Social Justice and Nation Building

Rassie van der Dussen, meet Bishan Singh Bedi

“The situations we faced in the past four years – COVID, Black Lives Matter, SJN – various political stories that we’ve had to manage as a team, have really forced us to pull together.” – Rassie van der Dussen

Telford Vice / Pune

RASSIE van der Dussen, meet Bishan Singh Bedi. You will have so much to talk about that your conversation will soar through and beyond mere cricket. You won’t agree on everything — that would be boring, anyway — but by the time you say goodbye you will have made not only a friend but a comrade.

Sadly, as of last Monday, when Bedi died in Delhi, this connection is no longer possible. That they never met is indeed a pity, because Bedi was that rare creature in cricket, regardless of the era: a player who thought about and spoke about matters far away from the game. His boundary wasn’t the edge of the ground. It was the full extent of what it meant to live, with integrity, in this imperfect world. Van der Dussen is of the same mind.

Which is not to conflate them as cricketers. Bedi’s bowling action was fluid simplicity in motion, the game’s equivalent of Picasso’s lifelong yearning to paint like a child. Van der Dussen’s batting technique can look as if it’s been cobbled together by a committee for the preservation of ungainliness. And yet, just as the product of Bedi’s apparently beach cricket action was the undoing of the world’s top batters, so Van der Dussen’s spiky angularity reaps runs and adds rectitude to South Africa’s batting.

He is their compass at the crease, just as a lodestone guides him off the field. As with Bedi, Van der Dussen’s boundary encircles everything. His answer, at a press conference in Pune on Tuesday when he was asked what had changed for South Africa’s team — who have won five of their first six games at this World Cup — since the 2019 edition, when they lost five of their eight completed matches, said as much.

“I think the situations we faced in the past four years, whether it be COVID, whether it be Black Lives Matter, SJN [CSA’s Social Justice and Nation-Building project, which exposed deep rooted racism in the game], various political stories that we’ve had to manage as a team, have really forced us to pull together.

“And the effect of us being really tight off the field, knowing each other intimately. We’ve been playing together for a very long time. Between any two members of the squad there’s a real connection somewhere. So I think there’s definitely something different in this team. We’ve had to deal with quite a lot of controversy and that’s stood us in good stead.”

A lot of that would seem to have nothing to do with scoring runs and taking wickets. But, because cricket is part of the real world and not the other way round, those who need to score runs and take wickets will be thrown this way and that by the impact of events beyond the edge of the ground.

Van der Dussen, like Bedi, is not among the unfortunates who believe in the impossibility that sport should be sacrosanct and separate from everything around it. The reaction to South Africa’s loss to the Netherlands on October 17, which leapt far past Dharamsala’s confines, proved that.

“You realise there are people at home who’ve been scarred by South Africa’s performances at World Cups,” Van der Dussen said. “And you can’t criticise them for feeling that way — it’s criticism coming from a place of hurt; they’ve seen that movie before. But we haven’t lived that, so it’s not really applicable to us and it’s not affecting us. It’s part of history but it’s certainly not part of us as a team.”

That history is starkly different to the Springboks’, who have returned home to the adulation of their compatriots after winning the rugby World Cup for a record fourth time. The Boks have yet to lose a final. The Proteas have yet to reach a final. That’s a bleak view from the cricket end of the equation, but Van der Dussen said the team were “massively” inspired by their rugby counterparts.

“I think Siya [Kolisi, the Springbok captain] mentioned in a press conference that if you’re not from South Africa you don’t really understand what sporting achievements mean for the people at home and for us. The realisation for us is that we’re no different. Yes, we haven’t won World Cups. But if we do manage to get there it will be an honour for us to be mentioned in the same sentence as those guys.”

What did it mean for Van der Dussen to represent not a country where realities are less contested, or problems are on a smaller scale, or the future seems stable? What did it mean to play, instead, for South Africa’s teams?

“We come from a very divided background, and that sort of mindset is still entrenched in a lot of communities and among a lot of the older generation. What the Springboks and what sport shows us is that, as South Africans, when you do get things right and you do things the right way, what you can achieve. Good things happen to good people. That Springbok team, that’s what they are. They’re all hardworking, good South Africans with a real humility about them, a real hunger for success. It shows, when you’re willing to put differences aside, what’s possible for a country like ours.”

At 34, Van der Dussen lives in a South Africa he knows is at once different and similar to what it was under apartheid. Gerald Coetzee, 11 years Van der Dussen’s junior, is from a different time and, in some senses, a different place. “We’ve grown up to understand each other’s cultures, and when we don’t understand something we try to respect it,” Coetzee said. “Because when you don’t understand something you still need to respect it.”

Coetzee “can’t imagine how hard it must have been” to live and play sport under apartheid, “but our cricket heritage is old and we look up to those players. So as much as the politics was horrible, the players were decent. There’s a balance — looking at the cricketers we’ve produced over the years and being proud of that; also looking at the history and being sad. But also rejoicing about that it’s become so much better and there’s been so much growth. We need to look at that and appreciate it.”

Had Bedi, a cricketer’s cricketer who was so much more than a cricketer, still been with us it would be difficult not to imagine him nodding and smiling in approval. This, he might have said, is how life is supposed to work: one generation making it better for the next.

Before India visited South Africa for the first time from November 1992 to January 1993 — when apartheid was dying but still the law of the land — Bedi, then 47 and long retired, asked Vijay Lokapally, a stalwart Indian journalist who was to cover that tour, “to get literature on South Africa the country and on South African cricket”, Lokapally said. “Bedi sir felt strongly for the blacks. He particularly wanted books that had information on the apartheid days.” When Lokapally returned home Bedi invited him to lunch and a debrief: “He listened to my experiences with childlike enthusiasm. He wanted to know if I had experienced any discrimination because of my colour.”

Famously, Bedi wrote to the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) to demand his name be removed from a stand at the Kotla after the ground was relabelled in honour of Arun Jaitley, a former DDCA president and BCCI vice-president but more prominent as India’s minister of finance. To be connected with a figure he detested was too much for Bedi, whose letter scathed: “With honour comes responsibility. They fêted me for the total respect and integrity with which I played the game. And now I’m returning the honour to assure them all that four decades after my retirement, I still retain those values.” As if that wasn’t clear enough, he followed up with another volley days later: “I don’t wish a stand in my name when late Arun Jaitley’s statue is erected without any visible shame.”

Even so, the Bishan Singh Bedi Stand still hugs the western boundary in Delhi, offering spectators respite from the setting sun. Cheers rose from those in its seats on October 7 — 16 days before Bedi’s death — when South Africa piled up 428/5 to beat Sri Lanka by 102 runs. Quinton de Kock and Aiden scored centuries, but so did a player who isn’t blessed with their languid left-handedness, a man of angles, integrity, and the courage to speak his mind. Maybe, in cricket’s strange way, Van der Dussen did meet Bedi after all.

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Ngidi pushes boundaries as Lord’s Test looms

“Once you’re happy off the field, it makes the job on the field a lot easier.” – Lungi Ngidi

Telford Vice / London

“LEAVE it!” Lungi Ngidi didn’t heed Keshav Maharaj’s shrill, urgent call. Instead, he kept his eye on the ball as it plummeted out of a hot blue sky near the Tavern Stand at Lord’s on Sunday. Call it fielder’s instinct: catches should be taken.

The reason for Maharaj’s warning became ominously clear as Ngidi moved towards the point where the dark dot would fall — it was sailing into the seats. Without a rope on the ground as a reference point, Ngidi didn’t know that. He also didn’t know exactly where the boundary boards separated the field from the stands. The hard, metal, straight edged, immovable boundary boards …

There was maybe a nanosecond left in it when Ngidi, on second thoughts, did not dive. But the momentum of one of cricket’s biggest units isn’t easily halted. So, still upright, he kept going until his knees made solid contact with the boards. The resultant thud shuddered around the almost empty ground. For an agonising moment, no-one and nothing moved. Then Ngidi walked away, apparently unhurt in the collision.

Others might have been relieved that a crisis had been averted. Not Maharaj. With big eyes fixed on Ngidi, he shot out his right arm in one direction and yelled: “Your head would have been there!” His left arm jerked in the opposite direction: “And your body would have been there!”

Ngidi and the rest of the group taking practice catches in the deep — Kagiso Rabada, Lutho Sipamla, Khaya Zondo — maintained the kind of respectful silence that prevails when a parent reacts the only way they know how after a child crosses a street without looking both ways.

Minutes later Ngidi stood close to the same spot talking to reporters, diamonds not on the soles of his shoes but on his forehead; evidence of three hours of preparation under a blazing sun towards the Test series against England, which starts on Wednesday.

He took Maharaj’s moment of panicky concern in the right spirit: “A bit of banter between the guys is always good energy. We’re keeping the spirits high. It’s nothing too serious.” Ngidi spoke, as he often does, with a smile wide and dazzling enough to outshine even a sizzling Sunday summer afternoon. But there was a bounce in his tone and a ripple in his manner that suggested progress since another chat he had with reporters more than two years ago.

Then, his stating of the obviously necessary — that South Africa’s players needed to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement sweeping the world — lit a fire that prompted difficult but constructive introspection about the team’s culture and led to CSA’s Social Justice and Nation Building project, a long overdue examination of cricket’s voluntary and involuntary entanglements with race and racism.

It would be mischief to claim Maharaj would have reacted differently on Sunday had those discussions not been had as seriously. But the fact that they were had in that way means Ngidi is under no illusion about Maharaj’s motivation: a sincere sense of care for a fellow person, South African and teammate, in that order.

Something different but not dissimilar was seen and heard in the nets on the Nursery Ground earlier on Sunday, when, amid mostly middled strokes, Zondo edged a drive at an easily catchable height into the netting directly behind him. As the ball plopped to earth apologetically he swung an angry kick at the ground and let loose a throaty, “Fuck!” You don’t do that if you don’t care. And you can’t care properly if you don’t know that your teammates care not only about your ability to play cricket but also about you as a person.

“Having those types of conversations, gaining different understandings about where people come from, it does help and it does educate,” Ngidi said. “We’re in a much better position now. You can see the team environment, from the banter that we have and the energy around, everyone seems to be in a good space. We’re looking to keep that positive energy.”

The reasons for wanting to do so are numerous. Cricket isn’t the most important among them, but right now — four days from a Test — it is the most pressing. As Ngidi said, “Once you’re happy off the field, it makes the job on the field a lot easier.”

Rain prevented the South Africans from measuring how well they are doing that job in the drawn ODI series, but they got it done in the T20Is, which they won 2-1. Their bid to keep the narrative going in that direction in the Tests suffered a setback in Canterbury last week, where England Lions beat them by an innings and 56 runs. Or did it?

“The warm-up games … that’s exactly how we take them, as warm-up games,” Ngidi said. “Our biggest thing was for the guys who hadn’t played in a while to get time on their legs. We got what we wanted out of that game. The result we don’t look at too closely. Once there’s a value on the wicket, shots become a bit different.”

Ngidi’s primary function is to take those wickets. He has played in only 13 of South Africa’s 33 Tests since he took match figures of 7/90 on debut against India in Centurion in January 2018. The rest of South Africa’s pace attack in that match hints at why Ngidi hasn’t played more often: Vernon Philander, Rabada and Morné Morkel. Philander and Morkel have since retired, as has Dale Steyn. But Anrich Nortjé, Dane Paterson, Beuran Hendricks, Sipamla, Marco Jansen, Glenton Stuurman and Lizaad Williams have all been blooded. South Africa is a good place to bowl fast for a living. That means a lot of cricketers are bowling fast for a living in South Africa. Even for someone of Ngidi’s calibre, competition for a place in the Test XI is fierce.

“You’re sitting on the sidelines for a reason — there’s someone ahead of you at the time,” Ngidi said. “I’ve got to figure out what is going to get me back in the team; the sort of skills I can bring and where I need to be physically. Being a big guy it’s not easy to control the weight. But it’s been a good off-season. Even the time at the IPL, not playing, everyone sees that as a negative. But I had a chance to work on different skills and I think we saw them come out in recent games.”

Ngidi was a spectator throughout this year’s IPL. Essentially, Delhi Capitals paid him USD60,280 to bowl in the nets. He used the time to trim weight off his 1.93-metre frame and work — with South Africa bowling coach Charl Langeveldt — on a flurry of flummoxing slower balls, which helped make him the leading pace bowler in the T20I series against England on either side of the dressing room divide.

“We’ve got guys who bowl quick,” Ngidi said. “If I’m not as quick as them, what else can I do? Bringing variation into the attack is a positive for South Africa. I’m trying to fill those gaps and it seems to be working. In the red-ball format, I’ve been asked to bring the element of control. That’s how I’ve been playing, and I’ve been pretty successful in that role. Whatever chopping and changing has been done, I know my role and I’m happy with that.”

But Ngidi’s key performance indicators could be changing. Rabada is in a race against damaged ankle ligaments, and Duanne Olivier has been ruled out with a torn hip flexor muscle. Rabada trained normally on Sunday and seemed his usual relaxed, confident self. But team management wouldn’t go further than to say he was making progress. Olivier stuck out at the training session, and not only because he still sports blond highlights — he was not in team kit but wearing civilian shorts and T-shirt, and would be on a flight home before the rest of the squad hit the showers.

So Ngidi might yet hold a brand new ball in his hand at Lord’s this week. Or tasked to keep the pressure on after Rabada and Anrich Nortjé, or Rabada and Marco Jansen, or Nortjé and Jansen, or two of Rabada, Nortjé, Jansen and Sipamla, have shared the new ball.

“It doesn’t matter who comes in,” Ngidi said. “Test cricket is fairly simple — top of off.” And mind those boundary boards.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Zondo’s story has many chapters

“I’m always nervous, whether I’m playing a club game or my son is throwing balls at me.” – Khaya Zondo

Telford Vice / London

HYDE Park looked like an African savannah on Thursday. Not that lions or lionesses, or indeed cricketers or footballers of any kind, roamed the vast undulations of London’s usually green and pleasant heart. It was too hot for that. Aside from the baroque splendour of its trees, the parched park was a patchwork swathe of beige.

The UK’s most intense summer since 1976 will do that to even the most lush spaces. Like Lord’s, less than three kilometres to the north, where the Test series between England and South Africa starts on Wednesday. What has the heat done to pitches at cricket’s grandest ground?

Not the obvious and helped the spinners, it seems. They have claimed only 18 of the 186 wickets to fall there in first-class matches this season. That includes the Test against New Zealand in the first week of June, when Lancashire leg spinner Matt Parkinson had to come haring down the highway to make his debut as a concussion substitute for Jack Leach.

Parkinson had Tim Southee caught at slip in New Zealand’s second innings — the only wicket of the 35 that fell in the match that belonged to a slow bowler. No spin was bowled in either team’s first innings, and only 18.3 overs in the 170.2 overs bowled in the second innings. In the most recent first-class match at Lord’s, between Middlesex and Sussex three weeks ago, spin accounted for three of the 29 wickets and 54 of the 365.1 overs. If mad dogs and Englishmen really do go out in 2022’s midday sun, not many of them are spinners.

According to Southern Water, this region of England had less than two-thirds of its average rainfall for the first six months of 2022 and only four millimetres in July — when the long-term average is 50.3 millimetres. Temperatures have hovered around 30 degrees Celsius for weeks, and the rain that has been forecast for next week will come — if it comes — as a relief to everyone except cricket aficionados who have turned their attention to Lord’s.

Doubtless Khaya Zondo isn’t thinking about any of the above. For one thing, he’s not in London. For another, he can’t do anything about the weather. For still another, he is focused on staying in the selection frame for the first Test. He did that on Tuesday and Wednesday by batting for more than three hours for his 86 in a tour match against England Lions in Canterbury. It was the South Africans’ biggest innings in terms of runs and deliveries. Importantly, Zondo showed a level of patience that earned 130 dot balls from the 166 he faced. He was undone on the second morning without adding to his overnight score, when he left an inswinger from Sam Cook and had his off stump rattled.

“I’ve accepted my limitations,” Zondo said in an audio file released by CSA after the close on Tuesday. “I’ve also accepted where I am good and I’ve just kept working, trying to get better with each ball I face, just keep adding building blocks on top of each other.”

The first of those blocks was laid during practice — “I went into the nets and worked on my balance, worked on playing the ball late” — to help him adjust to the conditions: “It’s definitely different to South Africa. The ball nips a lot more, and you never really feel like you’re in; you’ve got to make sure you’re always awake. As soon as you think you’re comfortable, that’s when the ball does something you don’t expect it to do and that’s when it catches you off guard.”

After 213 first-class innings, he was not immune to anxiety: “I’m always nervous, whether I’m playing a club game or whether my son is throwing balls at me. So I’m always nervous when I pick up a bat. That’s good nerves.”

Zondo scored two half-centuries and a century in nine innings for Darwen in the 2015 editions of the Northern Premier League and the Lancashire Cricket Board Cup. He last played in England on South Africa A’s tour in May and June 2017, when he made 66 runs in four 50-over innings and a single in each trip to the crease in a four-day match. His effort this week is his best anywhere since he reached a career-high 203 not out in a domestic first-class match in October 2021. In eight subsequent innings in the format he has twice passed 50.

Zondo’s latest effort has complicated South Africa’s selection deliberations. He batted at No. 7 with Ryan Rickleton, Rassie van der Dussen and Aiden Markram above him. All could be competing for one place in the Test XI. Markram made 10 and Van der Dussen 75 in the first innings, and they were 20 and eight not out at stumps on Thursday. Rickleton suffered a first-baller on Tuesday.

The naked numbers say Zondo has done the most among them to crack the nod, but rarely are these matters so simple. Markram played himself back into confidence and form at the IPL, and just more than three weeks ago Van der Dussen, a reassuring presence in South Africa’s line-up, scored a yeoman 134 in extreme heat in the first ODI in Chester-le-Street. Rickleton reeled off two centuries, a 95 and three half-centuries in eight first-class innings for Northamptonshire in June and July.

You might have heard Zondo’s name mentioned for reasons other than his achievements on a cricket ground. In October 2015 he was, at then captain AB de Villiers’ insistence — and with the acquiescence of Hussein Manack, the selector on tour — left out for the deciding match of an ODI series at the Wankhede. CSA investigated and decided his omission was wrong, and Zondo’s testimony to the Social Justice and Nation Building project in August last year revealed how deeply affected he had been by his treatment.

“I switched off mentally for the rest of the day and I detached myself from the team because it was clear I was not wanted,” Zondo said. “Switching off helped me cope with everything that was happening. The hardest part was watching players who were selected ahead of me having the opportunity to shine for South Africa on a world stage, in India, and having a chance to play and potentially impress and get future IPL opportunities.”

Dean Elgar’s flight to India for the subsequent Test series was brought forward to enable him, rather than Zondo, to feature in the white-ball decider. It is not often remembered that South Africa piled up 438/4 in that match, with Quinton de Kock, Faf du Plessis and De Villiers all scoring centuries, and also largely unhighlighted that the visitors won by 214 runs. Neither is it recalled that Elgar took guard at No. 7 with four balls left in the innings, faced only two of them and finished five not out. Was Zondo, albeit then uncapped, honestly not trusted to do something similar, or better?

If you’ve heard Zondo’s name for still another reason, it might be because his father, Raymond Zondo, was appointed South Africa’s chief justice in March. In June 2017 Zondo senior was named as the presiding high court judge in an inquiry into allegations of state capture and corruption during Jacob Zuma’s tenure as president from May 2009 to February 2018. In a damning and shocking report that runs to more than 5,000 pages, Zondo found that “the [ruling party] ANC under Zuma permitted, supported and enabled corruption”.

Zondo junior and the rest of South Africa’s squad have found in England circumstances that will feel oddly familiar to them. They are no strangers to the water restrictions that are being implemented here, and the planned power outages that loom because of the surge in energy prices — prompted by Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine — are common on the sharp tip of Africa.

Then there are the dots connected by history. When the English refer to 1976 as their last properly hot summer, they’re not only talking about the weather. In the build-up to a Test series that year, Tony Greig said of his team’s imminent opponents: “You must remember that the West Indians, these guys, if they get on top are magnificent cricketers. But if they’re down, they grovel, and I intend to make them grovel.”

Greig’s words, spoken in the thick, rough accent of the Eastern Cape of his birth, where he had leaned on his privilege and the luck of having a Scottish father to make the leap to England, did not land well. A white South African who had failed to denounce apartheid or racism telling black people he wanted to make them grovel?

Michael Holding and Andy Roberts answered the question on behalf of millions worldwide by taking 28 wickets each in the series, and Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge by scoring three centuries each. And they were only the brightest stars in West Indies’ 3-0 triumph.

Also in 1976, indeed during that series, South Africa’s winter was turned white hot by government’s insistence that Afrikaans — the language of the country’s oppressors — be used in black schools. The reaction was what became known as the Soweto Uprising, which killed between 176 and 700 mostly young people and lit the touchpaper for what became, in 1994, the defeat at the ballot box of apartheid.

Raymond Zondo was 16 when Soweto’s flames were lit, and almost 34 when Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first rightfully elected president. Khaya Zondo is 32 and still fighting for fairness. Will he get it on Wednesday? And, if he does, will it rain? In Africa, that would be a blessing. But not at Lord’s.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Why Boucher’s return to Taunton matters

“We’ll get a couple of the guys to talk about the pressures of what it’s like to play in England.” – Mark Boucher on a topic familiar to him.

Telford Vice | Palermo, Sicily

A previous South African team’s mission was accomplished 40 days short of 10 years ago, when Vernon Philander’s signature delivery — the seam smiling slyly as the ball veered away a smidgen at a pace that ambushed the drive as surely as a well-tied and wielded fly would fool a fish — took the edge of Steven Finn’s bat.

The ball curved gently through the electrified air towards second slip, where it plopped into Jacques Kallis’ hands. Job done. World domination had been achieved an hour after tea on the fifth day at Lord’s. Civilians know it as August 20, 2012.

The South Africans, captained by Graeme Smith and coached by Gary Kirsten, had arrived in England knowing they needed to win the series to annex the No. 1 ranking and claim the Test mace from the home side. The 2022 version of the team, captained by Dean Elgar and coached by Mark Boucher, rose to the No. 1 spot by dint of Sri Lanka’s innings victory over Australia in Galle, which was completed on Monday.

Some things change: the prize now is neither a ranking nor a mace but a place in the World Test Championship final, which will be contested by the top two teams in the standings as of March 31, 2023. Other things do not change: the 2012 visit started in Taunton, as the 2022 venture did on Tuesday with a white-ball tour match.

It is impossible to put Boucher’s name and Taunton on the same page without being struck afresh by the cold, hard truth of what had happened to him on the same ground on July 9, 2012 — 43 days before the mace changed hands. Time raced in the frozen moments before and after Imran Tahir cleanbowled Gemaal Hussain midway through the first day. One instant, Boucher was crouched behind the stumps. The next, his career was over. He was on his knees and elbows, gloves covering face, squirming in agony. For the first and only time in his life as a public figure, he looked vulnerable. A player who would expressly, in his own words, “walk onto the field as if you own the place” was about to be escorted off, never to return. The ball had launched the right-hander’s leg-side bail into Boucher’s unprotected face, its violence felling him. The white of his left eye was lacerated, permanently robbing him of half his sight.

Boucher was 37. He had played 147 Tests, 295 ODIs and 25 T20Is. In what became his last 20 completed Test innings, he passed 50 three times — including a 118-ball 95 that was instrumental in South Africa’s innings victory over England at the Wanderers in January 2010. There was grumbling that, at that stage, he had suffered 34 dismissals without scoring a century. But in those 34 innings he had batted higher than No. 7 only twice, when he took guard at No. 6.

Even so, the 2012 England series was to have been the last hurrah for a player who was a major figure in shaping South Africa’s way of cricket in that era: always uncompromising, often brutal, sometimes destructive. The alarming dangers in how that flawed philosophy was implemented were exposed at the Social Justice and Nation Building (SJN) hearings last year. It emerged that the ugliness was also aimed at South Africa’s own players, who were abused by their teammates in a range of ways. Some of that behaviour was racist. Boucher was both a perpetrator and, albeit less seriously because he was and is a white man in a white supremacist, toxically male society, a victim in that culture.

Partly because he has cultivated an image of unassailability, partly because it suits some of his attackers to cast him as the embodiment of much that ills not only South African cricket but also the wider problems in a country still stricken by the realities of racism, Boucher’s humanity isn’t often considered or even recognised. For some, he has become less a person and more a symbol. And therefore held up either as a bastion against imagined wokeness and, simultaneously, as a standard-bearer for South Africa’s underground but virulent and real racism.

He is neither. But maybe that’s why the relevant fact that he was back at the scene of his dramatic demise as a player for the first time since 2012 never came up during a 15-minute press conference on Monday.

No doubt Boucher was happy with that. Someone who has banked everything, at the seeming expense of anything, on the projection of square-jawed strength does not want to talk about weakness. But there is no doubt that his experience in 2012, as much as the SJN hearings and their fallout — the disciplinary hearing against him that never got off the ground — would have shaped the person Boucher has become even as the symbol of what he represents, to some, remains untouched.

“A lot of our guys have played a lot of cricket over here recently,” he told Monday’s presser, with reference to members of the current squad’s professional dalliances with English cricket. “So our guys are not foreign to these conditions. We’ll get a couple of them to stand up and talk about the pressures of what it’s like to play in England.”

Boucher himself will have much of value to say. He played in 52 Test series, of which South Africa won 32 and lost only 10. Three of them were in England between 1998 and 2008, when South Africa lost, drew and won. He knows plenty about winning but also about losing, and about losing more than games of cricket. And, also, about personal business that has been unfinished since an hour after lunch in Taunton on July 9, 2012.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Boucher not out

“CSA’s lawyers engaged with various other potential witnesses over the last month and concluded that the none of the three charges were sustainable.” – CSA

Telford Vice | Cape Town

CSA have dropped the charges in their disciplinary hearing against Mark Boucher, who has confirmed he wants to continue as head coach of South Africa’s men’s team. The dramatic news broke days after Paul Adams confirmed he would not testify in the hearing, which was to have started on Monday and could have led to Boucher’s dismissal.

“CSA has concluded that there is no basis to sustain any of the disciplinary charges, including charges of racism, [against Boucher]. The board of CSA has therefore formally and unreservedly withdrawn all of the charges.” A separate statement attributed to Boucher quoted him as saying: “I look forward to continuing to focus on my job and to taking the Proteas men’s team to even greater heights.”

In response to a question at the Social Justice and Nation Building (SJN) hearings in July, Adams said Boucher had been among the teammates who had called him “brown shit” in a dressing room song during his playing career. The mention of Boucher’s name was pertinent to what became the disciplinary proceedings because he is a fulltime CSA employee.

Boucher was also charged over his relationship with former assistant coach Enoch Nkwe and over his handling of the Black Lives Matter issue within the team. Boucher is white, Adams brown and Nkwe black.

“Mr Adams recently announced that he had withdrawn from testifying against Mr Boucher during the disciplinary hearing,” CSA’s statement said. “In doing so, Mr Adams stated that his concerns articulated during the SJN process were about the overall ‘culture’ in the Proteas team during the early 2000s, rather than being about any particular player. During the SJN process, Mr Boucher formally apologised to Mr Adams. After the SJN process, Mr Adams indicated to CSA’s lawyers that he accepts this apology. Mr Nkwe decided that he too did not wish to testify against Mr Boucher during the disciplinary hearing. In doing so, Mr Nkwe stated publicly that he did not intend to take sides regarding Mr Boucher and that ‘whatever happens in that process, I hope the outcome will be the one that’s best for the game’. CSA’s lawyers engaged with various other potential witnesses over the last month and concluded that the none of the three charges were sustainable.”

The exoneration by an independent arbitrator last month of former director of cricket Graeme Smith, on charges of racism that also arose out of the SJN report, informed the decision on Boucher: “The very recent ruling … in the Graeme Smith arbitration fortified the conclusion that the charges against Mr. Boucher would be dismissed. Having taken all of the above into account, as well as the advice of its external lawyers, CSA concluded that there was no basis to sustain any of the charges against Mr Boucher.”

In his statement, Boucher was quoted as saying: “The allegations of racism which were levelled against me were unjustified and have caused me considerable hurt and anguish. The last few months have been extremely difficult to endure for me and my family. I am glad that the process has finally come to an end and that CSA has accepted that the charges against me are unsustainable.

“I stand by my apology to Paul given during the SJN process for the hurt he felt during his time as a Proteas player. As I stated in my affidavit to the SJN process, some of the things that were said and done in those days were totally inappropriate and unacceptable and in retrospect, understandably offensive. I am proud to now be part of a team culture that is inclusive and whose objective is to be respectful to every person.”

The development is likely to foster further racial division among South Africa’s chronically dysfunctional cricket public. In certain white circles, it will be seen as vindication of the bad practices of the past and may even lead to an increase in racist language being used in discussions on the game. Black and brown South Africans will feel cheated out of the best opportunity they have had to secure a modicum of justice for historic wrongs, some of which continue today. If Boucher had been found guilty and consequently fired, the opposite would have applied.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Cats on the deck of a sinking ship

“Try to put the fear of failure out of your mind and rather try and take the game on. We went into our shells in this series.” – Mark Boucher

Telford Vice | Cape Town

WHAT does South Africa’s 2023 World Cup bid share with cats? Both have nine lives. But Temba Bavuma’s team can probably afford to spend only five of those lives on taking the most direct route to the tournament. Any more than that and they would likely find themselves having to hiss and scratch their way through a qualifier.

Bangladesh’s historic ODI series win, which was sealed in Centurion on Wednesday, means South Africa are ninth in the World Cup Super League (WCSL) standings — one place below where they need to be to book their berth in the line-up for India next year.

They have 11 games left in which WCSL points will be on offer. Two are against the Netherlands, and even considering South Africa’s most recent form it’s difficult to believe they will come unstuck against opponents they have beaten comprehensively in all four of their completed ODIs.

But nothing is certain about the other nine games. South Africa will play three in England from June 19 to 24, and as many in India and Australia in fixtures that have yet to be announced. Bavuma’s side are likely to have to win at least four of them to be confident of staying among the top eight teams to confirm their World Cup spot. Hence the cat analogy: they probably won’t be able to afford to lose more than five of those nine matches. And that promises to be a tough equation to square.

England have won 12 of their last 14 home bilateral ODI series, an almost uninterrupted run of success that stretches back to June 2015 and includes victory over South Africa in May 2017. They are the current World Cup holders, albeit the way they ended up with the trophy — they pipped fellow finalists New Zealand in a boundary count after the decider was deadlocked — means they can hardly be called champions. But England are undeniably a fine team and will take some beating in their backyard.

India have also been formidable in their conditions. Of their last 32 bilateral rubbers at home going back to October 2005, they have won 25. A mitigating factor for the South Africans is that they are one of the sides who have won a series in India during that period: in October 2015.

Australia have been more vulnerable, winning only 13 of their 22 home series since October 2005. South Africa have beaten them twice, most recently in November 2018.

All told, that’s 50 successes out of 69 series for those home sides: a winning percentage of 72.46. Of their 40 away rubbers all-time, South Africa have won 22. Or 55%. That’s significantly better than average — of all the 2,958 ODIs that have been won and lost, 58.52% of them have been won by the home side and 41.48% by the visitors.

So, historically, the South Africans have been ahead of that curve. But they have yet to win an away ODI series under the Bavuma and Mark Boucher regime: they drew in Ireland and lost in Sri Lanka last year. And what does history matter when you’re reeling from your first home defeat by Bangladesh in any format? Wednesday’s loss was particularly galling for South Africa’s supporters, whose team were bowled out for 154 in 37 overs. The Bangladeshis strode to victory by nine wickets in 26.3 overs.

“After we got off to a very good start today, we went to sleep,” Boucher told a press conference after the match. “It’s certainly not the way we want to play. We wanted to take the game forward after a good start. We just didn’t manage to do that. They bowled well but you have to take some risks to create scoring opportunities. It was almost like we went out with the fear of getting out, rather than going out to set a total.”

The problem, Boucher said, was mental rather than technical or tactical: “It’s a belief and a faith of playing like you want the guys to play. We want them to be pro-active, and they just didn’t do that today. We’ve been working on shot selection and that type of stuff, so the guys know they have the armoury to do that. But it’s one thing to understand that you’ve got it and another to execute. There seems to be a block and a fear of getting out, rather than understanding that the game’s about runs. Try to put the fear of failure out of your mind and rather try and take the game on. We went into our shells in this series.”

How loudly were the alarm bells ringing for Boucher considering South Africa are likely to have to find a way to win at least four ODIs in England, India and Australia?

“We’ve got a lot to discuss and we’ll have to do that, but it’s also about understanding that we’ve got the clientele in our changeroom to beat the best in the world,” he said. “Those teams that you mention, we have beaten them before and we’re going to have to beat them again in order to qualify. The alarm bells are always there, and we’re putting ourselves under pressure. But we’ve got to come to the party.”

Bavuma was less focused on the big picture than on tightening the nuts and bolts that seem to have become dangerously loose: “The worry for me is not so much the points. They’re obviously important — we need the points to qualify for the World Cup. But us really getting to understand our way of playing, that’s more important. Inconsistency in terms of our performances as a unit, that’s also a worrying factor. It wasn’t so long ago that we were victorious against India [3-0 in a home series in January that did not count towards the WCSL]. This series, we were completely outplayed in all three disciplines. That’s where my worry is, but it’s also a big thing that we need the points.”

An even more serious concern is that neither Boucher nor Bavuma knew what was going wrong. Bavuma floated the theory that, “Maybe it’s been a case of us not paying respect to the processes we put in place that allowed for those positive results [against India]; kind of expecting things to go our way.” But both said they had no real answers right now.

The long shadows of uncertainty that have crept from the suits’ silos into the dressing room won’t help. Graeme Smith’s contract as director of cricket expires on Thursday, and by all accounts he is set against continuing in the job — he was named on Friday among the 20 world feed television commentators for the IPL, which starts on Saturday. And that even as a decision is awaited on the now concluded arbitration proceedings between him and CSA. Boucher’s tenure could end after his disciplinary hearing in May. If he isn’t sacked — CSA’s preferred outcome — indications are he will look to leave his post before his contract ends after the World Cup.

The action taken against Smith and Boucher stemmed from allegations made against them during the Social Justice and Nation Building (SJN) hearings last year, and their consequent implication in the project’s deeply problematic report. Nothing, including qualifying for the World Cup, is as important as redressing racism. But that won’t stop the drama of attempts to do so from having adverse effects on the players, especially as Smith and Boucher are trusted figures who came on board when the game had spiralled to dismal levels, on and off the field, in December 2019 and have been instrumental in re-establishing something like stability.

Might the prospect of both of them no longer being around have been a factor in displays like South Africans watched, aghast, on Wednesday? If figures as significant as Smith and Boucher, whose stellar on-field careers will be fresh in the minds of the current crop of players, want nothing to do with the highest level of the game in their country, what does that say about South African cricket, CSA, the public, and the players who currently wear the badge?

Bavuma and his team — and Dean Elgar’s Test XI, who will go into the series against Bangladesh at Kingsmead on Thursday without the IPL cohort, among them South Africa’s entire first-choice pace attack — would be forgiven for feeling as if they were trying to play cricket on the deck of a sinking ship.

That’s not easy. Good thing, then, that cats, regardless of how many lives they have left, tend to land on their feet.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Smith saga sums up CSA woes

“We’re in a sort of half-pregnant state and we don’t know what the birth will be.” – Andrew Breetzke, SACA chief executive

Telford Vice | Cape Town

WHICH will come first: judgment in Graeme Smith’s arbitration process, or the announcement that he no longer wants to be CSA’s director of cricket? But, regardless of what the arbitrator decides, Smith would appear to be on his way out.

The hearing, which started on Monday, was set to conclude by Wednesday evening. It is confidential and the evidence isn’t available to be reported upon, but CSA and Smith have agreed that the arbitrator’s findings be made public. That could take two weeks.

Smith has been in the position since December 2019. His current contract expires at the end of March. Cricbuzz understands he will not seek to renew it. The disaffection appears mutual: on February 8, CSA chairperson Lawson Naidoo was quoted as saying the job would be advertised. That remains the case but has yet to happen, a CSA spokesperson said on Wednesday. But a sure-fire way to let people know they are not wanted is to tell them to re-apply for their posts.

The upshot is that, come the end of the month, CSA are set to be without a director of cricket. Unless, that is, they appoint someone in an acting capacity — which has become a frequent occurrence at the troubled organisation — or don’t bother with interviews and head hunt a suitable candidate, which they are entitled to do. CSA could also choose to restructure the role, assigning different duties to different people. That could open the door to consultants, Smith perhaps among them.

Or to someone like Ashwell Prince, who is back in the country after resigning as Bangladesh’s batting coach last month. Asked on Wednesday whether he was interested in becoming CSA’s next director of cricket, Prince told Cricbuzz his focus had shifted: “My time with Bangladesh allowed me to do quite a bit of soul searching and, to be quite honest, whatever I decide to do next will depend heavily on how much time I can spend with my family.”

Besides, who would want to throw in their lot with CSA? Despite the suspension in December 2019 of Thabang Moroe as chief executive — he was subsequently sacked — to end more than two years of chronic catastrophe on the fiscal and governance fronts, major sponsors who cut ties during that sorry period have not returned and replacements have not been secured. While the removal of a derelict and delinquent old board in November 2020 was widely welcomed, faith in CSA has not been restored. Not even the establishment in June last year of a majority independent board, which was heralded as a great leap forward, hasn’t done that. The pandemic, of course, hasn’t helped the game stay on its feet.

All the while, uncertainty has been snowballing. And South African cricket’s only revenue generators, the players, are looking on in alarm. “Players want stability, and irrespective of the merits of the case they see issues like this as a major disruption to the game,” Andrew Breetzke, the chief executive of the South African Cricketers’ Association, told Cricbuzz. “We’re in a sort of half-pregnant state and we don’t know what the birth will be.”

Smith’s obvious value to CSA is in his solid relationships with the BCCI — based on his friendship with Sourav Ganguly — and with broadcasters SuperSport. It is not a reach to say both of those associations, which are vital to South African cricket’s financial wellbeing, would suffer, at least in the short term, should Smith go.

The details of the action being taken against Smith have not been released, but they have been based on the tentative findings in the Social Justice and Nation Building (SJN) project’s report — which implicates him in several instances, both as a player and an administrator.

The conclusions in the 235-page document, which was released in December, could be dismissed as a hodgepodge of sloppy conjecture and narrow-minded assumption that fails miserably to do justice to the courage of those who came forward to testify about their experiences of racist treatment in cricket. The report also falls pathetically short in offering CSA constructive ways to make progress with combating and eradicating the undoubted, longstanding and ongoing presence of racism in the game. As such, it is difficult to see how it could fairly be used to help determine the rights and wrongs of anyone’s actions.

Even so, given that high hopes for a more just reality for black and brown people in South African cricket were quickly attached to the SJN hearings, CSA’s board could hardly assign the deeply flawed report to the shredder. Allowing an independently appointed arbitrator to decide the issue, in Smith’s case, is the board’s only viable option.

Ditto Mark Boucher’s disciplinary hearing, which is also tied to the SJN report and is set for May 16 to 20. But there are key differences. Long before the report was released, Boucher admitted to and apologised for some of the allegations made against him during the hearings — albeit that he left many dissatisfied with what he said. Maybe that’s why CSA’s board have said they are seeking his dismissal.

The case against Smith is risibly weak, and the outcome is likely moot in real terms. Perhaps all that matters, to him, is clearing his name. Not least because an adverse judgment would surely not sit well with prospective employers. The case against Boucher is stronger, although far from conclusive. But, should he be cleared, would he want to continue knowing that the forces ranged against him since his appointment in December 2019 — almost seven months before the SJN hearings started — would not be deterred in their sometimes unfair, other times irrational, disapproval of him? It’s a question only he can answer, and only if he gets the chance.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Smith arbitration looms

“He looks forward to demonstrating through this impartial process that these findings are without merit.” – David Becker, Graeme Smith’s lawyer.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

DISCIPLINARY action against Graeme Smith will start on Monday, CSA said in a release said on Friday. Smith, CSA’s director of cricket, has agreed to an arbitration process in the wake of findings made against him in the Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) report.

The report, which was released in December, implicated Smith and Mark Boucher in conduct that could be construed as racially biased. Unlike Boucher, who is a full-time CSA employee and will be the subject of a disciplinary hearing in May at which his dismissal will be sought on charges related to SJN findings, Smith is an independent contractor. Hence the difference in approach. The release said the arbitrators’ findings, which will be binding on both Smith and CSA, will be made public.

“The use of formal arbitration proceedings to deal with these issues is in keeping with CSA’s commitment to deal with the SJN issues in a manner that treats them with utmost seriousness but also ensures fairness, due process and finality,” the release quoted CSA chair Lawson Naidoo as saying.

“Graeme and his advisors have consistently voiced material concerns with the SJN process, in particular the tentative findings made against him,” Smith’s lawyer, David Becker, was quoted as saying. “He looks forward to demonstrating through this impartial process that these findings are without merit.”

The case against Smith is considered weak and ill-informed, and the process could be a waste of time and money because it is understood he will not seek to renew his contract when it expires at the end of March.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Boucher heads into murky racism storm

“CSA suspends Boucher and Smith” – the damagingly erroneous headline on CSA’s release was a glimpse of the divisions in the game.

Telford Vice | Paarl

CSA have no belief in Mark Boucher and are trying to fire him on charges of racism. It’s there in black and white, twice, in the charge sheet that will be used in his disciplinary hearing that is set to start on Wednesday.

Here’s page two of seven: “[CSA] will contend that the nature of your misconduct is gross and of such a serious nature to warrant termination of your employment. And page six: “Your conduct has resulted in an irretrievable breakdown in the trust relationship between you and CSA. In the circumstances, the sanction of dismissal will be sought before the chairperson of the disciplinary enquiry.”

This would be the same Mark Boucher who, last Friday, guided South Africa to a famous Test series victory over India with a team in which black and brown players are flourishing. And the same Mark Boucher who has recently been praised for his work as a coach by Lungi Ngidi, Rassie van der Dussen and Farhaan Behardien. Not for the first time, the suits and the players are not nearly on the same page.

But this is also the same Mark Boucher who was among the South Africa players who, the Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) project heard, called Paul Adams “brown shit” in a dressing room song during their mutual playing days. Boucher admitted as much and apologised, but only in writing. Had he taken the chance he had to appear at the SJN in person, or at least online, he would have been able to present himself as a contrite, fallible human being who was the product of a shockingly damaged society. Instead, he sent a cold, dry lawyer’s letter riddled with weasel words. It has now been used against him.

The SJN report failed utterly to provide a roadmap for progress. Instead it passed the buck and recommended that Boucher and Graeme Smith, CSA’s director of cricket, be investigated. Even if the SJN hadn’t made that limp suggestion — wasn’t that SJN itself’s role in all this? — CSA did not have the option of ignoring what had been uncovered at the hearings. To do nothing would have been to condone by silence serious allegations and admissions. There is never a convenient time to deal with racism, but dealt with it must be. That is more true in South Africa than in any other country.

Even so, some of the SJN’s findings on Smith, in particular, were blighted by damaging leaps of assumption. For instance, Smith’s refusal, before his appointment in December 2019, to report to former CSA chief executive Thabang Moroe, along with his stated lack of trust in the previous board, were held up as “[evincing] his racial bias against black leadership at CSA”.

Moroe was a wrecking ball of an administrator, and consequently fired. The board resigned in disgrace after years of governance catastrophes. That Smith insisted on keeping his distance from these malignant entities is commendable. For the SJN not to recognise that raises serious questions about its own integrity and its understanding of its purpose. Besides, Smith has been working with acting chief executive Pholetsi Moseki — who is black — since December 2020, and with a majority black and brown board for his entire tenure.

But that wasn’t the only charge made about Smith and, as per the SJN’s recommendation, action against him is expected to be unveiled in the coming days. As he is an independent contractor, unlike full-time employee Boucher, that could mean arbitration rather than the bigger stick being wielded at his former teammate.

So how was it that the release that heralded Boucher’s disciplinary hearing was originally headlined: “CSA suspends Boucher and Smith”? That statement was soon withdrawn, only to reappear without change except for the headline — “CSA appoints highly respected advocate Terry Motau (SC) chairperson of disciplinary hearing into allegations into Mark Boucher”.

Asked why “suspends” and “Smith” appeared on top of a statement that mentioned neither, Thamie Mthembu, CSA’s head of communications, told Cricbuzz that “this is an unforgivable error”, that “we have investigated and it is clear to us that one of the writers used a previous template that was never intended for release and then saved the new document as such”, and that “the document should have been saved as per the headline on the document”.

That a “previous template” in CSA’s system was titled “CSA suspends Boucher and Smith” — that it even existed — should ring loud alarms. It is an inkling into the division that infects every facet of the game. It is common knowledge that factions within CSA have been dead set against the appointment of Smith, who as per his mandate hired Boucher, since he started work: some 17 months before the SJN hearings started.

Had the first headline never appeared, this story wouldn’t have been anything like this long. That it needs all this explaining and context means cricket may not have rid itself of its delinquent denizens. Because unwarranted, damaging headlines like “CSA suspends Boucher and Smith” cannot be honest mistakes. They have to be unleashed by design — to misinform, to mislead, to divide and, perchance, to rule again in Machiavellian style.

Indeed, even though the board has been restructured to feature a majority of independent directors, some of the dinosaurs of cricket’s decades of rampant cronyism have survived. A minority of board members, in the words of one source, “hate [Boucher] with a passion” — hence, perhaps, the escalation of what was originally billed as an investigation into a potentially career-ending disciplinary hearing. Another minority are “vocally in his favour”. Still another, more objective, minority want the process to run its course fully and fairly.

So, not every board member wants Boucher sacked. But, as a collective, that’s what the board have signed off on. And, despite the ominous wording of the charge sheet, Motau could decide Boucher is guilty and not sack him. He could, for instance, slap him with a letter of warning and order him to undergo anti-racism training.

Boucher was furnished, privately, with the charge sheet on Monday. The news that he would be on the carpet was broken on Thursday, prompting CSA to release their clanger of a headline. It wasn’t long before the charge sheet itself was doing the rounds.

In it, Boucher is accused of “historically repeatedly used racist and/or offensive and/or inappropriate nicknames regarding a Proteas team-mate; and/or having had your racist and/or offensive and/or inappropriate utterances drawn to your attention, you failed to adequately and/or sufficiently and/or appropriately apologise for these utterances and/or acknowledge the racist nature of these utterances and/or hurt that they caused.”

Curiously, “When dealing with the Black Lives Matter issue and the question of ‘taking the knee’, you allegedly dealt with the white players’ concerns and requested that the team manager (who is black) deal with the black players’ concerns.” Consequently, “This allegedly created or exacerbated division and alienated players and the team.” It also meant Boucher drew for himself the short straw of talking to players who had refused to kneel: all the members of the squad who didn’t were white. He himself had been taking a knee since before the board ordered all to do so.

Boucher also “allegedly did not formalise any documented ‘roles and responsibilities’ or meaningful KPIs [key performance indicators] for the assistant coach, Enoch Nkwe”, who is black — and resigned unhappily in August. Boucher “allegedly did not provide any specific or sufficiently specific and defined role for Mr Nkwe and no ‘personal development plans’ were documented or implemented for Mr Nkwe” and “you allegedly treated Mr Nkwe in a manner unbecoming of a leader in your position”. This situation must be remedied. Nkwe is too intelligent and too valuable a coach and figure of excellence to be lost to cricket.

Wednesday will be the first step in what could be a protracted business of he said, he said. Boucher will take the team to New Zealand early next month with this saga hanging over his head, where it promises to be for months to come.

He could well win the battle, and he won’t be declared its biggest loser. That sorry status is reserved for those South Africans who thought they knew black from white, and how to tell the difference.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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CSA board raises bat on 100 days

“For the first time in three years the board is doing the right work, asking the right questions, and trying to find the right solutions.” – Andrew Breetzke, SACA chief executive

Telford Vice | Cape Town

CRICKET in South Africa was saved from itself on June 22 this year, when a majority independent board took control of CSA for the first time. That ended almost 30 years of corrupting cronyism enabled by powerful administrators being left to police themselves. Hopes were raised that the new suits would at least try to do right by a game that had become chronically dysfunctional under the flawed former governance model.

A release to celebrate the moment said: “The board agreed to focus their first 100 days in office on bringing stability to the organisation and embarking on an engagement programme to gain input from stakeholders as it seeks to align everyone towards a shared vision for the future.” Thursday is the 100th of those days. Has the board delivered on their promise?

“The answer is complex,” was how Andrew Breetzke, the chief executive of the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) — thus the voice of the players — began his reply. Too complex for other major stakeholders to tackle, it seems.

Government helped broker cricket’s brighter dawn by pressuring the previous board — an ill-equipped clutch of, mostly, small-minded people with big ideas centered on themselves — to resign. And by allowing CSA to ignore the objections of its reform efforts that came from the even more rapacious fat cats in the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee, which has authority over federations. What did sports minister Nathi Mthethwa think of the board’s first 100 days? Comment was requested, more than once, from his office. No response was received.

What of the fans? Ask two cricketminded South Africans for their views and you will likely get three divergent opinions. Instead Cricbuzz asked the Gwijo Squad, the all-singing, all-dancing supporters’ group who have brought traditional Xhosa and struggle songs to the country’s cricket grounds and rugby stadiums in rousing fashion since Siya Kolisi — South Africa’s only black rugby captain — led the Springboks for the first time in June 2018.

The Squad’s chair, Chulumanco Macingwane, said he had consulted within the organisation, “and it was agreed that it’s probably not our place to be opining in any way about the administration of any sports federation. Though individuals may have their own views on the CSA board’s performance, we can’t present those as representatives of the collective.” Fair enough. Fans are interested in the game itself, not in the dreary doings of administrators. So back to the players.

“The board has succeeded in bringing about some stability in the game, I give them that,” Breetzke said. “The board committees are all now functional; they hadn’t been for 12 months [previously], which was very worrying.

“For the first time in three years I can say that the board have done good work in getting the organisation moving forward and doing the right work, asking the right questions, and trying to find the right solutions.

“They have engaged with us fully on these issues, and it’s wonderful to sit in a meeting and give your input and have debates and discussions. There’s a positive vibe that is very important, and I have to give the board credit that that has happened.”

Considering SACA had a septic relationship with the old order — they had to drag CSA to court for the players to be paid some of what they were owed from the 2018 Mzansi Super League, for instance — Breetzke’s words rang with the promise of progress.

But there is a ghost in the freshly oiled machine. It haunts cricket with truth as well as untruth and has produced, along with invaluable insights into the experiences of those hurt and wronged by cricket’s troubled past, evidence that the game’s capture by nefarious figures has not been undone. The ghost has a name: the Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) project.

A source with close knowledge of the SJN said: “There could have been a different process that could have been very useful for our game — around transformation and why it isn’t working. But how much of the testimony was actually part of carrying on the game’s internal faction fight and people taking positions, and how much was about dealing with real issues of hardcore racism and transformation that we need to deal with in cricket? I’d say less than 50%.” The fact they source didn’t feel comfortable putting their name to such constructive criticism is an alarm to all who hope the SJN directs cricket onto a more honest footing with all who are part of it.

The hearings, which started on July 5, have dominated cricket’s headlines, drowning out the success of the national men’s team in Ireland and Sri Lanka, and the women’s side in the Caribbean. Who’s to say that shouldn’t happen? Eradicating racism has to be more important than winning matches. But it has to be done with integrity, and not in accordance with a spiteful agenda that undermines those who come to the SJN with legitimate grievances. The convicted fixers who have tried to hijack the hearings with their self-serving conspiracy theories are cases in point.

The board inherited the SJN from their predecessors, and would be forgiven for feeling ambushed by what has transpired. That chairperson Lawson Naidoo said, on July 5, that CSA would not comment while the hearings were ongoing in order to “protect the independence, autonomy and integrity of this process” has not stopped recklessly premature demands for the board to take decisive action against some of those implicated. Many of these calls seem to have been triggered by pre-existing prejudice, which will detract from reasons to take them seriously.

Some have already switched off. “There’s so much noise around so many issues at the SJN that a lot of people are distancing themselves from the game,” a source said. “It’s not that they’re no longer supporters, but they’re not engaging with cricket.”

The SJN hearings are set to resume on October 18, this time with testimony from those accused of wrongdoing. Five days later South Africa will play their first game in the men’s T20 World Cup. Against Australia, no less. This doesn’t get easier, and it shouldn’t: there’s too much at stake to look away now.

A hundred days from Thursday is January 8 next year. By then, we’ll know who won the T20 World Cup and, Covid-19 permitting, we’ll be able to ponder what happened in South Africa’s home Test series against India. But we won’t have rid cricket of racism, nor of cynical bandwagon jumpers. Sadly, that will take many more days.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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