“It’s disappointing. It’s crazy that it happened. We’ve got to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” - Graeme Smith on the clash between the New Zealand Test series and the SA20.
Telford Vice / Cape Town
THEY wore white dungarees, gold-rimmed sunglasses and not much else. The significant amount of black skin they exposed on this incandescent afternoon soaked up the sunlight, which boomed off their bleached, close-cropped hair. They were young, beautiful, utterly in vogue, and of a gender that wasn’t immediately apparent or even, perhaps, fixed.
They were the last type of person you would expect to see at Newlands, the natural habitat of white and brown conservatives mired in the conventional and the way things should be done — by all of us, not just conservatives — because they’ve always been done that way. And yet there they were promenading the concourse in their dungarees and sunglasses and not a lot else, enjoying Saturday’s SA20 final along with everyone else.
Beyond all the numbers that prove the tournament’s success, that tell us why the second edition was better than the first, that assure us the competition has a solid future, there was this. The SA20 is doing something right if it attracts people who wouldn’t otherwise be seen dead at a place like Newlands.
The conservatives are still there. But if the game is to remain relevant in the real world it will need to develop new audiences. It will require, among others, fine-looking people in dungarees. The SA20 is doing its bit to pull them in even as it goes about its core business of keeping the game in South Africa afloat financially.
But that doesn’t sit comfortably 11,500 kilometres away in New Zealand, where South Africa are likely to lose a men’s Test series to the Kiwis for the first time in all 17 rubbers they have contested from February 1932. That will happen unless Neil Brand’s team find a way to win in Hamilton, where they were 220/6 at stumps on the first day of the second Test on Monday.
The strength of South Africa’s squad has been severely impacted by the players’ contractual obligation to prioritise the SA20, which clashed with the series. Most of the first-choice Test XI was involved in the tournament — and looked on from afar as New Zealand won the first Test, in Mount Maunganui, by 281 runs on Wednesday.
The SA20 has the better of this bargain. South Africa’s seemingly bottomless well of talent means the tournament does not want for players worthy of the stage it offers. So the comings and goings of foreign stars is felt less keenly as it is in the ILT20, which runs concurrently but is heavily dependent on players from other countries.
Graeme Smith is uniquely placed to consider those contrasting realities. As the SA20’s commissioner, he is the face of the tournament and is rightfully credited with the lion’s share of its resounding success. As South Africa’s Test captain, from April 2003 to March 2014, in 109 matches of which they won 53 — both world records — he took his team to the top of the rankings in August 2012, where they remained until May 2014. How did he feel, as an administrator, a former player and captain, a South African, about the fixture trainsmash?
“My job is to build the SA20 and make it a success, but my love for Test cricket hasn’t gone away; I care for it,” Smith told a press conference on Tuesday. “I sit on the MCC cricket committee, and we debated at length two weeks ago. The challenges for Test cricket are much deeper than just this scheduling issue. It’s about the funding, how the models work.
“We saw [CWI chief executive] Johnny Grave come out and say, after an incredible Test win [by West Indies by eight runs at the Gabba last month], that they lost more than USD1-million and didn’t earn a cent on that trip. How does the revenue work between bilaterals? The distributions? All these things in the game need to be spoken about to keep Test cricket strong.
“This scheduling issue [between the Test series in New Zealand and the SA20] shouldn’t have happened. It’s disappointing. It’s crazy that it happened. We’ve got to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Under Smith, South Africa won 48.62% of their Tests, lost 26.61% and drew 24.77%. Of the 79 completed matches they have played since his retirement, in March 2014, they have won 38 — a winning percentage a marginal 0.52 lower than in Smith’s era. But they have lost 39.24% and drawn 12.66% — deficits of 12.63% and 12.14%. South Africa have not been markedly less victorious after Smith, but they have been significantly poorer at not losing. “Our Test cricket has been a challenge for a long time performance-wise,” Smith said. “I’d love to see that team strong again.”
That team had their best day of their tour to New Zealand on Tuesday. Having slipped to 150/6 after tea, they were well-served by an unbroken stand of 70 shared by Ruan de Swardt and 37-year-old debutant Shaun von Berg. South Africa might have been in a stronger position had David Bedingham not been caught off his boot after scoring a sturdy 39. “There’s so many ways in cricket to ruin your day and that’s one of them,” Bedingham told reporters. Maybe slipping on a pair of white dungarees would make him feel better.
Cricbuzz
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