Ken Borland

The squads

The Proteas won the series 2-1 the last time India toured South Africa in early 2018, in a hotly-contested series.

But they have lost much of their brawn from that series with the bulk of their attack – Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Morne Morkel – having retired and their powerful middle-order of Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis also no longer playing.

From that 2018 series, only six players are still in the Proteas squad – Elgar, Markram, Maharaj, Rabada, De Kock and Ngidi. And there are fitness doubts over Lungi Ngidi, who has only bowled seven competitive overs since July.

India are missing, due to injury, the combative all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja and Rohit Sharma, one of their leading batsmen in recent years. Rohit is their highest-ranked Test batsman at No.5, but India still have plenty of batting muscle with four others from the top-20: Virat Kohli (6^th), Mayank Agarwal (12^th), Rishabh Pant (14^th) and Cheteshwar Pujara (17^th).

Jasprit Bumrah (11^th) and Mohammad Shami (18^th) will be the pace enforcers with the ball for India, but off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, number two on the rankings, is likely to be a major threat in the third and final Test at Newlands.

The venues

The same three grounds used in 2018 will be hosting the Tests again, but this time in a different order: SuperSport Park hosts the opener from Boxing Day, followed by the New Years Test at the Wanderers and then the series ends in Cape Town from January 11.

Batsmen found it hard to dominate in 2018 with Kohli and Dean Elgar the only batsmen to average over 40.

Hopefully the pitches in use this summer will provide a more even battle between bat and ball. Pitches with more even bounce would also be good because in 2018, the team that won the toss and batted first won all three matches, with terribly inconsistent bounce blighting the fourth innings.

Tactical approaches

South Africa could field a fiery trio of out-and-out fast bowlers in Anrich Nortje, Kagiso Rabada and Duanne Olivier, making liberal use of the sort of short-pitched bowling Indian batsmen are generally not as used to facing and which has proven successful at both Centurion and the Wanderers. Lanky left-armer Marco Jansen also has plenty to offer in terms of pace and bounce.

Not that India’s pacemen are going to be at all generous to a South African batting line-up that has struggled to inspire in the last couple of years. If there is any assistance from the conditions, they will find it with the new ball and they are also very effective practitioners of reverse-swing.

In what could unfortunately become the norm in coming years, 60% of South Africa’s cricket matches in 2021 were T20 internationals, but the Proteas did show an encouraging run of form in the format, culminating in an unfortunate early departure from the World Cup in the United Arab Emirates.

South Africa played 23 T20s in 2021 and won 15 of them, making them one of the most successful teams globally over the last year in that format. Considering that they began the year by losing home and away T20 series against Pakistan 2-1 and 3-1, it meant they won 13 of their last 16 matches, an impressive achievement.

The turnaround happened when the Proteas went to the West Indies and beat the defending T20 World Cup champions in that series. With a more settled squad and confidence growing, Ireland could not handle them and were swept aside 3-0, and nor could Sri Lanka, who were also whitewashed on their home turf.

South Africa went into the T20 World Cup in form and they were unlucky to not qualify for the semi-finals having lost just one game in the group stage. That was to Australia in their opening match when a below-par batting performance on an unhelpful pitch for strokeplay left the valiant Proteas attack with just a little too much to do.

Despite South Africa then upsetting the previously unbeaten England team, Australia’s nett run-rate was just a little better than their’s and the eventual champions snuck through.

Wrist-spinner Tabraiz Shamsi was the main man behind South Africa’s T20 success and he took 36 wickets in 22 matches in 2021 at an average of just 13.36 and an economy rate of 5.72; amazing figures that saw him ranked the No.1 T20 bowler in the world for much of the year.

Aiden Markram was a revelation in the shortest format and was the leading run-scorer for the Proteas in T20s in 2021 with 570 at 43.84 and a strike-rate of 148.82. Second to him was Quinton de Kock (524 at 43.66, SR 131.32), a man who hogged the headlines for much of the year.

De Kock was man of the series, with brilliant innings of 141 not out and 96, as South Africa won both Tests in the West Indies, which was the turning point of their year. He also made an ODI century in Ireland.

But it was a day on which he did not take the field which created the most stir. CSA’s board rashly decided to issue a directive that all players must take a knee in support of Black Lives Matter on the morning of their crucial T20 World Cup game against the West Indies. It is an issue that the Proteas had discussed at length without coming to a united way of showing support, but the board made a sudden and unilateral decision without consultation. De Kock opted not to play rather than make the prescribed gesture.

Fortunately all parties then talked it out and, going forward, the national team will all take the knee.

Other players to make strong statements on the field during 2021 were fast bowler Anrich Nortje, potent in the Test matches and one of the best bowlers at the T20 World Cup; Markram across formats and with encouraging gains in his back-up off-spin; Rassie van der Dussen, who finally made his maiden Proteas century with his 123* in an ODI versus Pakistan; Keshav Maharaj, who also led impressively in white-ball cricket when Temba Bavuma was injured; and David Miller, who played some matchwinning innings in limited-overs cricket.

South African golfers continued to make their mark internationally in 2021 with eight of them finishing the year in the top-100 of the world rankings.

Louis Oosthuizen was once again in the forefront of the local effort, finishing in the top-three of three of the four Majors. Having been the runner-up at both the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open, the 39-year-old then finished tied-third at the Open. It left him ranked 10^th in the world.

This continued his incredible run at the Majors, where he now has 11 top-10 finishes, including his victory at the 2010 Open Championship at St Andrew’s. Far from being downcast at being pipped to the post so often, Oosthuizen instead said his record inspires him because it proves he can still compete in the Majors.

South Africa’s next highest ranked golfer is Christiaan Bezuidenhout (48^th) and he also enjoyed a good year in the Majors, making the cut in all four of them, an inspirational performance on its own.

There were good years too for Garrick Higgo (59^th), who enjoyed a phenomenal stretch in which he won three times in eight weeks, including at the Palmetto Championships in just his second start on the U.S. PGA Tour. The fact that the youngster’s good friend, Gary Player, gave him a motivational phone call on the morning of the final round created much excitement in America.

Branden Grace staged a good revival in 2021, winning the Puerto Rico Open and finishing the year back in the top-100 at 66^th, while Dean Burmester enjoyed an even more astonishing rise to reach 67^th. He was 182^nd at the end of last year, but his consistency in Europe – winning the Tenerife Open and having six other top-10 finishes as he finished 18^th in the Race to Dubai – saw him claim his career-best ranking. He also won South Africa’s PGA Championship at the St Francis Links in November.

Shaun Norris (76^th) proved his mettle on the Japanese Tour, winning twice and finishing fourth on their points rankings.

Of the home-based golfers, Daniel van Tonder enjoyed the most success. Having dominated locally in 2020, he gained his European Tour card by winning the Kenya Classic and did well enough overseas to retain his privileges by finishing 75^th on their order of merit. He made the cut in the two majors he played in, the Open and the PGA Championship, and completed another very pleasing year for the 30-year-old by winning the South African Open at Sun City.

Despite their dodgy origin, there are many who believed the Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) hearings would be a very good idea, something necessary to try and heal the increasingly polarised and embittered environment of South African cricket.

But now that the SJN report has been made public, what a grave disappointment it has been and what a waste of R7.5 million. So much evidence has simply been ignored or totally misinterpreted and the legal flaws within the findings reflect very poorly on Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza’s standing as one of our finest jurists. Never mind the poor job done by his assistants from Werksmans Attorneys.

It is now clear that the entire focus of the SJN was on getting dirt on Graeme Smith and Mark Boucher. Addressing historic wrongs and racial discrimination was just a side project.

Ntsebeza has found Smith’s appointment as director of cricket to be irregular and has also accused him of racist behaviour in the past. This is despite what I thought was compelling evidence presented by the likes of Cricket South Africa, the South African Cricketers’ Association and former Proteas manager Mohammed Moosajee.

The report almost entirely ignores all of that and goes way outside of its mandate in slamming Smith’s appointment. Surely Ntsebeza is aware that headhunting is a common occurrence in the corporate world and his appointment was approved by a number of people, the majority of whom were Black?

But no, it was racist. As was Boucher’s selection as Proteas head coach.

Enoch Nkwe is a very good coach and, in an ideal world, should be the successor to Boucher. But to say he was discriminated against based on the colour of his skin is ridiculous. It ignores the fact Boucher had more experience and more success coaching at the level below the Proteas and the wicketkeeper/batsman’s immense international knowledge from his playing days.

Three franchise trophies in one season point to Nkwe’s potential, but to equate trophies won in second-tier cricket in the Netherlands, semi-pro cricket or junior weeks, and even a second place in the Canadian T20 league, with Boucher’s achievements is ludicrous. The report also makes no mention of the 3-0 hammering South Africa suffered in India under Nkwe as interim head coach just before Boucher’s arrival.

The SJN could really have done with some advice from an ex cricketer or anyone with some idea of how high-performance sport works. The total lack of expertise in this regard has been made clear by the report. There was an early warning sign of this when legal assistant Sandile July asked why Imran Tahir had not stepped down from the Proteas team to allow another spinner a chance!

I also believe Mr July exhibited a lack of impartiality in his examination of those witnesses who had been implicated. He seemed to implicitly believe that the evidence of the complainants, even those dishonest individuals banned from the game for their involvement in matchfixing, was true.

The allegation made this week that over 250 paragraphs of the complainants’ heads of argument, which were written by July and Fumisa Ngqele, have been simply cut and pasted word-for-word directly into the ombudsman’s report, reflects poorly on the fairness of the SJN process.

These are not just minor matters that need amendment. Most damning of all is Ntsebeza’s own admission in his closing remarks that the evidence presented was not able to be tested. He says he cannot make definitive findings, describing his own conclusions as being “tentative”.

And yet he has happily painted Smith, Boucher, AB de Villiers and various other former players and officials as being racist. The decent thing for Ntsebeza to do would be to pay back half the R7.5 million to CSA for doing half a job, never mind the compensation he might have to fork out for the damage he has done to the reputations of people based on “untested evidence” and “tentative findings”.