Ken Borland

Kagiso Rabada has his superman cape back at the IPL and Proteas assistant coach Enoch Nkwe says it’s all thanks to the rejuvenating effects of Lockdown.

After three matches, Rabada, playing for Ricky Ponting’s Delhi Capitals, is the joint leading wicket-taker with seven dismissals along with India star Mohammed Shami. But Rabada also has the best average of all bowlers who have taken at least five wickets and, at 6.25, he has the best economy rate of all pace bowlers in the IPL.

It’s a far cry from the Rabada who struggled to get going for the Proteas in 2019 and who limped out of action in February 2020, missing the epic ODI series against Australia. A month later and all cricket was stopped by the Covid-19 pandemic, but Nkwe said on Thursday that the enforced break has done a world of good for South Africa’s spearhead.

“KG had a heavy schedule and he needed a break from both the physical and mental point of view. By the end of last season he was carrying some niggles, which is a sign of fatigue. You need a break when you’re competing at such a high intensity for so long, you just need some time to focus on yourself and not be constantly on the road, constantly on the move.

“I’ve been watching mostly the games with South Africans involved and it’s been very pleasing to see a lot of guys put in great performances, taking responsibility and responding really well in different situations. It’s been fantastic how guys like Faf du Plessis, KG, Lungi Ngidi and Anrich Nortje have stepped up to the plate and I have no doubt Quinton de Kock is due a massive performance soon too,” Nkwe said on Thursday.

The one player Nkwe did not mention though was AB de Villiers, who has really been going to town with the bat, scoring 134 runs in three innings at a strike-rate of 186.11.

Virat Kohli, the captain of De Villiers’ Bangalore Royal Challengers side, heaped praise on his matchwinner

“He’s relaxed and has turned up every time he walks on to the field and that’s exactly what we need from him. He keeps things simple and doesn’t watch a lot of cricket. He enjoys his golf, enjoys his life and comes out here, backs his ability and there are very few like him. Just to have his energy on the field and getting stuck into the bowlers was a joy to watch. Only he can do that best,” Kohli said this week.

Sounds like the sort of player the Proteas would love to have available for next year’s ICC T20 World Cup. Nkwe admitted on Thursday that the timing of the IPL has been very useful from a Proteas point of view.

“The IPL has been a massive boost because increasing the workloads of the players after Lockdown is very important. We are fortunate to have quite a few Proteas involved and hopefully they all come back very fit. Locally the guys are looking forward to getting back on the field and domestic and international cricket will start up very soon. Soon they’ll be playing warm-up matches.

“So the Proteas will have guys in different phases of readiness, some of them will have just started playing again. So there are going to have to be different management processes for different guys, it’s important to manage the individual. I think the guys are more hungry now and a lot of them are in really good shape, which is good because the next couple of years are going to be quite heavy,” Nkwe said.

Du Plessis has been the other South African batsmen to excel at the IPL, scoring 173 runs in three innings for the Chennai Super Kings, at a strike-rate of 149.13. Ngidi has taken four wickets in two matches for the same team, while Nortje has played all three games for the Delhi Capitals and impressed with an economy rate of 7.83 in the United Arab Emirates.

Proteas coach Mark Boucher says the team has found a new vision and identity for themselves and also a new way of playing that will hopefully bring greater success as a rebuilding side looks to regain their glory days.

The South African cricket team’s Culture Camp at Skukuza last month not only dealt with wrongs of the past, especially those that involved racial discrimination, but also plotted a way ahead for the future. #ProteaFire, the mantra of the team that went to number one in all three formats with Boucher as a player, has now officially been extinguished, replaced by three watchwords: Belonging; Empathy; Respect.

“One of the biggest changes came in terms of #ProteaFire, which gave us direction and the values to become the number one side, especially when under pressure. But none of those guys are playing anymore and we have outgrown that, it’s an outdated identity. Maybe it became too commercialised, it ended up just being on paper and the guys no longer live it.

“There are more cultures in the team now and it was time those came through. It’s important for a new team to create a new identity and that’s exactly what we got – a new set of values. It will start with how we play and the players chose the same route that myself and Enoch Nkwe [assistant coach] wanted, everything aligned without us really trying. It’s also about how new guys coming into the team must feel and management did not choose the vision, the players did,” Boucher said in an audio interview released by Cricket South Africa on Monday.

Boucher said the Culture Camp also gave the larger group of players from which the Proteas will draw the opportunity to talk about their pet peeves and he found the revelations to be eye-opening.

“We all come from different backgrounds and have been brought up in different ways, and we must understand our shortfalls in the past. We can’t turn a blind eye, we must acknowledge them, that’s empathy, which is a big word for us. We need to use our four or five different cultures to our advantage and I came out of the camp with a completely different understanding.

“I educated myself, I found it quite fascinating, things I have never thought about before. The camp opened my eyes in a massive way and I would encourage people to get out there and try and understand the feelings of different races. Now the best thing for the game would be for our biggest assets – the players – to be able to take over the headlines for good things, let the game do the talking rather than the other things that have been hogging the headlines,” Boucher said.

The Proteas were meant to make their return from the Covid-19 Lockdown with a tour to the West Indies in the southern hemisphere winter, but it seems it will be England touring South Africa that will provide them with their first taste of international action.

England are keen to play three ODIs and three T20 internationals from mid-November to early December, with domestic action kicking off in South Africa on November 2. While British media have speculated that the series will take place in a bio-bubble in Cape Town, it is known that Highveld venues have also been told to prepare to host the 50-over world champions.

The series against one of the Big Three provides an opportunity too good to waste for CSA to start generating some much-needed income after all cricket came to a standstill in March.

Despite this week’s series loss to Australia, England remain a powerhouse white-ball outfit and their tour could be one of the highlights of the summer, particularly since Sri Lanka will be the Test opposition over the traditional festive season schedule.

Then again, the Proteas have a score to settle with Sri Lanka, who became the first sub-continent team to win a series in South Africa with their shock 2-0 triumph in 2018/19.

South Africa’s cricketers will have four-day cricket in November and December in which to get up to full power, with the Momentum One-Day Cup scheduled for early next year. While the Mzansi Super League has reportedly been scrapped for this season due to the constraints of Lockdown, it is possible that a franchise T20 competition will be played to end the summer.

Spin is a word often used both in cricketing and PR contexts, but in terms of the sport, amongst the most important properties of a spinner are guile and deception. And Cricket South Africa’s Board and executive have mastered these arts.

Fortunately, the cracks are starting to show in the great edifice of #CricketCapture, thanks to some extra heat applied by Sascoc, the indefatigable work of certain journalists and the valuable input of stakeholders whose love for the game and desire to serve it far outweighs personal considerations.

The key, as Sascoc have correctly insisted, is the Fundudzi Forensic Report, which was used to fire former CEO Thabang Moroe and then hastily hidden away from public view. Moroe certainly did the game great harm by alienating so many vital stakeholders, but for justice to be seen to be served, the actual misdemeanours that led to his axing need to be made known.

The CSA Board consistently ignore the fact that they are a non-profit company operating in the public interest, so they have to be transparent. Their idea of transparency was revealed in their absurd statement after their unsuccessful meeting with Sascoc on Thursday night that their decision to restrict access to the report “has been made in the interests of transparency”. Classic Doublespeak like their constant and incorrect use of “unanimous” when it comes to Members Council decisions.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Fundudzi Report implicates the Board and senior executives in misgovernance; those of us who covered Moroe’s fall from grace know full well that he did not act without the firm support of others.

And where these miscreants have shown particular guile and deception is in allowing the Members Council to commission the forensic investigation and allowing them to believe it was their property. But the Board then changed the terms of reference of the inquest and, once the report eventually came out, they put it under lock-and-key at the offices of their lawyers, Bowman Gilfillan.

Together, the CSA Board, senior executives and their lawyers have used scare tactics – the threat of litigation or enormous legal costs – to convince the Members Council that the forensic report should not be made public. Instead the provincial presidents were only allowed to see a summary of the report, explained to them by the CSA Board’s own legal representatives from Bowman Gilfillan.

But it has now emerged that the summary was written by Bowman Gilfillan themselves, and not by Fundudzi, the independent investigators tasked with the audit.

Let us be clear on one thing. Without wanting to slander the legal profession, lawyers only act in the interests of whoever is paying them; moral and ethical questions don’t really come into it, which is why even the most vile child-killer will have a legal representative doing their best to get them off.

And who pays for Bowman Gilfillan? It is the CSA Board that engages their services, under the advisement of their legal head, Company Secretary Welsh Gwaza.

The fact that Gwaza was previously in the employ of Bowman Gilfillan is one of many potential conflicts of interest. A strong ally of Moroe, Gwaza’s name has been linked with the permanent CEO position and he seems to be in the middle of just about every contentious issue CSA are embroiled in, having recently been the internal auditor and acting chief operating officer as well as head of legal.

Bowman Gilfillan will be acting under his briefing and the appointment of independent directors goes through his office as well.

Which brings us to Dr Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw. This self-confessed non-fan of cricket and reportedly close friend of Gwaza’s, was appointed in May as a temporary independent director and it is astonishing how quickly she rose into a position of power on the board, before she blundered into sponsorship matters on social media this week.

There are many who believe she is a Gwaza placement and the integrity of the whole nominations process ahead of the postponed AGM has been thrown into question by the person handling it allowing their own nomination to go through while stopping others.

But it is also in the Members Council where Gwaza’s hand is seen in machinations to ensure his cabal retain power.

The Easterns Cricket Union has been the kingmaker in CSA history before – the Majola bonus scandal took far longer to resolve because of the obstructive work of the then president, Andy O’Connor, known to the cricket writers fraternity as The Milkman back in those days.

The current president of Easterns is Xolani Peter Vonya, who was one of the spokespeople for the Members Council this week as they tried to explain why they are now backing their Board and won’t comply with the Sascoc resolution to set up an independent task team to investigate the affairs of CSA.

But the constitutionality of Vonya even sitting on the Members Council has been called into question because his own board at Easterns suspended him for dictatorial behaviour, financial mismanagement and a failure to implement the recommendations of a previous inquest into the dismissal of their CEO.

But then CSA intervened and said due process had not been followed, reinstating Vonya and asking Judge Bernard Ngoepe to sort out the mess. And who was it that instigated this intervention? None other than Gwaza.

With seven Board members on the 14-strong Members Council, Vonya provides that crucial eighth vote that allows the status quo to continue. And he is certainly using it to ensure his place in the feeding trough.