Ken Borland

While Neil McKenzie will return to South African cricket as a batting coach, the appointment of Malibongwe Maketa and Shukri Conrad as the chief breeders of talent for the Proteas will arguably have an even greater effect as director of cricket Graeme Smith announced his high performance management team on Thursday.

McKenzie, who played 58 Tests and 64 ODIs for the Proteas, is the new batting lead and while this means he will replace Jacques Kallis as the batting consultant for the national team, his appointment is a full-time one and he will work with batsmen at all levels of the pipeline.

Conrad, as the new SA U19 men’s lead, and Maketa, who is now the full-time South Africa A and National Academy lead, have been given key roles in that pipeline.

Maketa was a Proteas assistant coach from 2017-2019 as well as enjoying a successful time in charge of the Eastern Cape Warriors, so the 39-year-old knows exactly what is required for talented cricketers to progress through the system. He told The Citizen on Thursday that he sees himself as the go-between for the Proteas management and the franchise coaches.

“They are two very important roles and fortunately I’ll have a lot of highly qualified coaches around me as we try to prepare cricketers for both the franchises and the Proteas. The Academy is there to empower the players with skills and I will be assisting them with their game-plans and execution. It’s great to be back in a full-time role with Cricket South Africa.

“I’ll be looking to assist Mark Boucher and Enoch Nkwe in creating a bigger base for the Proteas and my contract runs concurrently with their’s. It’s also about monitoring and identifying talent and lending a hand to the franchise coaches, making sure we are all speaking the same language, from Graeme, Mark and Enoch to the franchises. I intend to get my hands dirty and throw lots of balls,” Maketa said.

Conrad, a vastly-experienced coach who has been heading up the National Academy, will now take over the crucial U19 programme.

“I’ve loved every minute of it at the academy and I know what is required to get to those levels as I now get involved earlier in the pipeline. The U19s are a great challenge because it is such an important stage in development and South African cricket as a whole. The challenge is to ensure we give every young cricketer every opportunity to play and perform.

“Excellence in coaching is critical at provincial and school level, and schools have a massive role to play. I would like to work together with them, private coaches and the Hubs and RPC coaches because we have been in our silos for far too long. Plus we have a scouting system and a wonderful database run by John Bailey and Niels Momberg to ensure nobody falls through the cracks,” Conrad said.

Other appointments confirmed on Thursday were those of Eddie Khoza as the Acting Head of Cricket Pathways, Vincent Barnes as the High-Performance Bowling Lead, Dinesha Devnarain as the Women’s SA U19 and National Academy Head Coach, and Dr Shuaib Manjra as the Chief Medical Officer. Follwing the rather dilly stink created over the appointment of certain consultants, these announcements should be sweet-smelling for the majority of SA cricket fans. They all have considerable amounts to add to the high performance programme.

The South African Cricketers’ Association – the players’ union – are mulling taking legal action under the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to ensure Cricket South Africa release the forensic report that led to the dismissal of former CEO Thabang Moroe, SACA chief executive Andrew Breetzke revealed on Wednesday.

CSA postponed their AGM scheduled for September 5 with one of the reasons given being that there were so many unresolved issues arising from the Fundudzi forensic report into Moroe. Up till then, the Members Council, who had commissioned the investigation, had not been allowed to view the report unless they travelled to Bowman Gilfillan’s offices in Johannesburg and signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Members of the Members Council were optimistic that they would now be allowed to study the outcome of the report they instituted, with relaxed conditions, but it seems that has not been the case. The secrecy behind the report has led to growing frustration amongst the cricket-loving public and other stakeholders, with speculation now rife that the report also implicates Board members and company secretary Welsh Gwaza in misgovernance.

Speaking on a Daily Maverick webinar on Wednesday, both Breetzke and governance expert Judith February, a lawyer based at the Institute for Security Studies, called on the Members Council to demand their right to see the report is respected, failing which SACA will need to launch legal action.

“In December/January there was already enough information for a proper investigation but everything was linked to the forensic report, which was a mistake. They could have dealt with Thabang Moroe back then and South African cricket would have been in a better position now. What our cricket desperately needs now is certainty and consistency as we move into a very difficult time for the game.

“We have formally asked CSA in the past to release the report, but obviously that has not happened. We are stakeholders in that report because of the breakdown in CSA’s relationship with SACA and if it is not forthcoming in the next two to three weeks then we will have to go the legal route and apply under PAIA. There will be no peace in South African cricket until that report comes out,” Breetzke said on Wednesday.

“CSA don’t seem to understand that they operate in a democracy, they appear to be tone-deaf to the fact that the public have a stake in the game,” February said. “At the moment it feels like the public is totally disregarded, and CSA have a lot of work to do to restore their faith. When an organisation is very badly managed and has the wrong people in power, people who abuse power and mismanage finances, then it leads to a forensic report.

“The Members Council commissioned that report and it is bizarre that it is being kept secret. because it is being so closely guarded, we can only assume that it implicates others. But that report will come out because we live in a democracy and the public, the players and the stakeholders in the game have the right to know. A PAIA request is the way to go because the report is certainly in the public and players’ interest,” the former head of IDASA’s governance programme said.

February said the governance of CSA was so terrible that the Members Council should immediately dissolve the Board.

“CSA have lurched from crisis to crisis and there have been rumblings all over about how bad their governance has been. The wake-up call that something rotten was going on came when journalists’ accreditation was withdrawn. That clearly showed they were an organisation insecure in power and closed off to the public, that set off all sorts of alarm bells.

“The Nicholson Inquiry was quite clear that it wanted nine non-executive independent directors with real skill and gravitas, but the Board has been seven non-independent and just five independent directors since 2013. The Members Council should dissolve the Board. And the company secretary [Gwaza] has also become extraordinarily powerful, which is unusual to say the least,” the Visiting Fellow at the Wits School of Governance said.

Spinner Tabraiz Shamsi says the Proteas are seeking lessons from the past in order to ensure that they improve as a team, which is why the honest conversations they had at their recent culture camp have proven to be so valuable.

“The biggest thing for me from the camp was that as a group we realised that we can gain a lot of strength from communicating properly with each other. As hard as it is, it was really important as a group to discuss racism and race because it is a big part of our history in South Africa and we were divided in the past. Previous players have spoken about things being unequal so they had to go through hurdles that should not have been there if it was a level playing field.

“We need to look at the past and take the good things and add to them so that we are even more successful. We want to get better as a team and having so many young players is not necessarily a bad thing, it makes us a bit of an unknown package. But at the same time we need to make sure those hurdles are taken away from the system, they cannot be tolerated,” Shamsi said on Monday.

With the retirement of so many stars of the last decade like Hashim Amla, Vernon Philander, JP Duminy, AB de Villiers and Morne Morkel, the Proteas are going to be suffering from a lack of experience in the immediate future, but Shamsi is confident they are well-equipped to get through the tough teething stages of a rebuilding team and re-emerge as a powerhouse in world cricket.

“Most of our senior players retired in a clump and you can’t just replace that experience, it leaves a massive gap. For whatever reason, we didn’t have the youngsters learning below them and then coming through to replace them seamlessly and it might be difficult at first to perform consistently. But it’s not all doom and gloom and I am very comfortable with where we are as a team and the direction we’re going in. “We want to create a bubble for ourselves in which we can fight for each other and our country, now that we all understand where we’re coming from. I learnt a lot personally at the culture camp, there were things I did not know. I’m sure it was a good learning curve for management as well and we now understand each other much better. We’re definitely stronger than we were before the camp,” Shamsi said.

Lock Jason Jenkins has played just the one Test for the Springboks, back in 2018, but now that he has returned to the Bulls on loan from Toyota Verblitz, the beefy 24-year-old has the chance to establish himself in the national squad for the rest of the year, with the legendary Victor Matfield seeing him as a definite option for the Green and Gold.

Jenkins has played for Verblitz since 2017, but represented the Bulls in Super Rugby as recently as last year. But the Pretoria-born St Alban’s College product is now entirely a Verblitz player, with Jake White’s former club agreeing to loan him to Loftus Versfeld until the end of October.

Talks are ongoing though to have Jenkins for longer and the Bulls are hopeful they can extend the loan. Being based in South Africa will also improve Jenkins’ chances of adding to his solitary Springbok appearance against Wales in Washington, especially with RG Snyman, Lood de Jager and Eben Etzebeth all having suffered injuries recently in Europe. That could be just the carrot needed to lure him into a longer stay, because Japan’s Covid-19 travel restrictions are onerous.

Matfield, the most-capped Springbok ever, believes Jenkins can certainly provide able back-up in the number four jersey.

“Jason is a number four lock in the same mould as Bakkies Botha or an Eben Etzebeth, he plays in the same style as them. He’s a big, strong ball-carrier and very good in the lineouts too. I’ve seen him call the lineouts before as well and he did it well. But to me he’s more of an enforcer, I don’t see him playing at number five for the Springboks.

“With Lood de Jager and RG Snyman possibly out of contention for the Springboks, Franco Mostert will probably run the lineout. But as a back-up, Jason can definitely fill in for Eben Etzebeth at number four,” Matfield told The Citizen on Monday.

Matfield also believes the 122kg Jenkins will make the Bulls set-piece even stronger. White has a group of promising number five locks in his camp, but big bruisers with experience to fill the number four jersey are a bit thin on the ground. The other second-rowers in the Bulls squad are Ewan Coetzee, Jean Droste, Andries Ferreira, Sintu Manjezi, Walt Steenkamp, Wian Vosloo and Ruan Nortje.

“Jason is a great signing for the Bulls because last year their front row was really strong, but they perhaps needed that bit of extra bulk in the second row. They have one or two number five locks but they missed having an enforcer like Jenkins,” Matfield said.