“I want to see Test cricket being played in 50 or 100 years’ time. But we are seeing that a lot of things are at a crossroads. It feels like something has to give.” - Faf du Plessis
Telford Vice / Cape Town
A middle finger was raised into the bleached sunshine of a blustery lunchtime at an upscale hotel in Camps Bay, a blingy suburb on Cape Town’s Atlantic Seaboard, on Monday. The apparent insult was aimed towards a gaggle of familiar faces gathered on a walkway, but probably meant for one among them: Graeme Smith. The finger was attached to the arm of another familiar face: Kevin Pietersen’s.
The others in the scene were Keshav Maharaj, Faf du Plessis, Kieron Pollard, David Miller, Wayne Parnell and Aiden Markram — the captains of the teams who will contest the second edition of the SA20, which starts on Wednesday.
Pietersen will commentate on the tournament. His raised digit, which was accompanied by a smirk and received by Smith with a smile, was evidence that, however much cricket changes, there’s still room for juvenile ideas of humour. It also served as a hook on which to hang the looming subplot to this year’s SA20; the tournament and its ilk are giving the game’s other forms, particularly Test cricket, the finger.
Nine days into the SA20, South Africa’s men’s squad will board a flight to New Zealand to play two Tests. Of the 14, half will be uncapped, including Neil Brand, the captain. Only David Bedingham and Keegan Petersen featured in the Tests against India in the past 14 days. Most of the rest of the 16 who played against the Indians are legally bound — like all of CSA’s contracted players — to make the SA20 their top priority, ahead even of international commitments.
The squad’s announcement on December 30 triggered a wave of hand-wringing, much of it sanctimonious, describing the moment as defining the damage that franchise leagues are doing to the greater good of the game. Few considered the fact that the SA20 makes more money for CSA than most of the international cricket South Africa’s teams play. Neither that, without the tournament, South Africa would in a few years not have enough money to keep playing internationally in the manner to which they and their supporters have become accustomed.
No-one seems able to see the greater truth. In the same way that children of many cultures grow up and learn that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy do not exist, it’s time for everyone to grow up and understand that the international game is not where cricket’s future lay as a going concern. Could we wake up already from the pseudo-nationalistic fantasy to the reality that franchise tournaments are financially more relevant and significant than international cricket? And that, without the resources they generate, the so-called higher level would be poorer in every way?
“That’s where the game of cricket is, unfortunately,” Du Plessis said. “Since we have seen the [rise of the] big three, there has been more pressure on the rest of the countries. Everything is about money. So if it means Test cricket survives because of [the SA20] …”
This, mind, from someone who made his name as a Test player. Batting for almost eight hours to score a match-saving century, as Du Plessis did on debut in Adelaide in November 2012, will do that. “I’m a Test purist; I want to see Test cricket still being played in 50 or 100 years’ time,” Du Plessis said. “But we are seeing that a lot of things are at a crossroads. It feels like something has to give. There’s talk of the FTP being too full. Maybe it’s worth considering playing four-day Test matches so you have extra days in the calendar.”
Having made clear he was “not a big fan of two-Test series”, and sketched a scenario that, in a more sensible, less hidebound cricket world, could have extended India’s rubber in South Africa: “Everyone walks away from this series thinking there should have been one more match. I was joking with Aiden earlier. I said why didn’t the captains get together after South Africa lost in a-day-and-a-half [at Newlands last week, leaving the series drawn 1-1] to say let’s play another Test match tomorrow. It will probably only take three days.”
More seriously, Du Plessis said: “I hope the game will look after Test cricket. There’s enough happening and enough people talking about it that it’s time for people to say let’s revisit Test cricket. Australia, India and England are well looked after in this cycle, but the other teams really struggle.”
England are scheduled to play 43 Tests in the 2023 to 27 cycle, India 38 and Australia 36. South Africa? Twenty-eight. The only sides who will play five-Test series are Australia, England and India. None of South Africa’s rubbers is longer than two Tests.
What are boards like CSA supposed to do if not hatch grand plans like the SA20? This, too, has an Indian angle — all of the franchises are satellites of the IPL mothership. For some, that’s a problem. Here in the real world, it’s a strength. Without the financial heft provided by that ownership, the SA20 wouldn’t attract the world’s top players — including South Africa’s.
“Last year surprised me with how good it was,” Du Plessis said. “We’re ahead of where we thought we would be. The standard was incredible. The secret always lies in the national players being available. I’ve played in some competitions where you get the national players for only half or a third of the competition and then the standard really drops. You don’t want it to compete against Test cricket, but all the national players being available for this competition is a very strong feature for its future.”
Players like Markram, who said he “gets the financial side [of the importance of franchise leagues] 100%”. Even so, he knew that, “You want to play Test cricket as a cricketer. It’s still my most favourite format. But the cards have been dealt and we are unfortunately going to miss that series in New Zealand.”
To Smith, the SA20’s commissioner, falls the job of making the tournament entertaining enough to keep drawing crowds and viewers and — in a perfect world — pertinent enough to the game’s more conservative audience to win at least some of them over. Last year, the SA20 arrived in the shadow of South Africa’s shock loss to the Netherlands at the men’s T20 World Cup and a 2-0 thumping in a men’s Test series in Australia. The tournament banished the gloom and lit up the game, not least because it was — to the spectators and viewers — cricket without consequence. The teams didn’t exist in any meaningful way in the South African consciousness, so who cared who won? It also helped that there was daylight between the SA20 and CSA, who the properly and often unfairly cynical among the cricketminded in this country will tell you turn anything and everything they touch to scrap.
“The Proteas have always been the strongest brand in South African cricket,” Smith said. “But we really want to bring the gees [spirit] back to cricket, that feeling that rugby has built over the last two cycles [by winning the World Cup in 2019 and 2023]. The SA20 is another advantage for the Proteas that can bring the feeling back to the game, get people enjoying it again and focusing on the cricket and having a great night out. That’s what we want to do, and then the players have the platform to do what they need to do. We want to be a value-add for South African cricket.”
It’s a tightrope not made easier to walk by the view that this year’s SA20 must be better than the 2023 version if it is to be regarded as a success. How might that be accomplished? “There’s always an element of luck required with these things,” Smith said. “We hope, going into the last week, every team can still qualify; that’s it’s been competitive and there’s been some great story lines.
“Operationally the teams work extremely hard to deliver at the level that we want. We feel like we’ve involved some of the best people from around the world and locally. There’s always challenges that come your way. It's about how you deal with them. There are more than 500,000 tickets to sell for the 34 games, and you want to be able to attract the fans to the stadiums, and to get them back.
“I was looking at Newlands the other day and the two days of international cricket it got this season. The SA20 is a form of international cricket that that stadium is going to have. It’s bringing high-profile content to six regions, and players fans wouldn’t have got to see otherwise.
“We’re very intentional about trying to attract the 18 to 35 audience that’s new to cricket, who can come and have a fantastic time, and who then hopefully fall in love with the game. Hopefully the exposure will bring great players out who will then cross formats. It’s domestic cricket, but the platform and the competition here make it a bridge closer to international cricket.”
Between them, Pietersen, Smith, Du Plessis and Markram have played 327 Tests and captained teams in 148 of them. They will remain primarily Test cricketers in the public imagination. Yet they are embedded in a project that promotes the antithesis. Yes, they are being paid handsomely for their trouble. But they also know that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy do not exist.
Cricbuzz
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