Breeze of change in SA cricket needs to grow into a gale

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

ALTHOUGH it is still more of a breeze than a wind, change is blowing through SA’s test team. The selection this week of Kagiso Rabada, Temba Bavuma and Stiaan van Zyl in the squad to play three tests against West Indies this season proves as much.

At this stage of last season, that Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis would retire before the end of the summer was not easily believable. Now it is fact.

Similarly, before the under-19 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates, which ended in triumph for SA on March 1, not many outside of schools cricket and the junior provincial set-up would have heard of Rabada. Everything changed when he blew away 14 batsmen in five games during the World Cup.

Bavuma has come this far by a different route. His first-class career started in October, 2008 and he has been plugging away consistently ever since.

While Rabada and Bavuma were named in a test squad for the first time, Van Zyl has been around SA’s dressingroom since SA’s tour to Sri Lanka in July. He was also aboard for the test against Zimbabwe in Harare in August. So far, he has sat and watched all three of those tests.

Rabada, just 19, will give SA a brand of pace they have rarely known. Bavuma brings to the crease a maturity way beyond his 24 years - a crucial quality in a young batsman. Van Zyl, 27, has 95 first-class caps, 14 centuries, an average of 50.71, and more patience than he knows what to do with.

Some will want to believe the fact that deserving young players are able to come through the system and make it to the top level is more important than what race they happen to be.

But other facts - SA have gone a month short of four years without fielding a black African in a test, and they last named two in a test XI almost 14 years ago - complicate that argument.

Simply, players’ race does matter in a culture where blacks have long been denied opportunities on racial grounds. It matters, too, that all South Africans know that the game belongs to all of us - and that it is played in all communities.

For instance, Bavuma hails from Rubusana Street in Langa. So do former test wicketkeeper-batsman Thami Tsolekile, Knights medium pacer Malusi Siboto, Western Province left-arm spinner Siya Simetu, and pre-unity era allrounder Ben Malamba.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a co-incidence that so many good players come from there,” Bavuma said. “Langa has a rich history in cricket in particular.

“People there show their support. The club has good facilities, and you have the necessary people to guide young players.”

Even though Bavuma now lives in Johannesburg and plays for the Lions, did he feel as if he was representing the people of Langa on the field?

“That’s one of my motivating factors,” he said. “There are so many people there who showed faith and backed me.”

SA cricket will be a better, stronger place once players feel they represent all of their compatriots without pausing to think where they are from. But that cannot and will not happen for years to come.

And only if that breeze of change becomes a full-blown gale.