Change afoot in SA cricket. But will it be enough?

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

“BECAUSE things are the way they are,” Bertolt Brecht said, “things will not stay the way they are.” SA cricket knows this truth and the challenges that lurk therein.

There is no stopping change and cricket in SA is on the cusp of it. Nominations for a new selection panel closed at high noon on Thursday. Soon Cricket SA (CSA) will name Allan Donald’s replacement as the national team’s bowling coach; if he is not Charl Langeveldt a nation will be surprised. Next season franchises will be required to field six players of colour, three of them black African.

SA will not be the No. 1 ranked test team forever. But they will win a World Cup. Maybe. One happy day there will be no need for a quota in the national team. Depressingly that day, when the national team looks like the nation, seems too far away to unfurrow millions of brows both black and white.

Asked what should change about SA cricket to ensure a brighter future former first-class player Kevin McKenzie focused on the present: “I don’t care who the hell you are, you are not going to win the World Cup in any sport if you don’t play your best team.”

He was referring to the World Cup semi-final on March 24, when Vernon Philander was included in SA’s team despite having missed four out of seven group matches with a hamstring injury that had limited his bowling to 20.3 out of a possible 70 overs. Several sources have told Sunday times that Philander was picked on transformation grounds and CSA have admitted their chief executive, Haroon Lorgat, was “consulted” on selection.

“They made Vernon Philander look like a BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) player when he isn’t - he was simply injured,” McKenzie said.

And another thing ...

“We’re batting our best player at No. 5. AB de Villiers should bat no lower than No. 4 in every format. AB is the best player in the world and batting him at No. 5 is like batting Graeme Pollock at No. 5.

McKenzie wanted fewer bits-and-pieces allrounders and more specialists. “If your top six can’t get the runs you’re in the crap already,” he said. “It would be great if Nos. 7, 8 and 9 could bat but you’d rather have them strengthening your bowling.”

A hard man even in his own era McKenzie frowned on SA lugging a slew of consultants around the World Cup like excess baggage.

“You need a good coach a physio and a manager, and that should be it. Instead it’s overdone and you end up with a million guys telling you what to do.”

For Barry Richards the road to the future went through a past still strewn with hurdles set up by apartheid.

“CSA need to embrace some of the older guys,” Richards, who played for the all-white SA side before isolation, said. “You don’t want to keep alienating them by poking them in the eye with a burnt stick.

“CSA could use the expertise of guys who are very wise but are seen as off-side. I’ve never been asked to do diddly-squat, never been embraced.

“If CSA could only say, ‘Come and be part of the process’. Instead there’s an us-and-them situation. We don’t want to tell the team how to play but it would be good to be involved.”

He favoured “someone level-headed and balanced, not a politician” to succeed Hudson. “Haroon must handle the politics; the selectors should not be put under kind of pressure.”

That is unlikely, as Hudson explained: “My mandate was to achieve and maintain excellence but also to give opportunities and respect to transformation. I’ll probably be criticised for not transforming aggressively enough but we’ve got to stay strong as a team in the world game.”

Or, as Brecht also said, “Everyone needs help from everyone.”