Ken Borland

South African cricket is in a very sad and angry space at the moment, with the festering sores from years of poor leadership exploding in an awful throbbing spasm of pus and pain.

As ever in this country, the battle lines seem to have been drawn along racial lines and the prime targets of the baying mob are Whites in management positions. I can only describe it as being very sad when one of this country’s best administrators, someone who has shown more commitment to genuine transformation i.e. the type that changes lives; the Proteas’ greatest captain, who ushered in a new era of embracing diversity; and an icon of the game in this country; are singled out as the arch-racists and enemies of transformation, without any credible evidence being provided.

This week the Khaya Zondo/Dean Elgar selection controversy, dating back to an ODI in India in 2015, was brought up. AB de Viliers has been allotted all the blame, but what of the very vocal Hussein Manack, who was the selector on tour, and Ashwell Prince, also a national selector at the time? What of coach Russell Domingo? Why are they not expected to answer for what some people have portrayed as blatant discrimination?

There were good cricket reasons for the decision, and it would certainly be helpful for those men to explain them.

It is sadly typical of this country where accountability only seems to mean adding up the riches you have gained through corrupt means, that the voices given the biggest platforms have been those found guilty of the worst betrayal of the game – being involved in matchfixing.

I fully expect that MSW radio show (Does it stand for Matchfixers’ Sports Worldwide?) to follow up next week’s interviews with Lonwabo Tsotsobe and Alviro Petersen, after three episodes of Thami Tsolekile, with chats with Gulam Bodi, Saleem Malik, Mohammed Azharuddin and Mohammad Asif. The coup de grace, the scoop to end all scoops, might well be a séance with Hansie Cronje. Or maybe not, for the same reason that Jean Symes hasn’t been invited into studio yet.

But all this has not been the saddest thing I have heard in South African cricket this week.

My heart was well and truly broken when the Central Gauteng Lions, so often at the forefront of efforts to advance society, held the virtual launch of their campaign against gender-based violence. It was a sobering experience to listen to the terrible stories of abuse that were revealed by a Proteas Women cricketer and an administrator at the union. Their bravery was nothing short of inspirational.

The Proteas cricketer spoke about how she was suicidal at the age of seven after abuse from within her extended family left her with serious, and understandable, anger issues. Sport was an escape from what was happening at home for her.

The administrator revealed she was sexually abused as a child and was a witness to awful violence in the home, eventually leading to a mental breakdown.

“Men need to accept that they are doing this, we are not harming ourselves. Men need to talk amongst themselves, start having conversations about gender-based violence,” she said, which I think is very good advice indeed.

It would also be a very good idea, as mooted previously by former Proteas manager Dr Mohammed Moosajee, for cricket as a whole to have a Truth and Reconciliation process. It would be wonderful to hear from those Black cricketers who fought their way to the top, who are not embittered by the wrong choices they made in life or by the ruthless misfortune that accompanies elite sport, about the genuine barriers they had to overcome and whether those obstacles are still in place.

But, as Moosajee also pointed out, it has to be independently driven because Cricket South Africa have just about zero credibility at the moment.

There is so much talent in this country, but we all need to pull together for the common good, not narrow personal agendas, to ensure a much brighter cricketing future than what we are currently experiencing.

While a lengthy labour court battle lies in store for former CEO Thabang Moroe, the Cricket South Africa Board have more battles to fight this week after a group calling themselves Cricket United 2020 demanded that they consult them in any transformation policies and the Social Justice Network mechanism set up recently.

Cricket United 2020 is made up of the 40 black former Proteas cricketers and senior coaches who held a meeting with the CSA Board at the end of last month, but they released a statement on Wednesday night asking CSA to adhere to their agreement from that meeting to properly engage with the concerned Black stakeholders.

“We request that CSA adhere to the commitment to allow engagement and consultation with us and the relevant decision makers at CSA, namely the Board, CEO, Director of Cricket and relevant Proteas team management within the next 7 days. We are not here to break the system, it is already broken. Subsequently, following the process outlined by that commitment by the president and board we were alerted that the Transformation Policy had been signed off by the Board without any consultation with relevant coaches, ex-players, current players and other roleplayers,” the statement read.

Unfortunately CSA were in no place to respond publicly to Cricket United 2020 on Thursday because the Board was embroiled in an all-day meeting to decide the fate of Moroe, who was suspended last December. The former CEO was supposed to present his case to the Board on Thursday but it seems unlikely he bothered because he had instructed lawyers to prepare an indictment the night before to stop the board meeting.

It seems likely that the Board will dismiss Moroe, who will then take his case to the CCMA and ultimately labour court. But CSA have shown they are quite prepared to spend thousands dragging these matters through litigation until the complainant’s money runs out. It will also give them a handy excuse to delay making the forensic audit public, because many believe they are implicated in Moroe’s wrongdoing as well.

The one statement that did emerge on Thursday came from Director of Cricket Graeme Smith, who responded to allegations of racism made against him when he was the Proteas captain from 2002/3 to 2013/14.

“I should emphasise that I was never in charge of selections. I had an opinion as the captain, but the casting vote was with the coach and the selectors. In the case of the 2012 tour to England, which Thami Tsolekile has alluded to, there was a whole panel of selectors. Thami was in the squad as reserve ‘keeper and this was communicated to him on both the England and Australia tours by Gary Kirsten.

“It was international sport and there were some very tough decisions made. Decisions which I have been on the undesired side of myself. I was left out on the brink of the 2003 World Cup, having played the whole year before that; I was left out of a Test team and Ashwell Prince flown up to play ahead of me. I felt I still had more to give in ODI cricket when I was dropped. It hurt, but I had to knuckle down and accept it.

“Over time, I have grown to understand that it was the right call for the team. And that has always been the crux of the decisions made in my time, they were the best for the team. I have tried my level best to explain the decisions that I have made in my time as captain and I am happy to engage in discussions in the right forum, even if it is uncomfortable because I think we can only learn from our past,” Smith said.

Professional golf returns to action this month with two events in the Rise Up Series sponsored by Betway and African Bank, and the Sunshine Tour is also confident they will complete negotiations with three other investors for a further trio of tournaments next month.

The country’s top golfers will return to competition on August 19 with the Betway Championship at Killarney Country Club, followed by the African Bank Championship at Glendower Golf Club from August 26-28. Three other events are lined up for Pretoria Country Club (September 2-4), ERPM Golf Club (September 23-25) and Huddle Park (September 30-October 2). Each tournament has a purse of R600 000.

“These are exciting times with the Rise Up Series. We would love to be playing for much more money, but these are tough times. But we are going to do some clever things with our wonderful sponsors. For the Betway Championship there will be a birdie challenge with a R50 000 pot, the golfer with the most birdies wins R25 000, second-most gets R15 000 and third is R10 000.

“African Bank also jumped at the opportunity to get involved and they will be bringing their portfolios in and around the golf clubs. SuperSport are tour partners as well and we have other hooks in the water. We are just waiting for confirmation but we are hopeful of having title sponsors for all five events. Plus there will be live streaming of the action for the last three-and-a-half hours every Friday, so that’s further reach,” Sunshine Tour deputy commissioner Thomas Abt said in a virtual press conference on Tuesday.

Sunshine Tour stalwart Jake Roos said the players are just delighted for the opportunity to both play some competitive golf again and earn a living.

“The last time we played was the Tour Championship back in February, so everybody is very grateful to the Sunshine Tour staff who have shown a lot of dedication to get us playing again. It’s important for us pro golfers to compete again, you lose your edge if you don’t play, and it will be nice to earn some money too. We are all super-excited.

“It will be unchartered waters because we’ve had six months off and a lot of guys have never had more than a few weeks without competing. Luckily we have been playing and practising for a couple of months now, but until the pressure of a tournament you never know how your game really is. But we are all refreshed and have had time to work on some technical things,” Roos said.

The Sunshine Tour has spent much of the Covid-19 Lockdown trying to mitigate the dire financial strain put on many of its members and most especially their caddies, while also showing solidarity with the amateur game and all its stakeholders, who have been far more severely affected by the closure of golf courses.

But the Sunshine Tour has also devoted their time in Lockdown to ensuring that they can grow the game further once normality returns, by boldly pursuing new markets, especially through the digital space. Their groundbreaking Virtual Golf Challenge reached out to potential new fans and gave their sponsors exposure at the same time.

In the absence of live golf, fans were able to watch several head-to-head challenges between professional golfers, culminating in a knockout final featuring eight contestants on June 6-7, playing for R6500 of prizemoney. Rookie Nikhil Rama claimed a comfortable three-shot win over Heinrich Bruiners in the final.

International campaigners Brandon Stone, Haydn Porteous, Justin Harding and Oliver Bekker all took part in the series at some stage.

And, most importantly, during the whole series viewers were able to interact with the professionals in a way that would be virtually impossible in normal tournament golf.

Not only could they hear the banter between the golfers, who maintained their usual competitive spirit, but also ask them questions ranging from what are the best Open Championship courses (Carnoustie received a few votes), who are the naughtiest pros on tour (Andy Sullivan was mentioned), the longest hitters (between Wilco Nienaber and James Hart du Preez, confirming the stats) and what was the best chirp ever heard out on the course?*

The Virtual Golf Challenge took place on PlayStation’s The Golf Club game and the front nines of Glendower Golf Club and Royal Johannesburg and Kensington’s East Course, as well as Soweto Country Club for the final, were especially recreated for the series.

“We wanted to create something fun for our fans and they certainly seemed to enjoy watching the pros play these games. The banter was great fun and the viewers could see what type of guy a Brandon Stone or a Jared Harvey is, it gives the fan an insight into their personality. The public loved it, the players said they were just as nervous before their rounds and they were very much on-board in terms of it being serious competition. What more is sport?

“We created the virtual tour to be fun, but the biggest thing was that we have a captive audience that loves pro golf but we need to look outside that at younger viewers. We need to start thinking out of the box, push the boundaries a bit. It’s most important to attract the youth and women’s tennis has the youngest viewership globally, while golf on TV is mostly watched by people aged 55 and over,” Thomas Abt, the deputy commissioner of the Sunshine Tour, said.

“That’s why we’ve gone heavily into things like Instagram as well, because that reaches a much younger market, which gives you longevity in terms of support. The Virtual Tour was for fun but at the end of the day in this economic climate, it’s important what we can get out of it – which is speaking to a completely different market, people who might not ever go to a tournament or watch golf on TV. Our sponsors, and those of the players, have obviously not been able to promote their brands as much during Lockdown and we’ve been able to give them and our partners some value.

“The virtual tour definitely gained motion, it has shown us a positive way going forward and I’m just surprised that no other sport in South Africa really tried something like that in Lockdown. It was fun and something different, a new way of doing things, and the idea was to make ourselves more relevant. Hopefully those who saw it will say it was fun to watch and now they’ll want to go and watch the golfers in real life,” Abt said.

One of the biggest attractions of the Virtual Golf Challenge is that it offers an insight into the game plans of the golfers faced with certain holes which are instantaneously recognisable on the program thanks to the superb job done by the techies building the digital courses.

And the golfers enjoyed the realism of the game and just how tough it was, feeding into their competitive juices.

“Lockdown was like all of us sitting in our cages and champing at the bit for any opportunity that reminded you of competitive golf. Haydn Porteous and I jumped at the opportunity to play each other and we’ve now competed against each other through junior golf, to the amateur champs, at professional level and now virtually!” Brandon Stone said.

“The actual playing of the game was tricky, especially around the greens, and it mimics the toughness of golf quite well. After many hours of playing the game I can now grasp how it feels, understand the frustration, of most golfers. It was quite difficult to play technically, even though it doesn’t mimic the actual swing as much, but from a golf strategy point of view it was very similar to the real game. We had similar game-plans as we would in real life.”

It’s undeniable though that the Virtual Golf Challenge did not have the same heat of battle as one gets coming down the back nine on Sunday afternoon and Oliver Bekker, the 2017/18 Sunshine Tour Players’ Player of the Year, acknowledged that pro golfers would probably have to stay out of the heat of the kitchen if they were to take on proper gamers.

“Internationally, gaming has been around for a while and the games earn millions of dollars per year. But it’s a whole new thing for us and if it had to come down to golfers just being able to play Online, being a pro golfer would definitely not mean you’re a great Online golfer. It’s completely different.

“But I’m glad the Sunshine Tour are being innovative, they put something out that showcased professional golf and it didn’t really matter what we shot, it shows that something is still going on in South African golf. And the game they used is a lot more realistic than some of the others in which Rory McIlroy shoots 56 every time! The Golf Club almost feels real, it’s more up to the standard of real golf,” Bekker said before his match against Justin Harding, which he won to go through to the final weekend.

For realism in the world of virtual golf, however, nothing beats what the outstanding European Tour digital and social media team put together – the BMW Trackman Invitational.

Powered by the Trackman golf simulator, this series was a true test of golf played on digital versions of major courses like Wentworth, St Andrews and Valderrama.

By choosing tough settings in terms of factors like the wind and speed of greens, the golfers, hitting actual practice balls into their nets at home, had to shape shots to avoid the same obstacles that are out on those famous courses in real life. The auto-putt function that meant golfers were given putts within 2.5 metres and sometimes longer was annoying, while one wonders how troubled they were by bad lies given that they were hitting off a mat at home, with the simulator then tracking all the details of the club and ball data. At a glance though, it was difficult to differentiate between it and real golf.

The equipment is extremely expensive – ranging from $20 000 to $50 000 – but it does seem to be the new toy of choice for professional golfers.

The deep pockets of BMW and the wonderful exposure Trackman have received made possible what must have been a very expensive undertaking for the European Tour, but Abt said the Sunshine Tour are looking to follow suit.

“We’re very close to doing something similar, testing is going on in that sphere. But it’s not just about the playing of golf for us, it’s also very important for the fans to get to know the players better. The Virtual Tour may not have been real golf, but it was a platform for our professionals to present themselves,” Abt said.

Justin Sampson is the CEO of S-Factor Sponsorship, the digital PR company running campaigns for the Sunshine Tour, and he has been delighted with the success of the Virtual Golf Challenge.

“We’ve tried to engage social media across the board, from the virtual tour to Robbie Kruse’s Out of Bounds player interviews on Instagram, that included an episode with Louis Oosthuizen. The Virtual Tour had 600 000 viewers in the first six weeks, the majority of those from Facebook, then Instagram and then Twitter. We had 4500 people watching live on YouTube on Sunday afternoons. Those are the kind of numbers you get on SuperSport Channels 6-8.

“We wanted to reach the younger market, position the Sunshine Tour in a different market, not the traditional platforms. It was all part of a bigger strategy and nobody had even heard of Covid back then. But we had to adapt to tough circumstances and we’ve grown a new base, which I think is pretty cool. What the European Tour has done is pretty cool too and we copy each other a bit,” Sampson said.

The rise of eSports, which is now a billion dollar industry globally, means the line between virtual and real sports is going to blur, offering another big commercial platform for sports organisations. And while virtual golf is unlikely to ever replace the real thing, it could become more mainstream.

As Brandon Stone pointed out, if a golfer has never seen a course before he or she can gain valuable insight from the digital version and the fact that so many pro golfers now carry around their own tracking devices and simulator shows how useful a tool it can be in coaching.

*Best chirp ever sidebar

The diminutive Keenan Davidse, light in weight but heavy in game, was playing in the Zone VI amateur championships and was up against a big, burly Zimbabwean.

His opponent tried a bit of sledging on the first tee by saying “How’s a small little guy like you going to hit the ball far enough to beat me?”

Davidse said nothing but laced his first drive miles past the Zimbabwean. They walked to their balls and when Davidse reached his, he turned back to the Zimbabwean and shouted “How small do I look now?!”