The band plays on at the home of cricket

St George’s Park houses South Africa’s slowest pitch, but that doesn’t mean captains should load their XIs with spinners. 

TELFORD VICE in Port Elizabeth

WELCOME, Faf du Plessis and AN Others, to the home of cricket. In South Africa, at least. It was at St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth on two crazy days in March 1889 that a team who, despite their unbearable whiteness of being, had the gall to call themselves South Africa lost to a rag-tag side who, they later learnt to their bemusement, were billed as England in what has become acknowledged as the first Test played on the sharp tip of what was, for too long, shamefully caricatured as “the dark continent”.

So when Du Plessis talked up Newlands as “the home of cricket” before the second Test the other week, eyebrows yanked upward; particularly on the faces of those blessed with the flat vowels and rough attitude that come with hailing from the Eastern Cape. You could hear them thinking: “What? Newlands is ‘the home of cricket’? Is the poor bastard lost?”

When Du Plessis’ team were beaten in the shadow of the most referenced mountain in cricket, no-one had the gumption to ask whether he wanted the game to move house. Just as no-one thought to ask Joe Root, fresh from leading England to their first victory in a Newlands Test in 63 years, if he would prefer that cricket relocates to Cape Town. From Dubai: it hasn’t lived at Lord’s since 2005.

Doubtless Du Plessis and Root will have done their homework on St George’s Park before the third Test on Thursday. This is the country’s slowest pitch, but that doesn’t mean captains should load their XIs with spinners. You have to go a dozen entries down the list of the best performances in an innings in Port Elizabeth to find the first slow bowler, and nine quicks have taken more wickets in their careers here than the most successful spinner. On both counts that spinner is Hugh Tayfield, who racked up 154 wickets all told in the 1950s. Only four bowlers of whatever style had more victims overall in that decade. The next best South African was fast bowler Neil Adcock with 69: less than half Tayfield’s tally. Just five bowlers have snared 20 or more wickets in the 30 Tests played in Port Elizabeth — Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Kagiso Rabada, Dale Steyn and Makhaya Ntini. The same group plus Morné Morkel, Jacques Kallis and Vernon Philander have taken at least 20 on the faster, bouncier, seamier, swingier surface at Centurion, which has hosted five fewer Tests. From a South African perspective, St George’s Park is a spinner’s surface. In more objective terms, it’s a recognisably South African pitch. Except that it’s slower than the rest.

Of the grounds being used in this series, South Africa have their worst win/loss ratio here. It’s also where England have fared the best in this country on that score. South Africa haven’t won any of their four Port Elizabeth Tests against England since 1957. There’s that year again.  

Old hands at St George’s Park will tell captains to look up as much as down before they make their decision at the toss. Whatever the pitch looks like — even if it’s green it’s unlikely to be fast, or offer significant seam movement — they should note the wind. If it’s blowing from over the north-west corner of the ground it’s bringing dry air from inland: bat. If it’s gusting over the scoreboard, or 180 degrees in the other direction, it’s carrying moisture from the nearby Indian Ocean: field. Or at least consider that as a serious option.

To the north is the vast red-brick, green-roofed curving expanse of the Duckpond Pavilion. Its construction in the 1990s was fodder for allegations of poor building practices fuelled by dodgy money. Almost 30 years on, the award-winning edifice stands as solid as ever. The short spiral staircases either side of the sightscreen were uncovered until December 1995, when England played a Test at St George’s Park for the first time since the end of South Africa’s isolation in 1991. Can’t have that, England’s management said, and demanded that an already excessively wide white space be made wider and whiter still by the addition of opaque shields around the stairs.

The players, the parasites — who are sometimes called administrators — and the press are accommodated at the southern end of the ground. The teams’ balconies are uncomfortably close to the reporters watching their every off-field move. So Michael Atherton smashing the leg off a chair in reaction to his dismissal in that 1995 match didn’t go unnoticed. Neither did the disturbance caused by Shoaib Akhtar taking a bat to Mohammad Asif’s shins in the dressingroom in January 2007. Sitting in the pressbox, you would be forgiven for imagining you are close enough to the middle to reach out and tap a slip fielder on the shoulder to offer advice.

Grass banks stretch away to the east. It was here in March 2018 that poltroons wearing Sonny Bill Williams masks gathered in a malevolently misguided attempt to taunt David Warner by slut-shaming his wife, Candice Warner — who had a brief relationship with the rugby star before she met her husband. Two Cricket South Africa officials posed for photographs with the disguised dolts, and were suspended from their jobs as a consequence.

The ground’s heart beats most rhythmically in its north-western quarter. The brassy blare of the St George’s Park Band, an amalgamation of musicians drawn from several churches, is central to the grand pageant of Test cricket on the south-eastern edge of Africa. Some can’t stand the noise — admittedly it can dominate television audio — and umpires have been known to tell the band to pipe down. But the signature scene of a St George’s Park Test is the band riffing on the introductory bars of Ben E King’s “Stand By Me” for much of a session; usually after lunch or tea, and usually when South Africa are in the field. If you’ve watched enough cricket here it’s impossible not to remember Jonty Rhodes, at backward point, dancing to that unbreakable tune between deliveries. The band is behind him, the sun hangs low in the sky beyond, the planets are aligned, the universe is in sync, and the moment never ends.

If you’re a South African of a particular geography, that’s a picture of the truth — memory is nowhere near a rich enough descriptor — that confirms what you know already every time this circus rolls into town: Cricket’s coming home.

First published by Cricbuzz.

CSA say SACA saga prompted suits’ suspension

History of sidelining those outside dominant cabal could be repeating itself.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

CRICKET South Africa (CSA) say the latest impasse in their fractious relationship with the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) is why they suspended three senior staff members.

But insiders regard that explanation with suspicion. Asked whether a rat should be smelled, one well-placed source said the reporter had “an immaculate sense of smell”.

TMG Digital broke the news on Tuesday that interim director of cricket Corrie van Zyl, sponsor and sales head Clive Eksteen and chief operating officer Naasei Appiah had been removed from their positions.

Van Zyl confirmed that as fact but declined to comment further. Eksteen and Appiah did not respond meaningfully.

A CSA release on Wednesday said the organisation had “recently become aware of an unfortunate situation involving players and player contracts, through player intermediary [SACA] in which speculation and indeed allegations of dereliction were levelled against CSA, following alleged non-payment of player fees, stemming from the Mzansi Super League [MSL] arrangement, in 2018”.

SACA lodged a formal dispute last Wednesday over the failure by CSA to pay R2.4-million into their players’ trust — the terms of the contract the player body signed with CSA for the use of their commercial rights for the MSL.

“CSA is in the process of investigating this matter to determine the extent to which certain CSA employees were or were not derelict in fulfilling their duties,” the release said.

“This is in line with the effort of ensuring that the principle of accountability is applied equally, fairly and without fear or favour throughout the organisation. 

“Whilst the investigation of this matter is in progress employees who are alleged to have been involved in this matter have been placed on precautionary suspension until the investigation is completed, following which disciplinary action could be instituted against the affected employees.”

The move has taken significant experience out of CSA’s knowledge bank at a time when the organisation can least afford it.

Van Zyl and Eksteen played for South Africa, and Van Zyl coached the national men’s team before being appointed CSA’s general manager for cricket in December 2011. Appiah arrived at CSA in October 2010 as chief financial officer.

Beleaguered by legal battles on three fronts, awash with interim appointments, and embroiled in a transformation squabble over the Cobras’ decision to field only two black Africans — instead of the target of three — in their four-day match against the Warriors at Newlands this week, CSA can ill afford another scandal.

That’s especially true with the national men’s Test team still under the cloud of their worst performance in a series in 83 years.

Faf du Plessis side were beaten 3-0 in India, the last two losses suffered by an innings.

The last time South Africa were as heavily defeated was by Australia in March 1936.

Eksteen, who joined CSA in October 2015 as their commercial manager, has been in trouble with his bosses before.

During the St George’s Park Test in March last photographs of him posing with fans trying to antagonise David Warner by wearing Sonny Bill Williams face masks emerged on social media.

Before she was involved with Warner, the Australian’s wife, the then Candice Falzon, had a brief but well publicised liaison with All Blacks star Williams.

That saga, which prompted the resignation of then communications head Altaaf Kazi, who was also in the photograph, was seen as part of an effort to rid CSA of figures not in the dominant cabal.

The same scenario unfolded in September 2017, when Haroon Lorgat left his position as chief executive over what CSA said was his poor handling of arrangements for the T20 Global League, which became the MSL.    

The current controversy is laced with similar undertones, with figures within the game fearing the drama is an attempt to clear the decks of opposition to the powers that be.

Even so, the fate of Van Zyl and Appiah is surprising.

Van Zyl has seemed central to powerful chief executive Thabang Moroe’s brave new direction for CSA, while Appiah is a long-time Moroe ally. But insiders say Moroe and Appiah had a major fallout about two months ago.

SACA, the players’ trade union, are in the throes of a high court action against CSA for plans to restructure the domestic system than could see 70 players lose their jobs, and will no doubt have taken note of being downgraded in Wednesday’s release to a mere “player intermediary”. 

The Western Province Cricket Association are also in CSA’s queue of court cases, having sought an interdict against the latter for their decision to put the province’s board under administration.

At some point, surely, CSA will be fighting more fires than they could possibly put out. 

First published by TMG Digital.

CSA suspend senior suits

“With Corrie [van Zyl] and Clive [Eksteen] gone they really don’t have cricket expertise in their senior management ranks.” – a source on CSA’s shock move

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

THREE of Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) most senior staff have been suspended, Bulletproof Truth has learnt.

Interim director of cricket Corrie van Zyl, sponsor and sales head Clive Eksteen and chief operating officer Naasei Appiah have all been removed from their positions.

That the action was taken against them was confirmed, off the record, by a high-ranking senior official. Staff were informed at a meeting.

Asked why the decisions were taken, CSA spokesperson Thami Mthembu said, “CSA will issue a statement tomorrow morning.”

Van Zyl declined to comment, while Appiah and Eksteen did not respond meaningfully to requests for comment.

Several sources contacted didn’t know the reasons for the action, although the fallout from the South African Cricketers’ Association’s formal dispute with CSA over R2.4-million still owed the players from last year’s Mzansi Super League has been mooted as an explanation. 

“With Corrie and Clive gone they really don’t have cricket expertise in their senior management ranks,” a source with knowledge of the situation said.

Eksteen has been in trouble with his bosses before, notably during the St George’s Park Test in March last year when he was photographed with fans trying to antagonise David Warner by wearing Sonny Bill Williams face masks.

Before she was involved with Warner, his wife, the then Candice Falzon, had a brief but well publicised affair with Williams.

 The fate of Van Zyl and Appiah is more surprising. Van Zyl has seemed central to powerful chief executive Thabang Moroe’s brave new direction for CSA, while Appiah is a long-term ally of Moroe.

But insiders say Moroe and Appiah had a major fallout about two months ago, which could be why Appiah has lost Moroe’s support.

CSA, beleaguered by legal battles on three fronts and strewn with interim appointments, can ill afford another scandal — especially with the national men’s Test team still under a cloud of their worst series in 83 years.

Faf du Plessis side were beaten 3-0 in India, the last two losses suffered by an innings.

The last time South Africa were as heavily defeated was by Australia in March 1936.

First published by TMG Digital.

Leading Edge: Men are ruining a game played with integrity by women

Why can’t men play cricket without resorting to neanderthal conduct?

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

IF you didn’t know that men — as opposed to women, boys, girls or meerkats — are contesting the test series between South Africa and Australia, you should by now.

“It’s a lot of men playing out there and you’re allowed to celebrate sometimes,” Vernon Philander said during the St George’s Park test. “Sometimes there’s a fine line about celebrating too hard.

“It’s a bunch of men playing this game. It would be a totally different ballgame if it was a bunch of schoolboys. We tend to take things personally.”

Other players have also reached for the M-word in response to questions about the poor standards of player behaviour in the series.

Among them Faf du Plessis, who when asked what all this manliness was about joked, albeit not snidely: “We’re men and we play the game.”

Are these explanations for why men can’t seem to play a game of cricket without resorting to neanderthal conduct?

Or are they excuses — we’re men; we know not what we do?

What they should be is apologies, but they sound much more not sorry than sorry.

There’s a “boys will be boys” dismissiveness about how players from both sides have tried to rationalise the rampant and puerile swearing, shocking misogyny and, in one case, what would in a court of law be called assault the series has had to endure.

Men are not admitting their limitations when they resort to stating their gender in answer to concerns over the way they have, or haven’t, done something. Instead, they are proclaiming their superiority.

We’re men, dammit. That’s why.

There’s something like pride in the fact that, even in 2018 and despite everything that namby-pamby International Cricket Council tries to throw at them, men are still in touch with their primal selves enough to be able to summon their basest behaviour at the flick of an emotional switch.

And no switch is as easily flicked as the mere mention of a woman who is close to them, particularly by an adversary.

Take it from a man, “Your mother sleeps with your father,” would start an all-out brawl if it was uttered on the dressingroom stairs.

This poisonous perversion has permeated the boundary, beyond which lurk pathetic husks of humans wearing Sonny Bill Williams masks and thinking they’re funny.

None of this is, of course, limited to cricket. The world has been messed up by men for centuries, and they have tended to blame women for their failures or at least use them as justification for getting things badly wrong.

Hence, David Warner could not control his anger when his wife was apparently insulted by Quinton de Kock, who had himself been provoked by alleged comments about his wife and mother.

Of course, part of Warner’s defence for behaving as he did was that he was standing up for women.

Those damn women. Always causing problems in men’s lives. Once they were burned at the stake as witches. Now they are torched on social media.

It is not manly to stalk a cricket ground like some caveman sniffing the air for the scent of prey, and to react as if you have been attacked at a mention of what you decide is the wrong thing to say. It is, instead, evidence that evolution hasn’t made much progress.

It is also what does not happen when women play cricket. There is aggression aplenty in women’s cricket — watch Marizanne Kapp bowl and you will be in no doubt about that — and the sledging can be rougher than a goat’s knee. But there is also fine skill and wonderful competitiveness.

Women play cricket. Men don’t so much play cricket as try to punish it for being a game worth playing: how dare cricket think it can put an XI in front of us who think they are better than us?

Men are ruining a game that is played with more integrity by women. There are indeed a lot of men playing out there. Too many.

When is a sport not a sport?

Feel it, esports is here. That you don’t want to believe that matters bugger nothing.

Times SELECT

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

BOBBY Fischer was and remains a sportswriter’s dream, a paranoid genius who was as likely to miss a flight because he thought he was being lured into a kidnapping as he was because he decided en route to the airport he would rather go shop for a television set.

In 1972 he missed his flight, willfully, for five consecutive nights as increasingly frazzled organisers tried to get him to Reykjavik to challenge Boris Spassky for the world championship.

Fischer eventually went, saw and conquered. Only to forfeit his title three years later in a squabble with the suits.

He emerged from years of obscurity in 1992 to beat Spassky again in Yugoslavia, which at the time was subject to a United Nations embargo and US sanctions.

That earned Fischer an arrest warrant from the US government, and in 2004 he spent months in jail in Japan for using a revoked passport.

Fischer, who won the US championship at 14, dropped out of school at 16, and was dead at 64 after he refused medical treatment for a blocked urinary tract.

A fight over inheritance promptly erupted between his Japanese supposed wife and the Filipino mother of his children, leading to the exhumation of his body for DNA sampling.

As we speak — and until March 14 — the Bobby Fischer Memorial tournament is being played in Reykjavik.

If you can’t see the rich seam of stories to be mined from all that, best you don’t take up writing.

Clearly, the kid could play. But he played chess.

Is chess a sport? Yes, say the International Olympic Committee. No, says the UK government, which doesn’t fund the game — which it would do if it did consider chess a sport.

Chess is a sport in that it is intensely competitive and requires high levels of talent and skill of its serious players.

But if chess is a sport what about draughts? Snakes ’n ladders? Monopoly? Pictionary? They’re all board games, but a roll of the dice is key to two of them. But something like talent and skill are required to play draughts and Pictionary.

What of bridge, snooker and darts, which tick all the boxes to be a sport except that they do not require physical fitness, strength, or much in the way of hand-eye co-ordination? Anyone for archery?

And if we decide that these are not sports we’ll have to ask ourselves whether some sports are more sport than other sports.

Cricket, for instance, is more physically taxing than bowls or golf but less than rugby, which is a picnic compared to boxing or marathon running. So is boxing more of a sport than golf? Hell yes, if you ask this sportswriter.

Thing is, while we’re asking ourselves these worthy questions the space for sport in the public consciousness as we know it — or want to debate it — is being eaten alive by the rising giant of esports.

Whether we regard sitting motionless, but for our typing fingers, at a computer for hours on end as a sport or not doesn’t matter. Everybody from J-Lo to Gillette is interested in getting a piece of the action in an activity that could make its Olympic debut in Paris in 2024. Science fiction? Not if you consider that esports is already on board for the 2022 Asian Games.

“We have to look at it because we can’t say, ‘It’s not us. It’s not about Olympics’,” Tony Estanguet, the co-president of the 2024 Paris bid committee, told the Associated Press last year.

“The youth, yes they are interested in esport and this kind of thing. Let’s look at it. Let’s meet them. Let’s try if we can find some bridges.

“I don’t want to say ‘no’ from the beginning. I think it’s interesting to interact with the IOC, with them, the esports family, to better understand what the process is and why it is such a success.”

The esports industry grows by more than a third a year. It was valued at US$660-million last year and is expected to reach US$.5-billion by 2020.

It is followed by 385 million people worldwide. One online platform, Twitch, attracts 400 million views a month.

The current, unofficial, esports Olympics is a tournament in Katowice in Poland that draws more than 100 000 spectators over three days.

All those nerdy geeks tear themselves away from their screens to go somewhere built of bricks and mortar to watch this stuff up close and personal.

None of them care whether their heroes can hit a six, score a goal, throw a mean left hook, or tie their shoelaces.

Feel it, esports is here. That you don’t want to believe that matters bugger nothing.

There are indeed bulletproof reasons why esports is as much a sport as anything involving balls, sweat and injuries. But they’re not the kind of reasons wanted by any sport, game, pastime, whatever.

Doping, for instance, is rife, which is hardly surprising considering esports competitors need to have the reactions of fighter pilots if they are going to make it out of little league.

And there’s a misogyny problem. On March 9, International Women’s Day, Soe Gschwind-Penski, a leading esports commentator — yes, there are people talking excitedly on air to a vast audience of people about all those other people pushing buttons — tweeted “a special shoutout to all the men in our lives who have supported us, gave us a voice when we had none, fought for our cause and treated us the way we all ought to treat each other… like a fellow human being – no race, no gender”.

You would think men, however undeserving, would be touched by Gschwind-Penski’s generosity of spirit. Or at least be civilised enough not to respond. But no …

“I’ve gotten death threats and hundreds of hate messages the past 20 minutes because I thanked men for treating me as their equal, on a day which is all about women’s struggle for equality. Hate, because I am grateful for the men in our lives who fight alongside us for our rights.”

You might say that’s just not cricket. Or, after what we saw at St George’s Park on the first day of the second test between South Africa and Australia, you might say it is.

Men turned up wearing Sonny Bill Williams face masks to try and get a rise out of David Warner because Warner’s wife, the former Candice Falzon, had a fling with Williams eight years before their marriage.

To those stupid men, Warner’s wife wasn’t a person; just a possession to do with as he and therefore they wished.

If esports can stamp out that kind awfulness, it might earn more attention from this sportswriter.

Rabada set to be ripped from series script

A decision on Rabada’s hearing is expected on what looms as an irredeemably blue Monday morning.

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE at St George’s Park

IT takes a special performance from a special player to shift the focus from the extra special AB de Villiers when he’s in full, glorious cry.

De Villiers’ undefeated 126 on the third day of the second test between South Africa and Australia at St George’s Park shimmered with enough incandescence to shine a light even under the rocks from whence those miseries in their Sonny Bill Williams masks have crawled.

But somebody did manage to steal De Villiers’ thunder. His name is Kagiso Rabada.

Rabada has bowled better and taken more wickets than the 3/38 he claimed in Australia’s second innings on Sunday; case in point is the 5/96 he took in the first innings on Friday.

But he has never shown more mongrel, more grunt, more edge, more nastiness, more likeness to Mack the Knife than on Sunday.

Even the rare delivery that might not have threatened became a grenade once it left his hand.

Like the one David Warner defended, perfectly sensibly, towards midwicket.

The ball was timed at 151 kilometres per hour — the fastest of the match — and so it cracked off the bat with zeal.

Rabada exploded after it, dived full length, spinning like a low-flying, horizontal figure skater as he did so, and came up with the goods in a menacingly cocked throwing arm.

Four overs later Rabada removed Warner with a rattlesnake of a delivery that straightened after pitching to snipe through the gate and nail his off stump.

As Warner walked past, Rabada roared a one-word farewell. What he said was difficult to know but it wasn’t a dinner invitation.

With that we were reminded of the real world, that place Rabada seems to be struggling to come to terms with.

That he will probably be ripped from the script of this series’ compelling drama on Monday is a shocking thought.

If South Africa go on to win this match, and they should, it will be in no small way Rabada’s doing.

But he was set to attend a hearing with match referee Jeff Crowe after stumps on Sunday at which his fate for bumping shoulders with Steve Smith after he dismissed the Australian captain on Friday will be decided.

What matters is whether the contact between the players was avoidable. It was.

Rabada has five demerit points hanging over him. Sunday’s hearing could add three or four more.

Eight points would get him banned for the last two tests.

A decision is expected on what looms, for South Africa, as an irredeemably blue Monday morning.

Whether Crowe will add Sunday’s spark with Smith to the charge sheet is not known.

Either way, the kid’s in trouble.

“It’d be handy for us not to have to face him, that’s for sure,” Australia bowling coach David Saker admitted with welcome candour.

Even so, Saker, himself a spontaneously combustible seamer in his playing days for Victoria and Tasmania, had empathy for Rabada.

“If I played now I’d probably only play two games a year, you’ve just got to be much more careful these days,” he said.

“But the game is so competitive — you’re trying to win for your country and sometimes you can go overboard, but it’s not a great look.”

De Villiers, too, tried to put himself in Rabada’s bowling boots.

“I’m glad I’m not a bowler because I think I would have been worse than him,” De Villiers said. “Maybe it’s important for the players to get around him before he gets close to a batsman so he can tell him, ‘You know what, I just got you out’.

“That’s what it comes down to, except with more emotion. He wants to tell him, ‘I just won that battle’.”

All good, except that Rabada has had five run-ins with match referees in not yet four years as an international player.

“He’s got to be smarter and he knows that,” De Villiers said. “I don’t know what is going to happen to him after this test but if he is around for the next test I think he would have learnt from his mistakes.

“There was a lot of emotion from that last test [at Kingsmead, where Warner and Quinton de Kock had a heated confrontation] going into this one, and as a fast bowler you want to prove things to people and you want to show everyone you belong on this stage.

“Dale [Steyn], when he’s on fire you don’t even understand what’s going on in that mind — you just see eyes and all sorts of stuff.

“Luckily for him he’s never sort of crossed that line.”

That’s the difference between a champion and a chump.

Rabada could be the best bowler in the game, but that won’t mean a thing if his temper keeps him off the field.

Strange days indeed continue in PE

That the SBW mask morons should drag into this idiocy a woman who no doubt has enough male stupidity in her life is vile and disgusting.

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE at St George’s Park

THE fact that this story has pushed onto an inside page our analysis of the cricket played on day two of the second test between South Africa and Australia at St George’s Park on Saturday tells you this is no ordinary match in no ordinary series.

Things will get more extraordinary if Kagiso Rabada is banned, as seems likely, for the rest of the rubber at a hearing on Sunday evening for the moment of male madness in which his and Steve Smith’s shoulders collided, seemingly malevolently, after he dismissed Australia’s captain on Friday.

But we should begin not on the field but in the sun-scarred green plastic seats of the western grandstand.

“We want the band! We want the band! We want the band …”

The chant went up before tea from the crowd clumped there after the umpires, Kumar Dharmasena and Sundaram Ravi, shushed the brass band, who promptly got up and left, tilting the tuba huffily as they went.

They returned after tea, to cheers more rousing than anything offered for a player’s feat. But twice more the umpires suspended play to silence them, to an edgy swelling of boos.

No-one was surprised by then. On Friday, this ground, the country’s gently fading grand dame of the game was defiled by barbarians at the gate putting their misogyny where their faces were.

They wore Sonny Bill Williams masks in an attempt at humour that would have been risibly flaccid if it wasn’t so mindless.

Eight years before Candice Falzon married David Warner, she and Williams’ liaison in the toilet of a Sydney hotel was dragged through the more feral depths of the internet, photograph and all.

The masks, then, were a few pitifully limited individuals’ idea of getting back at Warner in the wake of the invective he spewed at Quinton de Kock on and off the field in the first test at Kingsmead.

That they should drag into this idiocy a woman who no doubt has enough male stupidity in her life is beyond crass. It is vile and disgusting.

That two senior Cricket South Africa officials, commercial and marketing manager Clive Eksteen and communications head Altaaf Kazi, should see fit to pose, smiling, arm-in-arm, in a photograph with three of these masked morons is a brain fart of nuclear proportions.

That SuperSport should say they will take no action against Derek Alberts, who celebrated this sick stunt on social media, is beyond belief.

At least CSA knew it had to, in a statement, “distance itself from the alleged action of certain officials” and apologise to “the board of Cricket Australia, its officials, team management, players and their families”.

Strange days indeed.

Amla tries to talk cricket amid the drama

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE at St George’s Park

“SO you mean about the cricket,” Hashim Amla clarified with a reporter who had asked him a convoluted question after day two of the second test between South Africa and Australia at St George’s Park on Saturday.

Well might Amla have asked. What with Nathan Lyon, David Warner and Quinton de Kock having already felt the sting of match referee Jeff Crowe’s decisions and Kagiso Rabada on the carpet on Sunday evening, there’s a lot going on off the field.

That includes attempts by spectators in Port Elizabeth to get under the skin of Warner by wearing Sonny Bill Williams face masks.

Warner’s wife, Candice Warner, had an encounter with rugby star Williams in a toilet in 2007 — eight years before she married Warner.

Two senior Cricket South Africa (CSA) officials posed for a photograph with three of the masked men  that appeared on social media on Friday.

The suits concerned, commercial and marketing manager Clive Eksteen and communications head Altaaf Kazi have been sent home to Johannesburg pending the start of an internal investigation on Monday.

Umpires Kumar Dharmasena and Sundaram Ravi ordered the brass band that has been a fixture at the ground since 1867, in different guises and on and off, and consistently since 1995, to stop playing before tea on Saturday.

The band returned after tea but were twice hushed by the officials before resorting, largely, to playing quieter tunes.

“The umpires came to us as batsmen and they did ask us what we thought about the band,” Amla said.

“We told them it was their call; they’ve got to make the big decisions.

“Obviously they decided it was disturbing them.

“I think they had a chat to the fielding team as well.”

The umpires were booed for stopping the music, but after tea an official was seen in the band’s midst explaining that they could play after boundaries and between deliveries and overs but not while play was in progress.

Band members clearly weren’t happy with that idea, but the umpires did not intervene again.

Crowe handed Lyon, Warner and De Kock fines and demerit points for infractions of the code of conduct in the first test, but none of those players were banned.

That trend could change after stumps on Sunday, when Rabada is set to attend a hearing in the wake of him colliding, albeit lightly, with Steve Smith after he dismissed the Australia captain on Friday.

Rabada has five demerit points and could be slapped with three or four more if he is found guilty of his level two charge.

Players who collect eight active points are suspended for two matches, which would take Rabada out of the last two tests in the series.

CSA suits in hot water over SBW masks

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE at St George’s Park

TWO senior Cricket South Africa (CSA) officials are under fire for appearing to endorse the wearing of Sonny Bill Williams face masks during the second test between South Africa and Australia at St George’s Park.

CSA issued a statement on Saturday to “distance” themselves from their employees’ actions.

The masks are part of a spectator campaign in reaction to Australia opening batsman David Warner’s off-field verbal attack on South Africa wicketkeeper-batsman Quinton de Kock during the first test at Kingsmead.

De Kock apparently reacted to Warner’s sustained sledging on the field by making a comment about the Australian’s wife, further enraging him.

Eight years before she married Warner, the then Candice Falzon had a much publicised encounter in the toilet of a Sydney hotel with New Zealand rugby star Williams — hence the masks.

A photograph taken at St George’s Park on Friday and posted on social media shows three fans wearing Williams masks and standing arm-in-arm and smiling with CSA commercial and marketing manager Clive Eksteen and communications head Altaaf Kazi.

The story, which broke in the Sydney Morning Herald on Friday night, quoted Kazi as saying: “Initially security wouldn’t let them in [with the masks].

“We found out because [the spectators] contacted us and we then went to security and got them in. They said ‘let’s take a photo with you guys’.”

The Australia team had got wind that fans would wear the masks, and had asked for that not to be allowed.

Kazi denied that his actions amounted to support for those wearing the masks.

“People come in dressed as all sorts of things. We let people in with Hashim Amla beards.

“We’re very clear from a stadium perspective that we monitor the behaviour and language of fans.”

CSA’s statement quoted president Chris Nenzani as saying, “On behalf of CSA I extend my sincere apologies to the board of Cricket Australia, its officials, team management, players and their families.”

The release itself said, “CSA wishes to distance itself from the alleged action of certain officials in associating themselves with fans wearing masks representing the face of Sonny Bill Williams, which conduct is seemingly related to the Warner/De Kock incident during the opening day of the second test match at St George’s Park.

“While CSA respects the rights of its fans to represent their own points of view, CSA does not associate itself with these actions and urges all Protea supporters from refraining from being involved in distasteful or unwelcome actions that may impact the image of the sport and its supporters.

“CSA has taken immediate precautionary steps against the CSA officials allegedly involved in this incident and will follow the organisation’s normal internal processes in this regard.”

Asked what those “precautionary steps” were, Kazi told TMG Digital, “Please can you ask Thabang [Moroe, CSA’s acting chief executive] or Chris as I’m currently not in a position to make comments on this manner.”

Attempts to reach Nenzani failed.

It is unclear whether the behaviour of officials of the status of Eksteen and Kazi is governed by the International Cricket Council’s code of conduct, which pertains to the actions of players, coaches, team support staff and match officials.

“An official must not do anything that may intimidate, offend, insult, humiliate or discriminate against anyone on the basis of race, sex, gender, national or ethnic origin, religion, culture, colour, sexual orientation, or otherwise,” the code reads.

Barbarians at the St George’s Park gates

What does their clumsy idiocy say about a South Africa in which women are routinely abused in every which way?

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE at St George’s Park

SOUTH Africans held the Warnergate moral high ground until Friday, when they relinquished it to a mob of misogynists wearing cardboard cutout masks and carrying songbooks smeared with lyrics as lewd as they were lame.

The yob mob turned up at St George’s Park on the first morning of the second test between South Africa and Australia.

What their aim was wasn’t clear. Whatever it was went unattained — not a line of their songs was heard and most wore their masks on top of or behind their heads.

The masks featured the face of Sonny Bill Williams, whose name was in the lyrics.

If you don’t know why a New Zealand rugby player should make waves at a cricket match between South Africa and Australia, you probably also don’t know that David Warner is under fire for his verbal attack on Quinton de Kock during the first test at Kingsmead.

Warner launched his tirade after De Kock apparently made a derogatory comment about the Australian’s wife, which was triggered by hours of abuse directed at De Kock on the field.

De Kock shouldn’t have said what he allegedly said, but he was clearly provoked. And he said whatever he said quietly enough for only those closest to him to hear him.

Still not up to speed? In 2007 an Australian ironwoman star, Candice Falzon, engaged in what the tabloids enthusiastically dubbed a “tacky toilet tryst” with Williams. Falzon married Warner in 2015.

Ah. You can see clearly now, and the picture is as ugly as you imagine.

As if being married to one of the most unnecessarily aggressive men in sport wasn’t challenging enough, Warner’s wife has become the main victim of what he started.

Those South Africans who have shown themselves to be no better than Warner by trying to engage with him on his own pitiful level — perhaps they, like him, know no other way — disgrace all of us along with themselves.

They disgrace men. They disgrace cricket followers. They disgrace South Africans. They disgrace the human race.

What does their clumsy idiocy say about a South Africa in which women are routinely abused in every which way?

That, to them, rape and the sickening culture it breeds and feeds is not a problem?

Did any of them know that Thursday, when they carefully prepared their masks and their songbooks, was International Women’s Day?

Do they understand why what they have done would, in a better world, offend everybody and not only David Warner?

Do they care that Candice Warner had nothing to do with what happened at Kingsmead?

Do they get that what they have done is stupid and embarrassing and not at all funny?

Good on them. They must be so proud.