Ken Borland

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.

Pretoria Country Club probably has two favourite current professional golfers in George Coetzee and Tristen Strydom and on Friday the two ‘pets’ went head-to-head in the final round of the Titleist Championship with Coetzee emerging as a four-shot winner in a contest he said was tighter than the final margin suggested.

Coetzee and Strydom began the day both on seven-under-par, but Coetzee added to his two Tshwane Open titles at the Waterkloof course by firing a superb six-under-par 66 on Friday, winning himself R95 100.

The 23-year-old Strydom, in just his second season on the Sunshine Tour, performed admirably to post a 70 and earn R69 000, more than his total previous earnings of R58 877. And the resident and member of the Pretoria Country Club estate would have been properly in contention were it not for consecutive double-bogeys on the par-three fifth and the par-four sixth holes, from which he did exceptionally well to still shoot two-under-par.

“Tristen is a really exciting player, he hits the ball so good and definitely has a bright future. Were it not for just a couple of holes he would have really had me sweating,” Coetzee admitted. “But it’s always special winning at Pretoria Country Club and being a Titleist player, they have both supported me my whole career. I’m really happy to have won in front of everyone who was expecting me to perform, I could hear their cheers from a long way off,” he added below the clubhouse balcony that was littered with people supporting Coetzee and Strydom.

“Usually expectation is the killer so it was nice to pull it off,” Coetzee continued. “I really enjoyed the pressure of playing while in the lead, being in a tournament situation and under stress, because I’ve worked a lot on my mental game in Lockdown and made a lot of good strides. I felt comfortable attacking the flags, tending to a certain side if I missed so I would still be safe.”

Coetzee actually made an awful start to the day with bogeys on the first two holes. A five at the first was in fact a big escape for the 34-year-old, who had to fashion a cunning piece of innovation to only drop one shot as his ball was against the boundary wall. Coetzee hit it into the wall and rebounded it back on to the green.

“The last time I was against that wall was when I was 13 years old, I learnt my lesson then but obviously forgot it today. In the end I was very happy to make bogey because it was a tough putt,” he said.

Another bogey on the par-four second may have suggested Coetzee was vulnerable but it was one of the great cons as he powered his way back from his poor start with six birdies between the fourth and 10^th holes. He added two more birdies on the par-three 14^th and the par-four 17^th holes to complete his 11^th Sunshine Tour victory.

“On the second I basically hit the ball flush over the green so I had really hit just one bad shot, so I was still pretty happy and was confident to still go for the flags,” Coetzee said.

On a glorious sunny day that was fantastic for those wanting to work on a spring tan, Darren Fichardt made the biggest move on the final day with a top-class seven-under 65 that lifted him into fourth place on six-under. Jaco Ahlers completed a solid week’s work with a 67 to finish third on seven-under, two behind second-placed Strydom.

The Rise Up Series now takes a three-week break before resuming with the penultimate event at ERPM Golf Club on September 23.

From boozy evenings in top London hotels, which then led to potential sponsors being kept waiting the next morning, or extravagant weekends at luxurious places like Zimbali, to the financial disaster of the Mzansi Super League being given to the SABC for free, there was an awful amount of money wasted by Cricket South Africa in the couple of years leading up to December last year.

There were other factors at play which led to a predicted budget deficit of R654 million, which some believe should be closer to a billion rand, but such largesse certainly didn’t help and if fired chief executive officer Thabang Moroe was guilty of credit card abuse as charged, then certainly the life of excess being lived by CSA’s top executives did not match the message of frugality they were preaching.

Given that history, it is highly ironic (if I wanted to be unkind I would say hypocritical) that shots are now being fired in the direction of Proteas consultants Jacques Kallis and Paul Harris for allegedly earning inflated salaries due to their appointment by their old skipper Graeme Smith, now the director of cricket.

Of course this narrative should be seen as part of the campaign the Cricket Capturers are busy with to try and get rid of Smith. They don’t care about the millions wasted before, but are now shouting the odds about a few hundred thousand rand.

To date, Harris has not done any paid work for CSA since January, which meant he has actually only been on the payroll for two months. Kallis’s situation is the same. But still, they have been singled out as the ones raking in millions that poor old CSA can’t afford to spend.

They are both, as key members of the South African team that went to number one in the Test rankings nearly a decade ago, sought after overseas and other countries definitely pay a higher daily rate than CSA do. But they have both wanted to give back to their former national team and support their globally much-admired captain in his new role.

Of course, it was CSA’s new leadership of acting president Beresford Williams and acting CEO Kugandrie Govender who started all this hoo-ha over consultants when they announced in a meeting with the sports minister Nathi Mthethwa that from now on they would only employ Black consultants, unless there were exceptional circumstances.

This of course was merely an effort to get the sports minister off their backs. It is not a cricketing decision meant to make the Proteas a more competitive force in an international playground that is becoming more and more ruthless and unequal in terms of the richer nations pulling away from the rest. And I don’t see it being an enormous game-changer in terms of transformation either.

When it comes to transformation, CSA have an extensive history of box-ticking exercises that have made little difference to the horribly unequal situation on the ground, at grassroots.

The Social Justice and Nation-Building project, however admirable its intentions, could end up as another one of these box-ticking exercises. Designed to quell the anger that was fanned by those campaigning to get rid of Smith, head coach Mark Boucher and former acting CEO Jacques Faul, it will also pay reparations to cricketers who feel they were discriminated against.

This could create a headache of industrial proportions for the ombudsman, Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza, who will have to decide who has genuine grievances and who is merely after some extra money. Many of the most vocal critics of past selection have been those who have shown their lust for money by getting entangled in matchfixing.

I would not be surprised if Ntsebeza also finds himself inundated with applications from White cricketers who feel they have been discriminated against due to the quota system. He is clearly an extremely capable legal brain, but I do not envy the hot potato CSA have given him.

Throwing money at problems is an easy way out of actually having to change the system in order to fix the problem. That’s the sort of hard work the CSA Board seem allergic to. Instead of worrying about consultants and getting embroiled in reparation payments for past injustices, how about just following through on the recommendations of the forensic reports they have paid millions to commission?

It is absolutely laughable that only now CSA are looking to fully implement the recommendations of the Nicholson Inquiry that is eight years old! Even then, acting president Williams is in denial and says they have already complied with the vast majority of the recommendations.

Equally absurd was the CSA Board’s efforts to keep the Fundudzi Report from the Members Council. Having spent months saying the report belonged to the Members Council because they initially instigated it, they then turned around and said it was no longer their property! It can only be because the CSA Board is so completely implicated in the misdemeanours that had Moroe dismissed.