Ken Borland

Cricket-lovers in Kimberley can look forward to being the first spectators to resume watching live cricket at the ground, with CSA confirming that they are finalising plans to have a crowd in attendance for the first time since the Covid virus spread uncontrollably through the country 19 months ago at next week’s T20 Provincial Knockout Cup.

With government having now given permission for up to 2000 spectators to be allowed as long as all Covid procedures and precautions are followed, cricket is likely to be the second sport to open its doors, after 2000 vaccinated fans were able to watch Bafana Bafana beat Ethiopia 1-0 in their World Cup qualifier earlier this week in Soweto.

The CSA T20 Provincial Knockout Cup resumes with the quarterfinals on Tuesday at the Diamond Oval.

“Chances are that we will have our first set of spectators for the finals,” a CSA spokesperson confirmed to The Citizen on Wednesday evening. “We are finalising the logistics and we should be making an announcement soon.”

Tuesday’s action sees South-Western Districts take on the Northerns Titans, and then the Free State Knights, who used to have Kimberley as one of their home venues, play Western Province. KZN Dolphins versus Eastern Province Warriors and Boland Rocks against North-West Dragons are the other quarterfinals, both to be played on Wednesday.

The semi-finals will then take place on Thursday and then the final will be held on Friday.

SA Rugby announced earlier on Wednesday that fully vaccinated supporters will be allowed to attend both club and professional matches from now on. But the four franchises are all overseas playing in the United Rugby Championship and the first senior professional rugby match to be open to spectators is likely to be on November 6 at Loftus Versfeld when the Carling Champion XV take on Kenya.

The Proteas are off to the Caribbean on Monday and, having gathered on Friday, new captain Dean Elgar has spent the weekend almost trying to market his new leadership style to an expanded squad of 19 players.

Elgar is one of the characters of the changeroom, and is often considered a joker, but he has shown he has strong leadership credentials at the Titans and certainly commands the respect of the players. But a new era begins next week, post the captaincy tenures of Faf du Plessis and Quinton de Kock, and Elgar has been making sure everyone is on the same page as to the way things are going to be done now.

“We had a great chat on our first night together, when I mapped out how I see things going forward and we had a conversation around that. It was very constructive and those conversations will be ongoing over the next few weeks. I want to try and change the mindsets going forward, it’s a challenge with 18 different individuals who all have different opinions.

“So I’m trying to get buy-in, get the guys to trust the process. Hopefully some of what I’ve done in the past can rub off on the players, they need to know they can rely on me and follow me. We haven’t played much Test cricket lately, so it’s been difficult to get a process going that would make us competitive. I had a lot of quality conversations with Graeme Smith through the years and I would be letting the team down if I didn’t use that,” Elgar said at the weekend.

The 33-year-old Elgar said he would be leaning on other players who have been part of the Test squad for more than five years like Temba Bavuma, Quinton de Kock, Keshav Maharaj and Kagiso Rabada, because their experience will be vital for a rebuilding side.

“Those players are so valuable and there is a great demand for them around the world of cricket, you can’t replicate their knowledge. There’s not a lot of experience floating around at the moment, so their presence is massive for the environment. It was a totally different era when I started playing Test cricket under Graeme Smith, we had a lot more caps around then.

“But I would like to try and use my learnings from back then, use the knowledge I gained. That time moulded me and taught me a lot of good lessons, so I would like to bring that into this side. We need to get back to scoring big hundreds, bowlers taking five-fors and taking 20 wickets to win a Test. There used to be that rich culture of success and with extended squads now we have all the options we need,” Elgar said.

Cricket South Africa CEO Haroon Lorgat on Monday defended the absence of transformation quotas in the T20 Global League, saying it was a risk that had paid off with 55 players of colour amongst the 144 players chosen in the draft, including 19 Black Africans.

“We did debate having targets but we decided not to because we have a bottom-up approach with our hubs and schools. It was a risk but we want to see our players come through naturally and it was very pleasing to see Black players chosen as some of the best-paid by people who had no compulsion to do so.

“It shows that our system is working, foreign coaches wanting those players is what we are aiming for. We will not relent in terms of our development of Black players either, because your market is where your majority is and you don’t have to be a professor of economics to understand that. We’re doing it the hard way, from the bottom up,” Lorgat said on Monday.

The CEO and tournament director Russell Adams announced the fixtures for the T20 Global League on Monday in Cape Town, with 57 games being played over six weeks. With each team playing the other seven franchises home and away, that means there will be no playoffs but the top two teams after the league phase will go straight into the final at the Wanderers on Saturday, December 16.

With Johannesburg guaranteed the final for the foreseeable future, it means Cape Town will host the opening game, between the Knight Riders and the Pretoria Mavericks, on Friday, November 3, at least this year.

“In future the opening match will be played at the home of the winners of the previous year’s tournament. We also had a big debate about where to stage the final, but there are logistical challenges around having it in Cape Town around December 16 – there’s the World Sevens Series tournament and everyone is on holiday.

“Wanderers has a bigger capacity and there are more flights and accommodation available in Johannesburg. And we are looking to make the final at one host venue a fixture of the tournament which means people can do their planning, they can even make their bookings for the Wanderers on December 16, 2020,” Lorgat said.

“We also had debates about playoffs and semi-finals, but the league is the reason for the competition and we wanted to reward the two best sides with a place in the final, otherwise a team could come through at the expense of someone who’s had a great league season.”

https://citizen.co.za/sport/south-africa-sport/sa-cricket-sport/1630775/csa-defends-lack-of-formal-quotas-in-t20-global-league/