Ken Borland

Former Springbok captain John Smit believes rugby will need to be drastically streamlined once it resumes after the Covid-19 pandemic, while his fellow World Cup winner Joel Stransky is hoping for a quicker, less contact dominated game when action gets underway again.

Typically for the great South Africans they are, the two World Cup winners were busy handing out food parcels in Lonehill for the One Cup of Pap charitable initiative when they spoke to The Citizen about what they were hoping for once rugby is allowed to take place again.

Smit’s focus was on the effects of the suspension of play and how rugby organisations are going to have to adjust not just their schedules but also the very structure of the game in their respective countries in order to ameliorate the tough financial conditions that will be prevalent.

“Covid-19 has been a massive storm that has had a massive impact on our game, showing us how we have taken certain things for granted. I think it’s important to remember that rugby is largely a product of the players and wherever the sport is not streamlined enough, guys are going to have to make cuts.

“Decisions are going to have to be made about not just the survival of those in the game at the moment. Where the game is running fat, where most of the money is going, that’s where there have to be cuts and I think we all know where those places are,” Smit, a former CEO of the Sharks, said cryptically.

Former flyhalf Stransky wanted to see a pacier game in which there will be more exciting backline play.

“I don’t think the game will change so much although there will be more screening and testing, we will be more aware of the risks but there will still be running, scrumming and tackling. I would just like to see the space on the field used more. Rugby has become very predictable with defensive structures so well organised. The players are now very physical and tend to just bash it up.

“There is not too much backline excitement anymore; players like Cheslin Kolbe at the World Cup, stepping and beating players, using the space, are few and far between; normally the backs just kick the ball through now and hope for a mistake,” Stransky said.

The 1995 drop goal hero said he hoped being deprived of live rugby would encourage people to go back to the stadiums when the action resumes, and Stransky said he counted himself now amongst the people who used to just watch on television (when not broadcasting) but he would now be taking the family to games.

“There’s still going to be massive drama but every sport is in the same boat and we’re no different to other industries – we have all taken a knock. It could take years to bounce back but as soon as there is sport to watch live then hopefully people will be more inclined to go to the stadiums. I know I will be taking the family once rugby is back,” Stransky said.

Graeme Smith, Mark Boucher and Enoch Nkwe are all in place for the next two years so the Proteas will at least enjoy some stability after the turmoil they have been through over the last couple of years, but there is still reason to fear that Cricket South Africa could still be captured.

Smith was on Friday confirmed as the full-time Director of Cricket through until April 2022, which should take care of all the on-field issues as he has already struck up a good working relationship with Proteas head coach Boucher and assistant Nkwe, as well as with the South African Cricketers Association and the players.

But it is in the boardroom, where all the vital decisions are made, where tremendous uncertainty still exists. Most notably because acting chief executive Jacques Faul is not a permanent appointment.

At the moment his contract runs through to June, and there have apparently been moves to give him a three-month extension. But the board, who appoint the CEO, have their hands tied legally because of the elephant still in the room – Thabang Moroe.

The former CEO was suspended on December 6 for misconduct and a permanent chief executive cannot be appointed until Moroe’s disciplinary process has been completed. The forensic audit that is so crucial to that process apparently only began a week or two before Lockdown i.e. in early March, four months after he was suspended!

The audit itself has been allocated three months so justice is most certainly going to be delayed for Mr Moroe. Not that he is probably too concerned because he is on full pay in the interim!

Given that the CSA board still comprises largely the same incompetents who firstly appointed Moroe and then enabled his malfeasance, plus the certainty that the former CEO knows exactly where the board members have buried their own skeletons, there is reasonable anxiety that Faul may yet be told “Thank you very much for fixing our mess” and shown the door.

There has also been talk among those who keep an eye on cricket politics that Moroe has offered to go, no-contest, if he is paid R25 million. If that happens it should really set the cat among the pigeons because it will be seen as rewarding poor governance, will surely further alienate the stakeholders Faul has worked so hard to woo back into the fold and will merely add to the money splurged on Moroe, who has shown an appetite for siphoning up gravy like an elephant with its trunk in a desert waterhole.

Not only is the concept of accountability totally foreign to the current CSA Board, but they are also operating with only eight of the prescribed 12 directors in place. After the spate of resignations at the end of 2019, only two independent directors (Professor Steve Cornelius and Marius Schoeman) remain, and of the six non-independents, five of them have been supporters of Moroe.

And the lead director, who needs to come from the independents, also has not been appointed for two years.

There was a time when Ghanaian-born Naasei Appiah was Moroe’s right-hand man at CSA, rising to the rank of chief operations manager. But Appiah was one of the staff suspended by Moroe last December before his own fall from grace. Appiah’s disciplinary process has also not yet been completed, with commercial manager Clive Eksteen also in the same state of limbo.

It seems Moroe’s other chief ally was company secretary and head of legal Welsh Gwaza. Things like disciplinary hearings and the appointment of new directors fall under his ambit.

So it is surely in the national interest for Gwaza to be asked “Why the delay”?

Unfortunately, CSA’s head of communication, Thami Mthembu, did not reply to a request on Friday to ease the perception many South African cricket fans have that certain people are being protected from accountability.

Graeme Smith is now the full-time Director of Cricket for Cricket South Africa for the next two years and one of the first decisions he announced after his permanent capacity was confirmed on Friday is that Quinton de Kock will not be the Proteas Test captain.

Wicketkeeper De Kock is currently South Africa’s captain for ODIs and T20 Internationals, as well as being a key batsman across all three formats. There are few other realistic contenders who are certain of their place in the five-day team. The Proteas are scheduled to play two Tests in the West Indies in July/August.

Smith, the Proteas’ record-breaking captain from 2003 to 2014, said there was the threat of burnout if De Kock was also made Test captain, as well as keeping wicket and being arguably their most important batsman. The 27-year-old De Kock has made it clear that he does not want to give up the gloves.

“There’s no one person right now that we are looking at but I can tell you that the Test captain is not going to be Quinton. So it will be who escalates themselves as a consistent performer, who steps forward and has the respect of the team. Quinton is our white-ball captain but he won’t be doing the job in Test cricket as well.

“We want to keep Quinton fresh and playing well, and to be the captain in all three formats is very challenging. It probably won’t work. Just in terms of workload and mental capacity, being captain in all three formats probably isn’t going to be beneficial. We also have to consider the style of personality and player that Quinton is, and keep him as free and fresh as possible,” Smith said on Friday.

CSA acting chief executive Jacques Faul on Friday hailed Smith for the top-class leadership skills he has shown as the director of cricket in an interim capacity and announced that he had now received a two-year contract.

“It gives me great pleasure to contract Graeme permanently through to March 31, 2022 and I thank him for the willingness he showed to come on board and all the hard work he has done so far. I’m not sure anyone’s administrative career has started off with so many challenges, but he has looked at cricket administration in a different way in a very difficult time.

“We wanted to appoint him permanently from the word go in December, but there was a lot of uncertainty and we both wanted to see if the partnership worked. It has definitely worked well and Graeme’s leadership is vital to us, we’re extremely happy with his performance and he has also played a big role in this Covid-19 crisis,” Faul said.

Smith said he had agreed to become Director of Cricket on a fulltime basis because he wanted to make a difference for the sport in South Africa and get the Proteas back to the top of the world game.

“I would be lying if I said there was 100% certainty when I took on the job because there was so much doubt on all fronts. But operationally I’ve now got to know the staff and there are a lot of hardworking people who are passionate about the game. I feel more invested now, I care about the national team and the business side more than I used to now as well.

“I want to get stuck in and make a difference. We need to make good, consistent decisions over a period of time when it comes to the Proteas and grow our pool of players. We need to maximise our strategies, although our financial position will play a role. The players feel a lot more settled now and we’re having good feedback and conversations with them,” Smith said.

Coming into the new year, the Cape Cobras were so far above them on the Four-Day Domestic Series log that the Highveld Lions players almost had to rick their necks to see them. That was after the Lions had made such a train wreck of their first game back after the Mzansi Super League triumph that they had been thrashed by 279 runs by the Dolphins at the Wanderers.

But they managed to chase down the high-flying Cobras and then showed the same never-say-die spirit to seal the deal and claim the four-day title in the most dramatic fashion in the penultimate over of their final game, in Potchefstroom this week.

So how exactly did they pull off one of the most remarkable comebacks in South African first-class history?

“It was a great, spirited effort and we toiled hard, plus it is never easy to get a result in Potchefstroom. It took a massive effort because things have not been all rosy here for the last couple of years but the new management and leadership has restored confidence. It was important that we all just stayed with each other.

“We kept our energy and focus and we had to keep believing we still had a chance. You’ve just got to keep in the game, even though I saw some heads drop when the rain came in Potchefstroom. We’ve tried to be a lot more positive this season, to always try and take the game forward. It’s mostly the same personnel, so it’s just been the approach and the language we use that has made the difference,” captain Temba Bavuma said as the Lions celebrated their success at the Wanderers on Friday.

Head coach Enoch Nkwe has now robed himself in two major trophies since taking over at the Wanderers, but on Friday had flown to the Netherlands to be with his family. Assistant coach Wandile Gwavu spoke in his place about how trusting the 21 players they used in the four-day competition had been a key ingredient in their success.

“Enoch’s most important word was ‘trust’ and he must take a lot of credit. When new players came in and performed so well it was because they knew they were trusted and what was expected of them. We believed from the start of the year that we could still win. The Cobras are a very inexperienced unit in four-day cricket and we thought they might have a blip.

“So we just wanted to make sure we were right behind them, we just wanted to stay as close as possible to them. But you still have to give them and Ashwell Prince a lot of credit because they led the competition for 39 out of 40 days, so we have a lot of respect for them still. Having our experienced players like Temba, Stephen Cook and Malusi Siboto went a long way for us,” Gwavu said.

New players who have announced themselves in this campaign have been batsmen Kagiso Rapulana (average 84.40) and Wihan Lubbe (two centuries), left-arm quick Nandre Burger (18 wickets at 22.38) and all-rounder Delano Potgieter, with his remarkable century and four wickets on debut in the final game.

Having stuck to their task with great resilience, the Lions are now enjoying the sweet smell of success.