Ken Borland

The fact that almost all of them have international playing experience was first and foremost in fast bowler Lutho Sipamla’s mind this week when he spoke about the effect the Proteas coaching staff have had on his own fledgling career for South Africa.

Since making his Proteas debut in a T20 against Pakistan at the Wanderers in February last year, the 22-year-old Sipamla has played four ODIs and five T20 Internationals. For all his inexperience, he has been quick to recognise the value of all the experience around him.

“Guys like Charl Langeveldt, Mark Boucher, Jacques Kallis and Justin Ontong have walked the talk, they know what it takes to be a good international cricketer. It’s awesome to have them as coaches because they have been in our shoes and they have done it all before. So they can relate to what we are going through because they’ve experienced it themselves.

“Someone like Charl, when it comes to bowling at the death, he’s had to defend six or seven runs to win the game and done that. So he knows the processes involved, he’s been successful and he passes that on to the bowlers,” Sipamla said.

Bowling coach Langeveldt played 72 ODIs, but the respect he is held in by local cricketers suggests he should have played many more; head coach Boucher played 147 Tests and 295 ODIs, batting consultant Kallis is South Africa’s most-capped player ever with 166 Test and 328 ODI appearances, and fielding coach Ontong was unfortunate to play just two Tests, 14 ODIs and 28 T20 Internationals.

Last year was a pretty terrible one for the Proteas, but there were signs of the tide starting to turn when they whitewashed a powerful Australian side 3-0 in the ODI series in February/March.

“It was a great experience making my debut in the limited-overs format and it was a really good win over Australia, a wonderful experience and a great time for me. We had a very young squad but we all worked together towards our goal and gelled nicely. We all knew what we had to do, everyone knew their roles and we were able to execute.

“In that campaign we all grew as individuals and players, and it was something special to be part of it. And now we’ve had a long wait to play again and I’m really excited just to get back to practice and crafting my skills again. As my Dad always tells me when I’m having a tough time, I must just make sure I keep working hard and make sure I’m still doing all the right things,” Sipamla said.

Cricket South Africa chief executive Jacques Faul admitted on Monday that the organisation were “a bit naïve and ambitious” to think the sport would be let out of its Covid-19 Lockdown cell as early as this weekend, following the postponement of the Solidarity Cup.

The new format of the game, devised by 3TCricket, and a return to onfield action were launched amid much fanfare last week, with SuperSport Park in Centurion set to stage the contest involving three teams playing a 36-over match on Saturday, June 27.

But by the weekend CSA were forced to backtrack as government said they had not yet approved the plans, despite director of cricket Graeme Smith saying SuperSport Park had been “cleared” and “permits were in place” for the event to take place.

“We were a bit naïve and ambitious with the date because it did not leave us with a lot of time to work through all the protocols. Because SuperSport Park is in a hotspot, we now need Department of Health approval too. But we will take it on the chin and plan better. We really want to seek the correct procedure and it’s not something we can just push through,” Faul told The Citizen on Monday in a phone call.

CSA expect to be able to announce a new date for the Solidarity Cup in a few weeks.

As part of their efforts to convince the Department of Sports and Arts and Culture that they have measures in place to ensure a safe return to cricket, CSA have conducted more than 100 Covid-19 tests on their staff and those of the franchises, including players. Sport24 revealed on Monday that seven of those tests had returned positive results.

But those safety processes now have to be approved by two government departments so the wait to get back out on to the cricket field will last a little longer.

But if thousands of golfers are out and about on hundreds of courses around the country, then it surely won’t be long before cricket, in what is going to be a tightly-controlled environment, returns too.

SA Rugby CEO Jurie Roux said recently that every union whether provincial or international is going to join up with private equity partners either sooner or later. Rugby has been one of the slowest sports to embrace professionalism though and I can hear many fans wailing that private equity is going to ruin the game.

“Private equity in rugby will have a massive influence, it will probably control rugby. And yes, SA Rugby is in discussions with private firms, but I don’t think there’s a union that’s not talking to someone. We all live in a post-Covid world that is now a much smaller pond and there is the opportunity now for investors to buy things at much cheaper prices. Private equity is here to stay, you’ll either join early or late, but join you will,” Roux said in an online press conference earlier this month.

There is perhaps going to be understandable anxiety that rugby is going to end up in the same sort of mess as the Premier Soccer League has with the controversial sale of the famous BidVest Wits club to a little-known National First Division club, Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila, based in Limpopo. Thanks to BidVest cynically pulling the plug based purely on financial considerations, 99 years of history is down the drain, a club that has won nine top-flight trophies and produced players such as Gary Bailey, Peter Gordon, Richard Gough, Sam Magalefa, Thulani Hlatshwayo and Benson Mhlongo for all intents and purposes no longer exists.

Never mind Western Province leaving Newlands, can you imagine the outrage if it was announced that the Bulls were moving to Polokwane and would henceforth be known as the Buffaloes?

But let me allay your fears by pointing out that rugby has mechanisms in place to prevent such stupid things from happening.

Before going to market, a union will split its assets between a commercial/professional arm, which will largely deal with corporate matters like sponsorships, advertising, marketing and broadcast deals, and an amateur arm which will hold assets like the stadium (whether they own it or have a rental deal) and ‘intellectual property’ like the team name.

Stakeholders can then buy shares in the commercial/professional arm. A private company can buy 25% of those shares and the union gets the cash, while the equity partner takes dividends while also hopefully driving up the commercial value of those properties.

Even though SA Rugby’s constitution now allows for private companies to own up to 74% of a union’s professional arm, as long as the ‘amateur’ administrators have done their paperwork correctly then properties like the team name or where they play should be totally protected even if the union is now a minority shareholder.

The Bulls have been amongst the first unions to really make private equity work for them, with Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital Investments and Johann Rupert’s Remgro each owning 37% of the Blue Bulls Company. First prize to them because the influx of cash has allowed the Bulls to hire big-name coaches in John Mitchell and now Jake White, who is totally revamping the team with a host of quality additions to the player roster.

Perhaps the first thing for a union to ensure is that there is synergy between themselves and their private equity partners, so that they can work together to run a successful team.

Unfortunately there have been two unions in the news lately for getting it all wrong – the Eastern Province Rugby Football Union and the Western Province Rugby Football Union. Both those beleaguered unions seem to be suffering from a bunch of rank amateurs trying to run multimillion rand businesses.

After years of wrangling seemed to be coming to an end with the signing of heads of agreement to sell Newlands to Investec, WPRFU president Zelt Marais has unilaterally decided not to sign off on the rest of the deal, despite already taking an advance of more than R50 million from Investec. Interestingly, the WPRFU also owe Remgro R58 million for a loan. These are powerful enemies to have and one fears that the once proud union could be heading the same way as Eastern Province.

The embattled Port Elizabeth franchise just seems to lurch from one crisis to the next and fresh problems are now springing up between the company that holds the majority shareholding in the Southern Kings and the EPRFU.

Roux was not specifically talking about the Southern Kings or Western Province, but his message certainly applies to them when he said political interference tends to surface when administrators try to run their franchises as an amateur entity.

But to borrow from Saturday Citizen deputy editor Brendan Seery’s excellent Column, for every couple of Onions that have to be dished out to unions, there will be more Orchids given out to those who make private equity work.

Simply put, rugby is unable to survive this post-Covid world without them so, like the Wallabies and scrums, every union just has to find a way of making these partnerships work.

Kagiso Rabada said playing cricket in midwinter on the Highveld will remind him of the freezing water in ice baths during school camps in the off-season, but the new Solidarity Cup 3TCricket match to be played at SuperSport Park in Centurion on June 27 might be an even bigger shock to the system for cricket purists.

South Africa’s first taste of live sport and cricket’s return to action after the Covid-19 Lockdown will be a day of cricket lasting just 36 overs. But while this may seem to be a watered down version of cricket to go with such gimmicks as T10 and The Hundred, 3TCricket does at least bring some interesting innovations to the game.

Having three teams playing against each other at the same time, batting in six-over blocks, will change the flow of limited-overs cricket. And the Last Man Standing rule could provide for some thrilling conclusions to games. Paul Harris, the former top banker and Cricket South Africa independent director who is now chairman of wireless tech company Rain, who will present the Solidarity Cup, came up with the concept, and sharp cricketing minds such as former Hampshire captain and leading commentator Mark Nicholas, CSA director for cricket Graeme Smith and Proteas coach Mark Boucher have fine-tuned the idea. Former Springbok captain and Rugby World Cup winner Francois Pienaar, who has made such a success of the innovative VarsitySports stable, has come on board as CEO of 3TCricket.

“This is a new format and I’ve always believed that you can’t have too many formats of cricket. Just from my playing days we’ve had single and double-wicket competitions and limited-overs cricket has gone from 65 overs a side to 10 and everything in between. An eight-player, three-team format is perfect for kids and clubs who don’t have many resources, and the game has long searched for a format that will embrace all the players, no-one will be left at third man wanting to get involved.

“So we are throwing it out there, we think it is exciting and fresh, and hopefully as we come out of Lockdown it will inspire children to watch. Of course the stadium will be empty, but hopefully there will be full lounges watching on SuperSport TV. Last year’s World Cup in England showed that ODI cricket is not dead but we think this could breathe new life into the middle overs,” Nicholas, one of the founders of the 3TCricket company, said in a virtual launch on Wednesday.

The country’s leading limited-overs cricketers – barring the unavailable Dale Steyn and Imran Tahir – have all signed up for the game and superstars Rabada, Quinton de Kock and AB de Villiers have been chosen to captain the three sides that will launch a brave new era on June 27. Government have come on board with the Solidarity Fund being the beneficiaries of the fundraising efforts on the day.

“We envisage this format helping our pipeline and we will introduce it to schools and clubs. As temporary custodians of the game we are tasked with taking the game to the people, which is difficult in a country with such inequality, but this is another vehicle to do that, which is wonderful. We think it will have a big impact, maybe even internationally.

“The world has been starved of cricket and the goal is to have it televised worldwide and we are in conversations with our broadcast partners about that. It’s great to be part of something innovative, launching a new product, and it’s a nice opportunity to share it. But it’s going to be tremendous just to be able to see live sport again,” Smith said.

Having a sponsor called Rain is always running a risk for cricket, but in midwinter they should be fine.