as CA did to Smith, Warner and Bancroft, or even of castigating them.

Du Plessis’ second infraction happened in Australia, and the resultant storm elicited an amused awe from the South Africans that their hosts could take the issue so seriously. “The media attention and aggression multiplied exponentially,” Du Plessis wrote in Faf: Through Fire. “People attacked my character and my faith.”

There was a suspicion that things might have been different had an Australia player been the target. With the benefit of the hindsight provided by events at Newlands less than two years later, the South Africans’ wry smiles of 2016 would have broken into guffaws of astounded agreement that those supremely sanctimonious Australians really had suspended their disbelief enough to consider their players better than that.

The culture clash doesn’t end there. South Africans are amazed at what looks from afar like Australian cricket’s determination to inflict self-harm. There’s the Warner situation, and there’s Justin Langer commanding one pole of opinion on how things should be done — the old, bloodyminded, get on with it way — and Pat Cummins representing the other — the new, empathetic, be part of the modern world way. In South Africa, bitter and twisted former players and coaches disappear into putrid but petty puddles on social media. In Australia they become powerful media figures, as Langer has.

At a presser with the South African media on Thursday, Rassie van der Dussen admitted to surprise at Australian cricket’s apparent enthusiasm for undoing itself. He also offered what could be considered a cynical thought: “I see there’s a season two of ‘The Test’ being released, so maybe there’s a bit of that involved. Controversy sells and people want to stay relevant. Actions speak louder than words, and there’s a lot of words going around.” The documentary will hit screens in January, and will deal with Cummins becoming captain and the messy end of Langer’s tenure as coach. 

Not that the game in South Africa is free of internecine damage, as was painfully made clear last year by CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-Building project. If anything, agendas compete more fiercely in the country than anywhere else in the cricket world. Every facet of South Africa’s society is afflicted by racism and racially based economic and social inequality, and that despite apartheid ending in 1994. Conflicts over race are never far from erupting regardless of the issue ostensibly at hand.

Because Mark Boucher was among a slew of whites appointed to powerful positions in December 2009, when several black and brown figures were swept aside, he was dogged by criticism throughout his tenure as coach. When South Africa lost, it was his fault. When they won, he was denied the credit. Boucher’s voluntary departure with a middling record after the T20 World Cup led to Maketa being installed in, at this stage, a temporary capacity.

Elgar has made plain that he pushed for Maketa’s elevation, and was satisfied to have “got that right”. When Graeme Smith, as CSA’s then director of cricket, appointed Boucher, he was slammed for favouring a friend. How was Elgar’s support for Maketa different? “Due to the short-term nature of this appointment, it was important for the director of cricket to get the input of the captain,” Pholetsi Moseki, CSA’s chief executive, told Cricbuzz. “So I don’t think it’s the same as the Graeme Smith-Mark Boucher situation as that was a permanent appointment.” 

That’s the right answer for now. But if Maketa, a highly qualified and popular coach, lands the job permanently would he also have to endure mindless hate? Probably not, because the circumstances are beyond the blunt binary narratives that divide and damage debate in South Africa depressingly often. Elgar is white and Maketa black, and that means the usual poisonous nonsense would have nowhere to grow.

Australians who struggle to understand that should know South Africans can’t make sense of Cummins raising concerns about a major sponsor, Alinta Energy. They know fossil fuel industries have a disastrous impact on the planet, and that Cummins is a vocal advocate for action on the climate crisis. They also know CA have said the Test captain’s views aren’t why the company will part ways with cricket when their current agreement expires at the end of next year. What’s difficult for South Africans to fathom is that this could happen to a sponsorship reportedly worth AUS$40-million — the equivalent of almost two-and-a-half times the loss CSA declared at their annual meeting on November 26.

The space where Alinta’s logo sits on Australia’s playing shirts has been blank on South Africa’s kit since December 2019, when sponsors deserted CSA as push came to shove for a delinquent board. The suits who replaced that sorry bunch have exponentially more credibility and real world expertise and experience, but serious corporate backing has not returned for reasons ranging from what Covid did to South Africa’s already failing economy, to a perceived lack of confidence in CSA’s rehabilitation. So any player in South Africa who objected to the kind of money Alinta is pumping into the game in Australia would likely be told, by his teammates, administrators and the cricketminded public, to shut up and sit down regardless of what the company doing the pumping was selling.

In 2004, when Hashim Amla refused to wear, on religious grounds, logos advertising alcohol on his playing kit, his choice was accepted by many South Africans not of his faith. Given how impoverished the game in South Africa has become in the ensuing 18 years, if Amla had to make the same decision today it might be significantly less well received. Comparatively affluent Australian cricket wouldn’t have to confront that scenario.

Series between Australia and South Africa are said to produce compelling cricket because the cultures of cricket in their countries are similar, as Elgar argued. Closer to the truth is that differences between those cultures, and in the wider realities in which they exist, fuel fires on the field. The similarities are limited to superficial echoes. Or a means to an end, as Du Plessis wrote, “I realised early on that the only way to win against [Australia] was to match their aggression in order to neutralise their attempts at bullying you into submission.”

Doubtless the fires will burn again in the coming weeks, and with an intensity that startles neutrals. How high will the flames climb this time? 

Cricbuzz

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Evolving Elgar: more like Du Plessis, less like Warner

“Maybe a year ago it wasn’t as okay as it is now.” – Dean Elgar on what we don’t see about his captaincy.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

FAF du Plessis looked, as usual, as if he had stepped out of the pages of a magazine. In fact he had emerged from Kingsmead’s dressing room to see what all the fuss was about clad in nothing but a towel. Had Dean Elgar been South Africa’s captain, he might have rushed out stark raving naked brandishing a bat in one hand, swinging a stump in the other and not bothering to ask questions.

Du Plessis’ calm presence in that doorway remains an enduring image from the first of too many unseemly episodes on Australia’s tour of South Africa in March 2018, the last time the teams met in a Test series.

David Warner, aided and abetted by fielding close to the bat, had spent much of the second session of the fourth day of that match, the first of the rubber, verbally abusing Quinton de Kock, who was batting. Warner kept spewing nastiness when the players left the field for tea, and as they were making their way up the stairs De Kock retaliated by making a disgraceful comment involving Warner’s wife. The already ugly Aussie exploded with loud, foul-mouthed rage and had to be physically retrained, which emptied the dressing rooms. We know this because the scene was captured, in all its ingloriousness, on the security cameras. 

Elgar, who was in that South Africa XI, would not become captain until March 2021. And a good thing, too, probably. Du Plessis is measured, diplomatic, and mindful of cause and effect. The Elgar of March 2018 was a shoot first, refuse to apologise later kind of guy. Happily, South Africa will be led in the Test series that starts at the Gabba on December 17 by a figure who has developed into someone more like Du Plessis even as he has become less like Warner.

“Ten years ago I might not have had the skills to deal with it,” Elgar told reporters in Johannesburg on Thursday about shouldering the burdens of leadership. “Being 35, I’ve taught myself how to do things and when to focus on things. As a player I’m here to score runs; I’m here to win innings for our team. But I’ve also got a greater responsibility. That’s off-the-field stuff that people don’t see. It’s actually been okay. Maybe a year ago it wasn’t as okay as it is now.

“Some things you don’t have to waste your energy on. Putting energy into the important things is important. I don’t sweat the small things because I think you waste a lot of energy when you do that. When it comes to my players I use a lot of energy. Every player has their own pressures and being captain you have a few extra responsibilities.”

Another indication of the progress Elgar has made at a human level is the care he showed when he spoke of his vice-captain, Temba Bavuma, who will have to put behind him captaining South Africa to their most infamous loss yet in their T20 World Cup match against the Netherlands in Adelaide last month: “What we’ve discussed between us is personal. I respect what he’s been through, but I can’t speak for what he has been through because I wouldn’t know how to deal with it personally. So, for now, I’m respecting the space he is in.”

Elgar goes to Australia having scored a century and a half-century in four innings in South Africa’s domestic first-class competition. Bavuma, a nuggety Test batter, hasn’t played since the Adelaide awfulness on November 6.

“I think the time off has done him good,” Elgar said. “He wanted to have a break from the game and you’ve got to respect that as well. He’s got a lot of pressure on his plate. But we’ve got to go to work again soon and he’s got to be in the right space for the team. That’s going to be the message I put forward to him. I’m pretty sure he’ll respond well. It’s up to me to get him into the right space so we give him the best opportunity to go out and play his brand of Test cricket.”

Elgar’s evolution is far from the only major change in South African and Australian cricket in the past three and more years. Warner, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft ended the 2018 series in disgrace for their central roles in the Sandpapergate ball-tampering scandal, but have all returned to the fold. Warner’s reputation has been laundered to the extent that his life ban from leadership positions in Australia’s teams is being openly and widely contested by people who didn’t raise a peep of protest when it was imposed.

De Kock, Du Plessis’ successor as captain, led in four Tests, eight ODIs and 11 T20Is before he was sacked — only nine of those games were won — and replaced by Elgar and Bavuma, in the white-ball formats, in March 2021. De Kock retired from Tests that December. Du Plessis played his last Test in Rawalpindi in February 2021 but was expected to re-appear for the T20 World Cup. He didn’t.

Ottis Gibson, South Africa’s coach in 2018, was fired after his team’s dismal 2019 ODI World Cup and replaced, in an interim capacity, by Enoch Nkwe and, permanently that December, by Mark Boucher — who resigned after the T20 World Cup with a year left on his contract. Another interim coach, Malibongwe Maketa, who served as Gibson’s assistant, will take South Africa to Australia. Elgar would seem to have had something to that happening: “‘Mali’ is one of the coaches I asked our director [of cricket] to try and get in to be interim. I got that right. He understands his role, which is going to be a supportive role. He understands me as a cricketer, as a person and as a leader.” Nkwe, who served as Boucher’s assistant coach from December 2019 to August 2021, when he resigned citing, in part, difficulties working with Boucher, is now CSA’s director of cricket.   

Tim Paine found himself lumped with the Australia Test captaincy before the end of the 2018 rubber, only to be undone by a sexting scandal in November 2021. He has been succeeded by Pat Cummins. Darren Lehmann quit as Australia’s coach in the wake of Sandpapergate and was followed into that position by Justin Langer, who resigned in February this year and is now taking cheap shots at Cummins.

The whirl of these twin revolutions is enough to make anyone’s head spin. But Elgar’s is on firmly enough to keep a steady eye on the challenges of playing a series in Australia. Particularly when the visitors are South Africa. Or is it that not everything about Elgar has changed?

“The nature of individuals in their squad is pretty brash and bold, in-your-face kind of characters,” he said. “I think that plays into our hands. I think we enjoy confrontation as a group and we manage it pretty well. We’ve got calm heads around that. If they want to be in-your-face, it’s fine. I definitely don’t shy away from that and I will be encouraging the players not to shy away because I think that’s when South Africans bring out their best character.”

South Africa won the 2018 series but have since prevailed in only five, while losing seven, of their 13 rubbers in the format. Australia had played 11 Test series before their current home engagement against West Indies, winning five and losing four.

But not since 2008 have South Africa been in Australia to play the Boxing Day and New Year Tests. “Growing up as a kid, you always wake up for these Boxing Day Test matches Down Under and you don’t mind losing a few hours sleep,” Elgar said. “Now we’ve got 16 players who are going to experience it first-hand. It’s a childhood dream. I don’t think it gets bigger than this.

“But you can’t let events overwhelm your thinking. That’s going to be the message I am going to be driving. We are still there to do a job. You need to respect where you are and take in the moments in your own personal way, but we are playing a Test match for South Africa and we need to back our processes as long and as hard as we can to give us a favourable result.”

South Africa’s victory in 2008 was their first series win in Australia after five defeats and three draws since 1910. They have since won two consecutive rubbers there. Australia finished on top in the first five series they played in South Africa, starting in 1902. The South Africans won the next two, the last of them the final series the team from the then apartheid state contested until 1992 because of isolation. It took another eight rubbers between the sides in South Africa, two of them drawn, before the home side won the 2018 epic.

Australia versus South Africa, or South Africa versus Australia, invariably bristles with a mutual contempt born of a certain familiarity of national characters. That cannot change, however much the game changes in these countries.

So come on in. The water will be as hot this time as it has been every other time. Don’t forget your towel.

Cricbuzz

Nothing lasts forever, even David Warner’s life ban

“The amendment would allow a person to request a penalty that they had accepted be reviewed after an appropriate period of time.” — Cricket Australia prepare for Warner’s return to leadership.

Telford Vice / Geelong, Victoria

NON-AUSTRALIAN cricket followers won’t be pleased to hear this, but they wouldn’t be surprised: David Warner, who was banned from leadership positions for the rest of his career for masterminding the ball-tampering disgrace that erupted in South Africa in 2018, could soon be granted the suits’ blessing to captain a team.

Cricket Australia’s board decided on Friday to change the organisation’s code of conduct to allow ongoing disciplinary sentences to be reviewed on appeal by an independent commissioner and, if deemed worthy, commuted.

“The amendment would allow a person to request a penalty that they had accepted be reviewed after an appropriate period of time,” a CA statement said. “Currently the code states that once a charge and penalty is accepted, there is no avenue for review. The onus would be on the applicant to prove they had undergone genuine reform relevant to the offence they were sanctioned for.

“Any review would not revisit the original sanction, other than suspension of a penalty in recognition of genuine reform. The board has requested that the CA head of integrity propose an amendment to the code for consideration. It was agreed that should an amendment in respect to long-term sanctions be adopted, any review of a penalty would be heard by an independent code of conduct commission.”

Warner is the only Australia player serving a life ban. He is less than five years into that sentence, but he could be back in charge of a side before Christmas: Cricket New South Wales asked CA to reconsider Warner’s case because the Sydney Thunder are in the market for a stand-in captain for the BBL that starts on December 13.

Aaron Finch, who retired from ODIs last month and turns 36 next month, has led Australia in 128 white-ball games and is clearly reaching the end of his career. He and Test captain Pat Cummins have voiced their support for Warner’s return to formal leadership — he was appointed as Smith’s Test and ODI vice-captain in August 2015 and was at the helm in a dozen ODIs and T20Is from 2016 and 2018 — and nevermind that Warner is three weeks older than Finch.

CA will thus have to live with non-Australians thinking the decision to revisit Warner’s starring role in Sandpapergate reeks of expediency. Now that Australian cricket needs him in a managerial capacity, he’s OK. From polecat to prodigal son. No further questions, your honour.

That’s a sweeping u-turn from 2018, when CA decided after an investigation that Warner had misled poor, innocent Cameron Bancroft into using sandpaper to roughen the ball and that Warner had dominated poor, gormless Smith into allowing that to happen. The plot was discovered by broadcasters SuperSport — otherwise known as South Africa’s 12th-man — during the Newlands Test in March 2018.

How long the Australians had deployed their dark art by then is not known. All three players lied about their cheating under mounting pressure, some of which came from the highest office in the land. Malcolm Turnbull, then Australia’s prime minister, said he was “shocked and bitterly disappointed” and demanded Smith’s removal as captain. Sandpapergate duly cost Smith and Warner their positions, and Darren Lehmann his job as coach. James Sutherland would have wanted a better farewell to his 17 years as CA’s chief executive than this mess. CA chair David Peever and board member Mark Taylor resigned.

Smith and Warner were banned from playing for a year and Bancroft for nine months. Smith was precluded from captaining for an additional year after he had served his suspension. Warner wasn’t afforded any such favour. South Africans looking on at the time were caught between schadenfreude at their bitter rivals being torn apart from within and bemusement that Australians could take the matter so seriously.

Faf du Plessis and Vernon Philander had been caught in the same ball-tampering act three times in the previous five years, and not once did Cricket South Africa take action against them. They left that to the ICC, who banned Smith for the last match of the 2018 series, merely fined Bancroft, and didn’t even charge Warner. Besides, it wasn’t as if Aussies had a reputation for fair play: Warner himself had behaved abominably on the field and off in the first Test of the 2018 series at Kingsmead, where he had to be restrained from physically confronting Quinton de Kock in a stairwell after submitting the South African to a sustained verbal attack while he was batting. 

Might the vocal stance Warner took in the players’ protracted salary dispute with CA in 2017 have been a factor in the special treatment meted out to him by his home board seven months after agreement on salaries had been reached? Might the fact that he will play in the BBL for the first time since 2013, and the star quality he will lend the tournament, have helped manufacture his seeming redemption? Either way, there will be cynical smiles at the impending completion of Warner’s rehabilitation. Where, the smilers will ask, was the support for him in 2018 from Cummins — who was also part of the Newlands Test XI — and Finch, who by then had led Australia 11 times.

Gideon Haigh, Australia’s bard of bat and ball, addressed the issue in this weekend’s edition of The Australian: “It is anomalous and disproportionate in a world that pardons and winks at so much to impose a lifetime sentence for anything. It is holding cricketers to higher standards than public officials; it is mindless obstinacy to insist on the continuation of anything because it has been decided once. Justice needs to be tempered by mercy.”

There was little mercy for Warner to be seen, heard nor read in 2018. There was mostly loathing, in the press and seemingly everywhere else including the prime minister’s office, and shattered silence from within the dressing room. As for the problem of sticking to decisions made just the once, good luck telling an umpire — after you choose to bat and your team are bowled out for 47 — that the toss should be taken again and the game restarted.

Not that South Africans have a square centimetre of moral high ground to claim. They squandered it all in the way some of them reacted to Warner’s altercation with De Kock in Durban. To stoop to taking to the stands at St George’s Park wearing masks made from photographs of the face of Warner’s wife was the lowest point of shame and cowardice reached in this saga. Worse, most of their compatriots didn’t deplore their behaviour.

Of course, that didn’t stop dark chuckling in November last year when Tim Paine, who had emerged as a seeming beacon of decency, a rare and shining unugly Aussie, after taking over the captaincy from Smith from the last Test at the Wanderers in 2018, was undone by a sex scandal.
But that would be dangerously short-sighted. Because, even in a world as strewn with stats as cricket, sleaze and scandal don’t keep a scorecard for long. Just ask David Warner.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Why winning is neither everything nor the only thing

Connecting the dots between Justin Langer and Mark Boucher.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

“WINNING isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Vince Lombardi, the American football coach whose greatness is reflected in his name engraved on the Super Bowl trophy itself, is credited with creating that credo. He didn’t, and there’s more wrong about this than that.

Lombardi borrowed the slogan from Red Sanders, a University of California coach who had been trotting it out for years before Lombardi was first recorded using it in 1959. And another thing: it isn’t true. Winning isn’t everything. It isn’t even enough to keep you in a job. Justin Langer knows that.

You might have thought Langer’s position as Australia’s coach was safe in the afterglow of his team’s 4-0 Ashes success. But CA’s board told Langer on Friday that his tenure would end in November, after the T20 World Cup. On Saturday Langer announced he had resigned with immediate effect.

Since he was appointed in May 2018, in the wake of the Sandpapergate scandal in South Africa, for which Darren Lehmann walked the plank, Australia have won 66 matches and lost 54 across the formats. The ructions claimed the heads of senior figures Steve Smith and David Warner, roused the ire of Australia’s prime minister, and forced introspection into the country’s cricket culture. So it was unsurprising that Langer’s side endured seven bilateral series — six of them lost — before they won a rubber. But they have regrouped impressively, winning 13 series in total, losing 14 and drawing two. And triumphing in the 2021 T20 World Cup.

So why was Langer shown the door? Because he is seen as overbearing and unyielding by a cohort of senior players. Essentially, he is considered a brusque sergeant-major in what has evolved into a role better suited to a trusted guidance counsellor; a too square peg in a too round hole. Winning isn’t the only thing. Personality and people skills matter, too. Some will see this as a victory of style over substance. Others will think it’s about time cricket’s bullies were taught a lesson, not least for the sake of future generations of players.

This will be familiar to cricketminded South Africans. And to one in particular: Mark Boucher knows, too, that winning is neither everything nor the only thing. On July 22 last year, his team beat Ireland in Belfast to clinch a T20I series. They had gone there from the Caribbean, where they had won both Tests and claimed the T20I rubber in a deciding fifth game. All seemed well. But, also on July 22, Paul Adams told the Social Justice and Nation-Building hearings that Boucher was among those who had called him “brown shit” in a celebratory team song during their mutual international playing days.

More than six months later, during which South Africa have lost only four of 18 completed matches and won the rest, Boucher is not the national hero he might have been if winning was all that mattered. A measure of the mood of too many of his compatriots could be taken from CSA’s routine appearance before the parliamentary portfolio committee on sport, art and culture on Tuesday. The fact that Boucher had not been suspended, despite facing a disciplinary hearing from May 16 to 20 at which CSA will seek his dismissal, sparked rage. Impotent rage, as it turned out.

It didn’t help that the politicians present, like their ilk everywhere, were given to hopelessly out of touch pomposity. One repeatedly cited “Mark Butcher” as South Africa’s coach, which would no doubt puzzle the former England opener. There was a shrieking demand for the legal advice that warned CSA against suspending Boucher. The shrieker had to be informed that the committee were legally prohibited from meddling in matters between CSA and their employees. A member seemed to want to know what CSA were going to do about the banned Brendan Taylor, apparently oblivious to the fact that Taylor is Zimbabwean. There was no apology or embarrassment for this shocking lack of understanding, just more of it.

The brazen ignorance would be funny if it wasn’t dangerous: the committee has oversight over government departments as well as the authority to have issues debated in parliament itself. These people are supposed to be among the best and brightest of South Africans, not blowhard buffoons. But no doubt it is true that they reflect the feelings of many who elected them. Maybe that matters more than anything else. Those feelings centre on the conviction that winning cannot be as important as fighting racism, and it is correct.

Not that South Africa won immediately after Boucher was appointed in December 2019, losing eight of their first 11 series under him. But they have turned the corner, winning six of their last eight rubbers and losing only one. Boucher’s side are finally in the black, having won 34 games and lost 27. They have prevailed in nine of their last 10 completed matches, which includes five consecutive victories over India.

For some South Africans, that’s more than enough for Boucher to keep doing what he’s been doing. For others, not so much. But he has had a moving target on his back since his appointment. At first the problem was that he — a white man — had not only replaced Enoch Nkwe, who is black, but that Boucher’s arrival had prompted Nkwe’s demotion to assistant coach.

That Nkwe had been in the position only in an interim capacity, that his team had lost four of the five completed matches they played in India in September and October 2019, which followed South Africa’s worst performance in a World Cup — under Ottis Gibson, who presided over five losses in eight completed games — in the wake of Sri Lanka becoming the first Asian team to win a Test series in South Africa in February 2019, was less important than the fact that Nkwe is a more qualified coach than Boucher. That Boucher and Nkwe had had similar success as coaches at domestic level — Boucher won five titles and Nkwe four — also carried less weight than the credentialism that those championing Nkwe put front and centre.

They would have been aghast to hear Nkwe say, in January 2020, “Boucher has been very supportive. He’s given me the platform to make a difference in the team, to contribute as much as possible; whether it’s in team routines or in training. We’ve worked closely together. I’m enjoying the partnership.”

The wider problem was that Boucher was appointed by Graeme Smith, himself newly installed as CSA’s first director of cricket, and that Jacques Faul was roped in as acting chief executive. Smith was rightfully given the power to hire Boucher, and explained that the lows South Africa had ebbed to on the field demanded a seasoned international former player as coach. Faul, the Titans’ chief executive, is South Africa’s most trusted and respected cricket administrator. But Smith, Boucher and Faul are all white. They came on board in the aftermath of Thabang Moroe’s suspension as chief executive on charges of gross misconduct, which led to his dismissal. That followed Chris Nenzani’s resignation as CSA president under a cloud of chronic governance dysfunction. Then, and for reasons connected to those developments, the board was cornered into resigning en masse.

Moroe and Nenzani are black. The board that came to a sticky end was largely black and brown. The same board had appointed Smith, making a mess of that, too, by conducting what seems to have been a sham interview process. The minister of sport, Nathi Mthethwa, who pressured the board into getting out of the way of progress, is black. These self-evident truths seemed not to register with those who decried the appointment of three white men to the most powerful positions in cricket as a racial takeover. It also didn’t seem to matter that Nenzani and Moroe had driven cricket in South Africa to the brink of financial and administrative collapse. All that did matter, it appeared, was that whites had replaced black and brown people.

The converse was that no-one foresaw that putting a slew of whites in charge would prompt fear and loathing among those who, not many decades previously, had been brutally subjugated in a society run on racism and who suffer still under systematic white supremacy. Why would you trust whites produced by that deeply flawed, evil society, which has not yet mended its ways nearly enough, to do the right thing?  

Even so, once Boucher started steering South Africa towards better results, his detractors began running out of arguments and the noise dissipated. Adams’ bombshell replenished them and the din for Boucher and, illogically, Smith to go has risen to a crescendo. Boucher is also facing charges around his allegedly poor treatment of Nkwe — who resigned in August last year citing issues with a team culture he had previously lauded — and that he had made a hash of handling some of the white players’ reluctance to take a knee.

Boucher and his players have taken all that to Christchurch, where South Africa will play two Tests starting on February 17. Will they win despite the situation at home? Who cares. That doesn’t matter.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Law 43 changes everything we thought we knew about cricket

“Life is different, not only for the players but for everyone in the world because of the challenges Covid has thrown at us.” – Graeme Smith

Telford Vice | Cape Town

CRICKET is governed by what it calls laws. Fort-two of them. Now there is, unofficially, a 43rd: the regulations that allow the game to continue despite Covid-19. They mean, for instance, that Australia will be required to quarantine before their Test series in South Africa in April.

The South Africans will have empathy but not much sympathy for the visitors. The Proteas have had a particularly fraught relationship with the pandemic, abandoning their men’s tour to India in March and seeing England leave early in December. Their women’s team had a home series against Australia in March and April called off and a tour to England in September scrapped. 

The men hosted Sri Lanka in a Test series in December and January, are in Pakistan for Tests and T20Is that start on Tuesday, and plan to welcome Pakistan and Australia before the season ends in April. The women began a home ODI series against Pakistan on Wednesday. So things are picking up. But, as director of cricket Graeme Smith explained in an audio file CSA released on Friday, that has taken careful planning and hard work.

“If member nations don’t support each other and play cricket, cricket’s going to find itself in a very challenging space,” Smith said. “In working with Cricket Australia, we’ve come to a lot of those medical conclusions and how that’s going to look. There will be an initial quarantine period before that series. We would love to get our home summer completed, and Australia are a big part of that home summer. Not only do we want to get it played, we want to compete in that series. The last time a Test series with Australia happened in South Africa it was very heated and we all know what went on.”

The Australians are good box office, as their recently concluded epic Test series against India proved again. They have unfinished business in South Africa, where their most recent Tests — in March 2018 — simmered with acrimony that boiled over in the third match at Newlands, where television cameras caught the Aussies using sandpaper to roughen the ball. That cost Steve Smith and David Warner the captaincy and vice-captaincy, Cameron Bancroft his place in the team and Darren Lehmann his job as coach, and prompted deep introspection in facets of Australian culture far removed from cricket. 

But even one of the game’s most intense rivalries is not immune to its focus being softened by the virus. “I know everyone is focused on results but as the director of cricket I see [this season] as an opportunity for us to grow squads, to see a number of players across the board,” Smith said. “It’s natural with Covid and how bubbles are being run that it’s going to be impossible to play your best team day in and day out. But hopefully by April we’re going to have a really good idea of a core group of players.

“Yes, we want our team to win as much as possible. [But] I wouldn’t say that’s the defining thing for me this season. I would like to answer a few questions in my own head. I think the selectors and the coaching staff would want to do the same. I’m really excited to see who puts their hand up and who are the people we can back into the future. I played the game hard and I want our team to win as much as possible. But I’m also realistic around the challenges we face on a daily basis with Covid and the bubbles.”

Smith was among cricket’s toughest players when he was opening the batting for South Africa and captaining them. At the SCG in January 2009 he defied doctor’s orders and evaded his team’s security staff to go out to bat with a broken hand and a banged up elbow that had been injected with his own blood. But, now 39 and retired for almost seven years, he seems to have mellowed.

“I do feel for the players, who move from bubble to bubble. Life is different, not only for the players but for everyone in the world because of the challenges Covid has thrown at us. We’ve tried to offer more lifestyle types of [team] hotels where there’s an opportunity to get outside and get some fresh air. We’ve looked at team rooms and how we can create more entertainment for the players; try and create a bit of normality in what is a very abnormal thing to be involved in. We’ve worked very closely with SACA [the South African Cricketers’ Association] to try and keep the dialogue as open and honest as possible and really get players communicating. The men’s team are going to move from bubble to bubble as we try to complete our home season, but we’ll have to manage that. Our objective is to get as much cricket played in a safe environment.”

Before he said all that, Smith offered further evidence that he had grown up. “My little man’s arrived,” was how he announced the surprise appearance in the room of his young son, who had a special request. “Sorry, I’m just tying a shoelace,” Smith said as he did the needful. “You can hide anywhere in the house but they’ll find you.” If only the Covid crisis was that easily resolved.

First published by Cricbuzz. 

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The Srini years will echo for many more

“India could have sounded the death knell of Test cricket if they decided that the IPL was the only thing they were worried about.” – former ICC chief executive David Richardson

TELFORD VICE in Johannesburg

THE great and the good, and a fair chunk of the rest, of the world’s cricket press gathered around a small, squashed, suited man in the MCG pressbox on the day of the 2015 men’s World Cup final. His eyes were glassy behind rectangular spectacles. His skin was the brown of a Montecristo No. 4 cigar, his hair had congealed into slick waves of greyed black. Words escaped his flat tyre of a mouth like puffs of air, only just reaching the ears of his audience leaning in from a respectable distance. Clearly, what he said was important to a great many people far beyond the confines of the room. Even more clearly, he believed he was inviolate. He wore his power as easily as his pinstripes and spoke as if he was instructing underlings. He might have been Al Capone. Instead his name, all of it, was Narayanaswami Srinivasan. Which is often written as N. Srinivasan, and which, in the many discussions about him, becomes Srinivasan. Or simply Srini.

By then, he was no longer president of the BCCI. He was still the ICC’s first chair, but only until November of that year, when he was removed after being recalled by the BCCI, where the sands of power are forever shifting. But Srinivasan’s hand is still apparent, albeit now gloved. In September last year his daughter, Rupa Gurunath — whose husband, Gurunath Meiyappan, was banned for life for his role in the 2013 IPL spot-fixing scandal — was elected unopposed as the first woman president of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association. Even so, the once most powerful figure in cricket has lost much of his importance: he was reduced to hitching his wagon to Sourav Ganguly’s successful bid for the BCCI presidency in October last year in order to stay relevant enough to realise his ambition of returning to the ICC as India’s representative. If a court decision goes his way and Dubai beckons, he could be in line to serve another term as ICC chair.

If that seems a strange way to begin a review of the decade in the global game’s administration, you’re probably not a cricket person. The rise of India as the universe boss is the central story of the past 10 years, and Srinivasan is at the heart of it. Without him there could be no BCCI as we know it. Without the BCCI modern cricket wouldn’t exist in the way that it does. And not only in ways other countries would welcome. Like an elephant in the room, India could destroy everyone and everything else in that room if it chose to. Happily, it hasn’t. “India have acted responsibly in a lot of ways,” David Richardson, the ICC’s general manager from January 2002 to June 2012, when he was appointed chief executive in a tenure that lasted until April 2019, said. “They could have sounded the death knell of Test cricket, for example, if they decided that the IPL was the only thing they were worried about. But they’ve supported Test cricket and they’ve made sure the Indian team is strong at Test cricket. Through [Virat] Kohli and the modern team they’ve moved with the times as far as things like DRS are concerned. They’re very powerful and you have to acknowledge that. But, for the most part, they’ve been quite responsible. They could have done exactly what they wanted to if they wanted to.” 

Why hasn’t that happened? “Because I think they have the interests of cricket at heart,” Richardson said. “There might be some who think that Indian cricket can survive on its own, but they realise that for cricket to sustain itself into the future there need to be other countries who are also quite good and can play against India.”

So those who sigh at the banality of India’s dominance of the Test arena might want to consider what could happen once Kohli’s fine team are not as good as they have been. A strong India is good for Test cricket, and it’s up to the other teams to provide decent enough opposition. But a weaker India could mean less largesse from the paymasters.

Then there are the Indian courts, who have curbed the BCCI’s tendency towards world domination. The Lodha commission into how Indian cricket was run — the upshot of the 2013 IPL fixing saga — resulted in recommendations that the Supreme Court ordered, in July 2016, to be implemented. One of them is that administrators cannot be older than 70, which would rule out Srini’s return. But successive and ongoing legal challenges could yet undo the reforms.  

Administratively, international cricket is hostage to its most moneyed entities. Whatever happens takes place only after — and because — India, and to a lesser extent England and Australia, get what they want. That has been the case since the Big Three seized control of the game and its finances in February 2014. India were to have earned USD 440 000 000 in the ICC’s 2016 to 2023 rights cycle. The 93 associate countries would have made USD 230 000 000 between them over the same period — or almost 180 times less than India each. The BCCI argued that as they generated most of world cricket’s revenue they should keep the largest share of the profits. After the other boards united in defiance, the equation was revised in April 2017 to give India USD 293 000 000 with the rest of the full members taking USD 132 000 000 each and the associates sharing USD 280 000 000. Amid such inequality, what are the bigger countries’ responsibility towards their smaller peers? “Critically cricket has grown up to the realisation that we’re a global mega sport that doesn’t just serve a few,” England Cricket Board chief executive Tom Harrison said. “Cricket thrives on its international platform and it’s our duty to protect and encourage growth for all that sit within it.”

Did that mean cricket in a better shape now than 10 years ago? “We took two steps forward, and maybe even three steps back at one point — when the Big Three happened — and then two steps forward again,” Richardson said. “Over the 15 years that I was involved I think the ICC made some progress. We made huge improvements over that time in the quality of the events; how they were staged and hosted. Which obviously also depends on how the countries hosting them do their jobs. But the standards that we tried to maintain were improved. On the cricket side, we made big progress in the quality of umpiring. And DRS eventually. It took a long time but we got there in the end. Right towards the end I thought we were in a fairly good place in terms of creating more relevance. We had the World Test Championship, we had the ODI league, all leading to our events as the pinnacle. T20 came on during that period. I thought we adjusted well to the demands of modern society. I don’t think cricket can survive with only Test cricket. A number of sports of sports have tried to follow our lead, golf being a good example. On the whole, the ICC has made progress. It’s got more teeth when it comes to implementing regulations, codes of behaviour and things like that. Cricket is in a reasonable place, albeit that we had a big step backwards where the whole financial model was thrown into turmoil. Different countries are at different stages, but overall there was progress.”

The players, cricket’s most important constituency and its only means of generating revenue, see matters differently. “The biggest administrative issue globally is that ICC doesn’t see itself as a true global governing body,” Tony Irish, chief executive of the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations, said. “It still views itself as a members’ organisation. This affects its ability to have a true global vision for the game, and instead it is hampered by country interests. I think there is still only one independent director on the board so its governance model doesn’t lend itself to true global decisions. Country and regional interests, instead of global interests, are served in three key areas: The bilateral playing schedule – instead of it being structured and centrally managed it is a matrix of individual deals between countries with the Big Three deciding what they want; ICC event distributions – there is no real science around this; and the hosting of ICC events – the main events are only in three countries. The members’ organisation dynamic allows for the emergence of the Big Three, limits the real growth of the game in smaller countries and opens up the wealth gap between rich and poor. Over the decade we’ve seen the emergence of the T20 leagues and development of two distinct landscapes for players. The lack of central control by ICC has meant that these compete with international cricket and do not co-exist in a way that is best for the global game. Much of this comes down to the dominance of certain countries and especially of India and of how they want the global game to look.”

South Africa were at the receiving end of this dysfunction in December 2013 after India unilaterally hacked seven matches out of their previously agreed tour schedule of a dozen games. That cost Cricket South Africa (CSA) almost USD 14 000 000 in lost revenue. But they would have been USD 34 500 000 out of pocket had India not arrived at all. Why did this happen? Because Srinivasan’s BCCI bore a grudge against Haroon Lorgat, who had become CSA’s chief executive in July 2013, that dated back to his tenure as ICC chief executive — when he refused to allow India to get their own way around arrangements for the 2011 World Cup. The BCCI went so far as threatening to punish CSA if they appointed Lorgat. “We’re not telling you who to appoint,” an Indian suit told his CSA counterpart, “we’re telling you who not to appoint.”

What would it require for administrators to take their eye off the small ball of national concerns and instead focus on what was good for all? That has long been the model at franchise level across all sport in the United States, for example. “You’ll find very few sports are administered that way at international level,” Richardson said. “At domestic level, yes. There are so many instances where sports have made huge progress by going independent. The Australian Football League is a great example. For years they struggled with the clubs being in charge and all looking after their own interests. Suddenly they went with a commissioner system. Decisions were made for the sport as a whole. A lot of people say that in Australian sport the AFL is the best run organisation. All the boards that have taken a more independent route rather than relying on their constituents, like New Zealand, seem to box above their weight. England have become more independent than they used to be. Counties play a role but not as significant a role as they might have done 20 years ago. And their cricket has improved at international level.” Should the ICC, which currently has only one independent director, be structured that way? “The role of independents on that board would be very helpful, just to help members see the bigger picture. But at international level you’re never going to get away from the fact that members need to be involved because they own the game. Ideally you’ve got them as shareholders, and they also hold a more independent board accountable for keeping world cricket healthy.”

Who, outside of the Big Three, is getting it right? “New Zealand are a very good example for all cricket administrations, and in fact sporting administrations,” Richardson said. “They’ve got a very small base, their commercial strength is not significant, but they make the most of what they’ve got and they find a way to be competitive. The example is there for everybody — Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, which would fall into the category of the weaker seven. But cricket has had to move, over the last 20 years, from the time of the club presidents becoming the provincial presidents. In large parts of the world that system is still entrenched, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that the people running the sport are top class businesspeople. Cricket still has some way to go in becoming more professionally administered in a number of countries.”

Corruption and mismanagement in the game are either rife or have been investigated in boards representing Zimbabwe, South Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies, while Pakistan’s grounds only returned to the Test circuit in December last year after a 10-year absence because of security fears. Australia fought a running battle with their players for months in 2017 over a contract dispute that veered close to a strike, and were forced to take a painful look at themselves in the wake of Sandpapergate. With a stormy 10 years behind it, what might the game have to overcome in the next 10? “I almost don’t want to comment because I’m so pleased it can be someone else’s problem now,” Richardson said with a cheeky smile. “I would like to think, as a former cricketer as opposed to an administrator, that the three formats that we have can be sustainable going into the future. For that you need the balance between the volume of cricket played in each of the formats. Maybe there’ll be less Test cricket, but I’d to think Test cricket will still exist in 20 or 30 years’ time.” Richardson was willing to countenance four-day Tests — “I think it would be a different game, I’m not wedded to either four or five days” — and the shortest international format needn’t be T20 — “It could become the hundred”. But, nevermind what it looks like, cricket there will be. And suits there will be, some less bad than others. The most important among them will still be Indian.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Cricket controversies in 2018? Surely not …

What was Steve Smith thinking? What was David Warner thinking? What was Cameron Bancroft thinking? Scrap that: Bancroft doesn’t think, clearly.

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in London

“CRICKET’S greatest controversies in 2018,” the editor says he wants chronicled in this piece. And that’s hard to do.

Not because it’s difficult to find a rumpus that ripped through the game in 2018, but because it’s tricky to remember any others gnarly enough to hold their own next to the biggest and best story of the year in all of sport.

Like the Highlander, there can be only one. And I know, you know, we all know what that one is. But what the boss wants the boss gets. So …

“Sandpapergate”

That’s a lame descriptor for what happened at Newlands on March 24, especially considering the explosion that followed and still rumbles around cricket’s furthest corners.

What was Steve Smith thinking? What was David Warner thinking? What was Cameron Bancroft thinking? Scrap that: Bancroft doesn’t think, clearly.

“I didn’t know any better because I just wanted to fit in and feel valued really; as simple as that,” Bancroft said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.

“The decision was based around my values, what I valued at the time and I valued fitting in … you hope that fitting in earns you respect and with that, I guess, there came a pretty big cost for the mistake.”

The Newlands Test was Bancroft’s 76th first-class match. He had, by then, also played 41 list A games and 25 T20s at senior level. Since he turned out for Western Australia’s under-17 side in January 2009 he had walked onto a cricket ground 245 times.

Every time he stepped over the boundary he would have done so, knowingly, under the auspices of what the game calls its “laws”.

The 41st of them makes plain that “it is an offence for any player to take any action which changes the condition of the ball” and that a fielder is allowed to “polish the ball on his/her clothing provided that no artificial substance is used and that such polishing wastes no time”.

So it is patent crap that Bancroft “didn’t know any better” when, under Warner’s direction and with Smith’s knowledge, he rubbed sandpaper on the ball.

Not only did he fail as a cricketer, he failed himself as a person for wanting to “fit in and feel valued” in an environment toxic enough to allow the hatching of the plot and to nurture it, unbetrayed, to execution.

“I was disappointed with a few things and I don’t think he had to say some of the things he had to say,” Ricky Pointing said in another television interview on Wednesday.

“Even the way he presented himself … he’s trying to rebuild his brand and that sort of thing, and I think some of the things he’s had to say have actually done more damage to his brand than what had happened before.”

For Michael Slater, “In terms of a respectful comment on Dave Warner, there’s been none of that. So to me, it is untenable. [Smith and Bancroft have] buried him very quickly.”

An important fact about those statements is that Bancroft’s was aired on Fox Sports and Ponting and Slater spoke on the Seven Network: in Australia’s tabloid televisionland, channels consider it their duty to criticise what their rivals put out there.

Also, Australia’s media-trained players are exceptionally adept at bending the narrative to fit and further the agenda of current and potential employers.

But what Ponting and Slater were really questioning was Bancroft being treated like a victim and survivor — Bancroft will have served his ban by Saturday — of a system to which Ponting and every other Australia cricketer owe everything they are and everything they have.

Suits all look and sound the same: pathetically whiney and out of touch. So whether it’s the prime minister, cricket bosses or some slimy estate agent shouting at you, it doesn’t matter.

But when the light on the rotten world that made you is being shone by someone who opened the batting for Australia’s mighty, glorious, inviolable cricket team, it matters more than anything.

Warner v World

David Warner has a bloody good life. His partner is a pillar of success and, it seems, support. His children are lovely. Warner is among the best in the world at what he does for a living. The family do not struggle for material comforts and, apparently, happiness.

So why is the man such a dickhead?

Warner’s behaviour on the field at Kingsmead last season, when he was more like a rabid animal than Australia’s vice-captain, should have earned him a fine at least. What happened in the stairwell, where he couldn’t deal with Quinton de Kock’s retaliation, crass and unfair though it reportedly was, should have seen both of them banned.

What happened at St George’s Park, where spectators wore face masks demeaning Warner’s partner, proved it takes a dickhead to know a dickhead.

Al-Jazeera and all that

The integrity of 15 matches played mostly by England, Australia and Pakistan in 2011 and 2012 was impaired by 24 instances of spot-fixing, the network claimed and detailed in October.

Cue outrage in cricket. Not because there was evidence that corruption was rampant but because an organisation from outside cricket had said so.

The International Cricket Council fussed and fumed about Al-Jazeera’s refusal to cooperate with the suits’ investigations. Journalism 101 — if you reveal your sources, why would anyone who has sensitive information talk to you? And administering 101 — if you run the game properly fixers won’t find it this easy to infiltrate the dressingroom.

The mainstream cricket media made miffed noises about the way Al-Jazeera had prevented their story. Pissed off you didn’t get there first, né?

The fans said … Hello? Fans? Not a peep. Perhaps they were busy placing a bet when the documentary was broadcast.

Fixing has and always be part of cricket. We can either live with that get on with watching professional wrestling in pads, or aim to change the reality.

That means making match venues wifi-free zones, eradicating online ball-by-ball scoring platforms, not taking betting shops’ money for advertising and sponsorships, banning gambling on cricket, and throwing the guilty out of the game forever for a first offence, no matter how apparently trifling.  

What are the odds on any of that happening?

When clever people do stupid things

“I don’t think you should live in India, go and live somewhere else. Why are you living in our country and loving other countries? I don’t mind you not liking me, but I don’t think you should live in our country and like other things. Get your priorities right.”

That was Virat Kohli’s response, which he posted in a video on social media, to a tweet, which, helpfully, he read before issuing the above: “[Kohli is an] overrated batsman and personally I see nothing special in his batting. I enjoy watching English and Australian batsmen more than these Indians.”

Why does Kohli confuse sport with patriotism? Who is he to tell anyone where to live? Priorities? Clearly his are dangerously confused.

This kind of quasi-fascism should earn someone as influential as Kohli — he has 27-7-million Twitter followers — a visit from the police. Is he trying to engineer someone’s death?

You’re an intelligent person, Mr Kohli. Don’t be a dickhead. Cricket has enough of those already.