Rainbow Nation is starting to show true colours

WHEN South Africa take the field at Headingley, memories of the all-white side who played a Test there in 1994 will feel like a distant world. Eight of their 15-man squad for this summer’s one-day series against England and the Champions Trophy are either black, Asian or what the South Africans call ‘coloured’. And if you hear anyone cry ‘tokenism’, tell them to get a grip. South Africa have won their last seven bilateral one-day series, and are No 1 in the rankings. They are a team who mean business — black, white, brown or fluorescent green. Happily, they have reached the top with a side far more representative of the Rainbow Nation’s demographics than the team led by Kepler Wessels 23 years ago on South Africa’s first post-isolation tour of the UK. Back then, the only non-white face in the touring party was assistant manager Goolam Rajah. Now, racial quotas introduced last year dictate that an average of six players per game must be what South Africans refer to as ‘POCs’ (players of colour). And, of those, two must be black African. The two this time are fast-bowling starlet Kagiso Rabada and promising 21-year-old seamer Andile Phehlukwayo. Yet

80 per cent of the population is black: work clearly remains. Players of Asian heritage and the so-called ‘coloured’ cricketers — who between them account for 11 per cent of the population — will have a higher profile during one-day matches than their black counterparts. Pakistan-born leg-spinner Imran Tahir is miles ahead at the top of the ODI bowling rankings, while Hashim Amla, who has Indian forebears, is among the game’s greatest batsmen. Left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj recently helped win a Test series in New Zealand, while veteran JP Duminy is a standard-bearer for the multi-racial community on the Western Cape. Since whites make up less than nine per cent of South Africa’s population, the seven white cricketers in the squad can only be understood in terms of the country’s apartheid past. It is a past the government has been understandably keen to erase. Last year, sports minister Fikile Mbalula demonstrated his impatience with the rate of change in major sporting teams, insisting he would no longer ‘beg for transformation’. Cricket South Africa deny that they expanded the quota system in response to political pressure, but there is no doubting the desire to field a team more in keeping with the racial make-up of the nation. One consequence has been the flood of white South Africans arriving into the county game to take up Kolpak deals, whereby players from countries which have trade agreements with the EU are not classified as overseas cricketers. While Brexit has incentivised those players to act now, there are also fewer opportunities back in South Africa, where a maximum of 30 white cricketers are allowed among the 66 spots available in the domestic game. ‘We have lost some talented guys and it’s not good for our depth, but I feel it’s something in the past,’ said one-day captain AB de Villiers. The refreshing truth is that it should make no difference at all to South Africa’s chances over the next few weeks.