New captains and successful T20 Challenge give Cricket SA something to cheer
Cricket SA’s operations team has been forging ahead with a variety of important projects for many months while the organisation tries to disentangle itself from a complicated web of deceit and personal ambition that derailed it more than two years ago.
The domestic T20 Challenge was conducted not just faultlessly and without a single positive Covid-19 test, but with aplomb. The national team has two new captains in Temba Bavuma and Dean Elgar and we all look forward to the seasonending visit of Pakistan for seven limited-overs matches.
Captaincy can be a capricious experience, even for players for whom it had been a career ambition — such as Bavuma and Elgar. Neither will know how comfortably the cap fits until they have worn it for an extended period. Elgar has already enjoyed the honour of leading the national Test team at Lord’s and Bavuma has years of successful leadership at the Lions.
The largest and most significant project, however, has been the restructuring of the domestic game involving two divisions of eight and seven teams with automatic promotion and relegation kicking in after a two-year “bedding-in” period.
The abandoning of the franchise system and the move to 15 first-class teams makes cricketing sense if not financial. The domestic game has less money and sponsorship than ever before in the professional era with little prospect of that changing. It is not only the
smaller unions that will have to operate on a shoestring to survive. Those with Test venues have greater overheads and will also have to be creative to survive.
Overall, there will be about 70 fewer jobs for professional cricketers in the new structure but, in theory at least, they are now all available for national selection though it’s hard to imagine national selection convener Victor Mpitsang casting his Proteas net too often into the second division.
Border and Easterns will be the most aggrieved at being placed in the lower tier while North West and Boland take their places alongside the “big six” in the top flight. Senwes Park is a top-of-the-range cricket facility and, now that the union has sorted out the financial sabotage and leaks in its administration, they deserve to start in the first division.
Border, unfortunately, has been beset with administrative and financial irregularities for several years and, until they are confronted without fear or favour, will have to start at the bottom. Perhaps the union will be a litmus test for the health of the country’s domestic and international teams. When Border is being run efficiently, producing high-potential cricketers and even challenging for trophies, maybe Cricket SA and the Proteas will, too, be held in high international regard. That is anything but the case now.
In a little more than six weeks’ time a new, permanent board of directors is supposed to be in place. The current interim board has attempted to structure a nominations and voting process to limit (elimination is a better but unattainable target) the possibilities of egoism and cronyism marring the appointments. But there is one, vital non-negotiable: the majority of directors on the board must be independent.
Meanwhile, the disciplinary hearings of two former executives, company secretary Welsh Gwaza and acting CEO Kugandrie Govender, are ongoing. They are both lengthy and complex involving the timeconsuming cross examination of witnesses and examination of evidence. Gwaza, who had a presence on every committee and who assumed control of the organisation when president Chris Nenzani and CEO Jacques Faul resigned, will appear again from March 18 to 21.
Govender and her lawyers are due to resume on March 12 and again from March 24-26. If they and their supporters claim the interim board has a “vendetta” against them, it would be useful to know why they both refused to agree to “open” hearings.
“We were, and still are, keen for members of the media and public to have access to the evidence and the hearings so they can make up their own minds,” said interim board member Judith February. “Unfortunately neither of them agreed to that process.”
Back on the field, director of cricket Graeme Smith spoke with cautious optimism about the future of the men’s game and its two new captains, scarcely concealing his frustration at the boardroom leadership wrangles.
“We want to back them, we want to support them, and we want to empower them to take SA cricket forward; hopefully into a better cricketing space than what we have been in over the last period,” Smith said.
“There’s no hiding from the fact that we need to improve as a cricket team; our results and our standard of play need to improve. Dean leaves everything on the field, he leads by example and certainly has the experience. The time is right and he wants the job, which is an important part of captaining. If you’re a reluctant captain it makes’it very hard.
“We’ve always known about Temba s leadership qualities. The way he’s been operating in the squad and the experience he brings, the nature of his tactical captaincy at the Lions, and the feedback we’ve received from within the squad — from the managers and coaches — has been really positive around Temba,” Smith said.
“We believe they’ve got cricket brains, the right character, the right credentials to shift South African cricket into a positive space.”
● Manthorp has followed SA cricket as a writer and broadcaster since its return to the international arena in 1991. He has been on more than 100 tours, and has covered more than 300 Test matches and eight World Cups.