From pitch to plane in less time than a rained out Twenty20
It is symptomatic of the manic schedule that grips cricket’s best players that barely three hours after the Proteas thrashed the Netherlands by 146 runs at the Wanderers on Sunday, three members of the squad were on a plane bound for Dubai and onwards to cities in India.
It is also confirmation of the power of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the extent to which national boards and the players employed by its 10 franchises will bend over backwards to accommodate their wishes. The desire to get hold of their SA merchandise so quickly should probably be taken as a compliment then.
The “window” in the international calendar created for the tournament has opened, leaving only Pakistan, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland of the Test-playing nations still interested in playing international fixtures. Of those, only Pakistan would consider scheduling games without regard for precious IPL airtime. The others would not play if the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) asked them not to.
The changing relationship between SA’s cricket lovers and the IPL has been fascinating to watch over 14 years. A day before this year’s tournament began it was given its only real test when SuperSport said it would not be televised here, for the first time. The rights were bought by a rival bidder who then requested more than was reasonable as an “on-sell”. SuperSport, which has provided the most comprehensive bouquet of sports coverage to its subscribers anywhere in the world for two decades, at a cheaper price, stood its ground. The brinkmanship failed and the deal to put the IPL back on our screens was concluded within hours of the first game.
Most interesting was the realisation that, though the vast majority of Southern Africa viewers will take and leave the results of each match with equanimity, the notion of the tournament not providing intriguing background in the first two months of winter meant far more than people realised. They may not care for Washington Sundar, Rohit Sharma and Jos Buttler, but they were outraged that they wouldn’t be on their screens in the evening.
SA will have nine players in the tournament, 10 with Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Faf du Plessis. Anrich Nortjé, David Miller and Lungi Ngidi could be playing in India within a couple of days of (not) celebrating victory against the Netherlands, which all but secured their automatic qualification for the World Cup, also in India, in October and November. Kagiso Rabada, Sisanda Magala, Heinrich Klaasen, Quinton de Kock, Aiden Markram and Marco Jansen all left on the first flight on Monday morning. It was a bold and controversial decision by Cricket SA to keep them all back from the opening week of the IPL to “ensure” victory against the Dutch, especially after Cricket SA’s even bolder decision to forfeit the ODI series against Australia in January to ensure the best players were available for the inaugural edition of the SA20.
There will be no more international cricket for SA until August. Four months may seem a long time to wait, but with the accustomed, expected and welcome wallpaper of the IPL, the waiting time is halved. Australia visit at the beginning of August and will stay for the entire month, playing five ODIs and three T20s.
The elongated white-ball tour is to compensate for the three Test matches the Aussies refused to play at the height of Covid-19 in 2021, a tour that was due to end a week before 14 Australians flew to India for the IPL. Those administrative wounds are far from healed and will take years to do so. Still, eight limited-overs games offer far greater financial possibilities than three Tests, as grim as that sounds.
An unofficial preliminary schedule of the Australian tour has been spied. The first two ODIs are pencilled in for Centurion on August 8 and 12, which makes sense given the cold but dry conditions, but the third is scheduled for Newlands in Cape Town on the 14th. Capetonians will know the likelihood of playing cricket in the middle of August.
It becomes even more unlikely with a return to the Western Cape for the fifth ODI at Boland Park on August 20. The first of three T20Is will also be played there on August 24. Why was this extended period in the middle of the tour scheduled in the most unlikely of cricket climates? Players’ wives, families and partners can join them on any tour of 30 days or more. Where would they rather stay? Cape Town is a highly popular spot for sports people.
The curtain has come down on the opening stanzas of SA’s new dawn. There is an emphatic tick on starts made by Shukri Conrad and Rob Walter in their respective red and white ball arenas. For the first time in four years there is genuine and tangible reason to be optimistic.