Ken Borland

Mohammad Rizwan

As he showed during South Africa’s tour to Pakistan, Mohammad Rizwan has grown into a truly top-class wicketkeeper/batsman. Always a rock-solid option at the top of the order, Rizwan has developed into a swift scorer in white-ball cricket, playing some thrilling innings against the Proteas in February. He was their absolute nemesis making his maiden Test and T20 International centuries during the series, showing himself as a busy batsman, able to rotate the strike well and put away the bad balls.

Imam-ul-Haq

The 25-year-old’s uncle may be the famously overweight but brilliant Inzamam-ul-Haq, but Imam’s reputation for having a voracious appetite is not as one of the over-eaters of the game but rather as a prolific run-getter. In 40 ODIs, Imam has scored 1834 runs at an astonishing average of 52.40 and a decent strike-rate of 80.43, stats which are almost precisely matched by his performances against South Africa. The opening batsman is back in international action after a hand injury and is bound to be even more determined and single-minded than he was when he made a century on his previous visit to Centurion in January 2019.

Shaheen Shah Afridi

Pakistan coach Misbah-ul-Haq pointed out on Monday that the pace and bounce on offer on the Highveld pitches at SuperSport Park and the Wanderers would suit the better fast bowlers in his squad. Top of that list is Shaheen Shah Afridi, who is no mundane left-arm seamer. Not only does the 6’6 20-year-old have the ability to bowl unplayable yorkers at the death, but with the new ball he bowls a consistently challenging line and length and can swing the ball both ways from a fuller length, at good pace. The exciting spearhead of the Pakistan attack Is tipped to become a superstar.

Hasan Ali

Now that the 26-year-old all-rounder has fully recovered from his bout of Covid, he can go back to being a stalwart of the Pakistan side. The paceman can be a handful with the new ball, being an expert swing bowler and able to get movement in even the flattest conditions, and with the old ball he has a much-talked about slower delivery. A determined character who has fought his way back from a stress fracture, Hasan is of bustling pace rather than express, and is also a dangerous hitter in the lower-order.

In what the Ministry of Sports, Arts and Culture has described as “an extraordinary demonstration of patience”, Minister Nathi Mthethwa on Tuesday agreed to give the warring factions in Cricket South Africa another week in which to sort out their differences and adopt a new Memorandum of Incorporation for the new Board that is meant to be installed after the AGM on April 17.

The Interim Board have proposed a new MoI which seeks to rectify the poor governance in cricket by having a board with a majority of independent directors, as well as an independent chair. But the Members Council, made up of the provincial presidents, has refused to accept this and the impasse has grown uglier by the day.

Mthethwa, who put the Interim Board in place in October last year, met with the two parties on Tuesday night and his department then issued a follow-up statement on Wednesday morning that would have left no-one in doubt as to who the sports minister is backing.

The statement said: “In an extraordinary demonstration of patience, Minister Mthethwa said, ‘it is important not to allow boardroom disputes to trump player welfare. I am being dared to take executive action. In my opinion, it is clear that the court of public opinion shows no appetite for any unnecessary delays and own-goals, especially at a time when sponsors have demonstrated unbelievable loyalty and patience.

“Despite clarification on some misinterpretations and being provided with cricket best practice elsewhere in the world, the Members Council still clung to the 2013 CSA stance of ‘cricket needing to be run by cricket people’. Amongst the points of clarification were the fact that ‘independent’ does not necessarily translate to ‘cricket illiteracy’.”

In an environment that currently features as much intrigue as in a Sydney Sheldon novel, the Members Council are still deeply suspicious of having a majority of independent directors, but it was pointed out to them that a majority could mean as little as 51%.

It’s an axiom in cricket that batsmen should be picked when in form and no-one in the country has been in better touch this summer than Aiden Markram, who scored 945 runs in 12 innings in the Four-Day Franchise Series.

Which is why the Proteas have welcomed him back into their ODI squad, but it is an interesting selection because the 26-year-old has not played a 50-over innings since March 15 last year for the Titans in the Momentum One-Day Cup, and his last ODI innings was at the end of the 2019 World Cup against Australia in Manchester. In white-ball cricket generally, Markram has this season only played a handful of domestic T20 games without much success.

“It’s been a while since I played 50-over cricket and it felt a bit foreign at the start of the week. For me it’s about getting back to the game-plans when things were going well in franchise cricket, it’s more the mental side, bringing options that I think will work for me in these conditions. I still need to do a lot and I understand my white-ball cricket for the Proteas was not where I would like it to be.

“I certainly didn’t expect selection, you never do, but more so in this case. But I’m very grateful to be back and glad that the Proteas still see me as being in their plans, it’s a step back in the right direction for me, Markram, who averages 27.95 with a strike-rate of 85 in his 26 ODIs, said on Wednesday.

Run-rates in ODIs are on a steep incline at the moment, with England and India leading the way, and it is the top-order that have been the oxidising agents for these fiery pyrotechnics, rather than the old big-hitters at the death. It is a trend Markram says the Proteas want to follow, but there are still question marks over what their top-order combination will be.

Quinton de Kock and Janneman Malan are the incumbent openers from the whitewash of Australia a year ago, but where do captain Temba Bavuma and Markram himself fit in?

“We’re fortunate to be able to experiment still and in my few discussions with the coach and captain they have told me to try and be quite versatile. So I’ll probably bat anywhere in the top four. I’m probably most comfortable right at the top, but I need to get to know batting at three and four a bit more. But wherever there’s a gap, hopefully I take it and put big runs on the board.

“England and India are probably the two best ODI sides in the world at the moment and their brand certainly works. So that’s what needs to be done to be up there at the top and we have discussed it as a squad. Conditions can change things, but the Highveld is generally good for batting and an aggressive and brave approach is what we want,” Markram said.

Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa cleared the air at his meeting with the Cricket South Africa Interim Board and Members Council on Tuesday night and left no-one in any doubt that he supports a majority independent board and an independent chairperson of the board, encouraging the Members Council to remember the mandate and role he gave to the Interim Board last year to restructure the governance of the sport.

The Members Council has been fighting against a majority of seats on the board going to independent directors, obviously because that would cut down on the number of seats available to them, and they refused to adopt a proposed new Memorandum of Incorporation for the new board drawn up by the Interim Board two weeks ago.

With the impasse rapidly developing into all-out war between the two parties, Mthethwa’s joint sitting with them was overdue and he apparently made it clear that the independence of the new board is a vital principle.

The Members Council have now been given until April 6 by Mthethwa to reconsider their position. They will need to meet again with the Interim Board to find common ground and hopefully this time there will be no buccaneer statements from either side.