Gayle blows worrying wind into SA cricket

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TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

WHAT does it say that Chris Gayle, despite not having swung his railway sleeper of a bat in anger anywhere in the world for almost two months and not in South Africa for a day shy of five-and-a-half years, should swagger slowly to the middle of the Wanderers on Sunday and swat 56 off 38 balls? And then, mind, all but apologise for not being in the best nick for his first match for the Lions in South Africa’s franchise T20 competition.

Does it tell us the standard of South African domestic cricket is lower than perceived? Or that the Dolphins bowlers - none of the five have played at international level and going into Sunday’s match they held, ominously, just 111 T20 caps between them - were neither good enough nor experienced enough? Or that Gayle is too good to be bothered about who is bowling to him and in which conditions? Or that the pitch was a flop-proof belter? Or that T20 cricket is made in a hell where skill matters less than the gyrations of the dancers beyond the boundary?

All of the above. But only two of those five factors are positive: Gayle is indeed a god of the game, and the pitch really was a conveyer belt of runs that offered easier pickings than a sushi bar.

South Africans should be worried about the state of the game in their country. Their teams top the test as well as the one-day rankings and they are a respectable third in the T20 stakes. But the players who have earned those accolades grace domestic cricket with their presence usually only when they are easing their way back from injury.

Seven key members - AB de Villiers, JP Duminy, Faf du Plessis, Ryan McLaren, David Miller, Morne Morkel, and Dale Steyn - of the squad of 15 selected for the one-day series in Australia that starts next week have all gone at least 10 matches without once playing for their South African franchises. Moreover, De Villiers, Du Plessis, Morkel and Steyn are being rested for the T20 series in Australia. Which means they can go and watch their domestic teams in action but dare not play themselves.

This cottonwool approach leads to friction. The Dolphins, for instance, were itching to unleash Miller on the Titans in their first match of the one-day competition last month. Only to be told by Cricket South Africa (CSA) that he was untouchable because of an injury.

The day before the match, a clearly irritated Lance Klusener, the Dolphins coach, said he did not know the nature of Miller’s problem. When that was reported in the press, CSA cried foul, saying they had informed the Dolphins of Miller’s injury and the recovery period four days before the game. However, CSA’s own press release, issued the day before the match, said Klusener was “waiting to discover” whether Miller would play.

South Africa is far from the only country in which international and domestic cricket have endured a messy divorce. But to create parallel universes within the game in which each shall dwell almost exclusively cannot be good. There is not enough evidence to say conclusively that that is happening in South Africa: those No. 1 test and one-day teams were, after all, spawned by this system. However, there should be concern when organisations that should have empathy and understanding for each others’ objectives are at odds.

Like most of cricket’s ills, all of this can be traced back to money. Gayle wants it, which is why he spends most of his time as a hired gun in a T20 circus near you. CSA know they need to make as much of the stuff as possible, especially now that they have fallen out of favour with India and are not among the Big Three. As the only non-international cricket that has a hope of making money is T20, national boards know they need to squeeze every cent out of their competitions in that format. Which means signing players like Gayle. It also means staging sillinesses like the triple-header of matches the crowd at the Wanderers sat through on Sunday. In fact, to call them a crowd is ambitious - a stadium that holds more than 33000 spectators never looked anywhere near half-full. The franchises, meanwhile, are black holes into which CSA’s money disappears. Were they more viable financially and less reliant on the national body for funding, they would have more authority over their players.

Gayle’s next game for the Lions is on Friday against the struggling Warriors, who have lost four of their five one-day games and went down to the equally underwhelming Knights on Sunday.

The match will be played in East London, a gloomy seaside backwater not often visited by stars of the magnitude of Christopher Henry Gayle. The locals should expect plenty of crash, boom and bang. What they need not worry about seeing is a decent game of cricket.