Life c??ri?c?k?et
Given that the top six in this team are arguably the most brittle SA have fielded since readmission in 1992, without any such superstars as Hashim Amla or AB de Villiers, the fact that Boucher has conjured such performances is astonishing. Boucher has found himself as a coach this summer. He has stopped making self-evident mistakes (making Quinton de Kock white-ball and stand-in Test captain) and has discovered a Rassie Erasmus-like ruthlessness.
He is demanding and lays down parameters, and is not the most diplomatic man ever to walk the earth. Still, the nation’s cricketers know exactly where they stand with him, and he has forged tight, mutually respectful relationships with Elgar and Bavuma.
Elgar has always had true grit, but Bavuma has really blossomed. A second Test century remains elusive (his single Test ton was scored against England way back in 2016), but the nuggety right-hander is hitting his straps. He has five years left of what, in all likelihood, will be glorious cricket ahead of him. Boucher has much to do with it.
Given the summer’s challenges, it is perplexing — but oddly congruent given that we live in a country where politics frequently trump good sense — that Boucher should be facing his sternest test of the season next month. In mid-May he comes before a disciplinary hearing on charges of “gross misconduct”.
Gunning for the coach
These charges relate to the fact that, according to former teammate Paul Adams, a witness in the Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) hearings, Boucher was an enthusiastic participant in team songs with a nasty racial edge in post-match fines meetings when the two were national players in the late 1990s.
One of these songs, Boney M’s Brown Girl in the Ring, was amended to “brown shit in the ring”, a reference to himself, Adams said. At first, Adams simply spoke about the singing of the song when he appeared before advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza at the SJN hearings.
But under the pressure of pointed questioning Adams linked the singing of the song to his former wicketkeeper.
It was clear watching Adams give evidence that he had been labouring under the pain of his humiliation for years. At the same time, these were team meetings and team songs, so Boucher was not alone in singing them.
The vulgarity and the beer flowed and every player had a risqué or tasteless nickname for everyone else. That’s the thing with nicknames. They’re bonding agents and signs of comradeship. They work paradoxically, in that an insult can be a backhanded mark of respect. Adams had a nickname for Boucher and it wasn’t edifying.
The disciplinary hearing is a risk for Cricket SA (CSA) too, as it will surely focus attention on how little the organisation really did to prepare players barely out of school, in a country barely into its democracy, for the new era.
Either way, to reduce the team culture to what Boucher sang about Adams is disingenuous and nonsensical. But this is a key element in the
charges against Boucher and something CSA is determined to pursue, partly because Ntsebeza found in his report that Boucher’s apology to Adams (in an affidavit submitted to the SJN) was “ignorant and ill-considered”.
Ntsebeza’s view makes more sense when we realise that Boucher could have appeared before Ntsebeza, but didn’t.
The advocate felt disrespected (one of the themes of his report was that he was generally lenient to those who appeared before him) and, in a conclusion that showed more vanity than perhaps he intended, he put the boot into Boucher.
So did his former colleague, Proteas assistant coach Enoch Nkwe, who resigned last winter. Nkwe, Boucher’s predecessor as acting national coach, raised concerns in his resignation about “the culture and functioning of the team environment”. An internal report no-one has seen was commissioned by the CSA board and Nkwe gave an exit interview, with some of his criticisms finding their way into the seven-page Boucher charge sheet.
But here is where the grubby vendetta begins to get juicy.
Despite Nkwe’s initial statements, the longer he has been away from the national team environment, the more lukewarm he appears to have become about those views. Nothing is certain in the murky world of SA politics, but it is beginning to look like Nkwe will not appear on behalf of CSA as a witness next month.
Nkwe has repeatedly spoken about “this being a matter between the coach and CSA” and he now has a temporary job at the Central Gauteng Lions, where he has close ties to the Lions CEO, Jono Leaf-Wright.
Adams might yet appear on behalf of CSA, as might the Proteas team manager Volvo Masubelele, who has been critical of Boucher’s handling of the #BlackLivesMatter issue. But then again, they might not.
Put your ear to the ground and you can hear the far-off but unmistakable sound of horses being traded.
The Ntini factor
There is one man who has the authority to cut through much of this BS, however.
Makhaya Ntini and Boucher were contemporaries. Both played in the Border under-19 team under Richard Pybus, who went on to be the coach of Pakistan and (briefly) the West Indies and played 96 times for SA between 1998 and 2009.
Ntini was very vocal about #BlackLivesMatter as it played itself out here last year. Given his strong feelings, you would think he’d be only too happy to have appeared before Ntsebeza’s SJN or submitted an affidavit, or both. He did neither.
You can draw as many conclusions about his reluctance to participate in the SJN hearings as you like, but one thing is clear: he would have sung all the songs and participated in handing out all the nicknames in his time as a player.
Ntini could take us into the Proteas inner sanctum and clear up some misconceptions; he could give the lie to the version of Boucher as an unreconstructed racist that half the CSA board seems keen to portray.
Others are waiting in the wings. Some of the players, Bavuma included, have indicated their willingness to support their coach. Boucher is known to be reluctant to burden them, however, and anyway, there is often a disconnect between what players say they will do and what they actually do.
Anyone who appears as witness, however, exposes himself to the discomfort of cross-examination. Either way, when advocate Terry Motau gives his verdict, there will be no winners.
We were told repeatedly by CSA interim board chair Stavros Nicolaou that a new constitution and a majority independent board would usher in CSA’s brave new governance world.
This hasn’t transpired because CSA remains an overly politicised environment where racial considerations play a disproportionate role and really thorny issues like development remain too intractable for anyone to solve.
All SA’s best black players go to private schools as far away from a development environment as it is possible to be.
Boucher has found his mojo and could take the side to England this winter with a reasonable chance of winning the Test series for the first time in 10 years.
Will he be allowed to do so? Not if the small men of the CSA board have anything to do with it.