MSL whimpers to life, but Smith stands up to be counted

Graeme Smith reshaped the national team in his own tough, competitive image to win 163 of his 284 matches as captain.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

FOR Graeme Smith’s first trick as director of cricket, he needs to get more bums on seats at Mzansi Super League (MSL) games.

Only 4 840 turned at the 34 000-capacity Wanderers on Friday for the tournament opener between the Jozi Stars and the Cape Town Blitz.

Multiples of the missing 29 160 had better things to do than watch too much flaccid bowling and not enough of the kind of batting that earned Janneman Malan a 59-ball 99.

Neither will this lacklustre spectacle stop us from changing the channel, even on free-to-air television.

Smith’s next challenge will be to do something about Durban, where the competition’s second game was washed out on Saturday — a fate suffered by so many matches at Kingsmead.

Then he could get on with returning the SA men’s team to a reasonable facsimile of what they were for much of his tenure as captain.

Of course, Smith first needs to land the job. Along with Corrie van Zyl and Hussein Manack, he was interviewed on Friday by Cricket SA (CSA) chief executive Thabang Moroe and four board members. At stake is the newly created position of director of cricket.

Van Zyl — suspended last month in an apparent stitch up — has been CSA’s general manager since 2009. Hussain was a national selector from 2012 until the panel was disbanded in the wake of South Africa’s awful 2019 World Cup.

None of which competes with Smith reshaping the national team in his own tough, competitive image to win 163 of his 284 matches as captain.

He was appointed, at 22, after another shambolic World Cup, in 2003. He retired in March 2014 as captain of the No. 1 Test team.

SA cricket needs a winner. Smith wins.

First published by the Sunday Times.