Ken Borland

The International Cricket Council have announced a new system for deciding which teams will go to the World Cup, instituting the ODI Super League, and South Africa have drawn the short straw because they will have to play six of their top-eight colleagues in their bid to qualify for the 2023 event in India.

The ODI Super League begins on Thursday when England take on Ireland in the first of three ODIs, and features 13 teams vying for seven automatic qualification spots, along with hosts India. The bottom five teams will have to go to the World Cup qualifiers with five other Associate nations and battle it out for the last two World Cup places.

Teams will play eight series each, four at home and four away, earning points for each ODI won, with each series offering a set number of points as in the World Test Championship.

The only ‘minnows’ that the Proteas will go head-to-head against are Ireland and the Netherlands; while the only top eight team that South Africa will avoid is New Zealand.

Because of the difficulties of fitting this new pathway to the World Cup into the existing Future Tours Programme (FTP), teams do not play every other country and Pakistan and Bangladesh seem to be most favoured by the draw.

They avoid playing each other, while Pakistan also miss out on taking on India and Sri Lanka but will play Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and the Netherlands.

Bangladesh, apart from not meeting Pakistan, also miss Australia and India, while playing Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland.

The World Test Championship also does not feature every team playing everybody else and apparently the ICC tried to balance out those discrepancies with the ODI Super League draw.

“The ODI Super League format was devised some time ago, maybe three or four years ago when the rankings would have been different. But what you lose in the ODIs you gain in the Test Championship; it was just difficult fitting all these match-ups into the existing FTP,” a Cricket South Africa official involved in the new qualification system, told The Citizen.

“But the big thing is we now have better relevance and context for every ODI, every game will now have an effect, even those between the lower-ranked teams. This will make 50-over cricket more meaningful.”

Roster

Australia: v England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan.

Bangladesh: v England, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Ireland.

England: v Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Netherlands.

India: v Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan.

New Zealand: v Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Ireland, Netherlands.

Pakistan: v Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Netherlands.

South Africa: v Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Netherlands.

Sri Lanka: v Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, South Africa, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan.

West Indies: v Australia, Bangladesh, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Netherlands.

Zimbabwe: v Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Afghanistan, Ireland, Netherlands.

Afghanistan: v Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Netherlands.

Ireland: v Bangladesh, England, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Netherlands.

Netherlands: v England, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Ireland.

The fact that his previous two-year ban for doping has now been quadrupled to eight years for his next offence is something Chiliboy Ralepelle’s lawyers believe is grounds for an appeal, but the former Springbok hooker’s career is almost certainly over after the South African Institute for Drugs-Free Sport’s independent doping tribunal announced another guilty verdict on Wednesday.

The 33-year-old tested positive for the growth hormone Zeranol while with the Sharks in January 2019. It was his second doping offence after being banned for two years in September 2015 for use of an anabolic steroid, Drostanolone, while recovering from injury in France.

Ralepelle has actually tested positive on three occasions, with his initial brush with the law coming in 2010 when he and wing Bjorn Basson were found to have the banned stimulant methylhexaneamine in their systems after the Springboks had played Ireland in Dublin on an end-of-year tour. But they were only given a reprimand when a judicial hearing found that it was not their fault because it came from a tainted supplement provided by the South African Rugby Union.

So it seems Ralepelle’s legal team are set to argue that it is only his second doping offence.

“We have concluded that there are definitely grounds for appeal, but we are creatures of instruction and we will take those instructions from Ralepelle on how he wants to proceed. We are preparing an opinion for Ralepelle on whether, solely from a legal perspective, he should appeal.

“There is one example: Chiliboy was previously banned for two years and the WADA laws say that the second offence must be double the standard for the first offence. In that respect, from our legal view, from a two-year previous ban, it should have been a four-year ban at best and not an eight-year ban. But we are still considering the contents of the judgement,” legal representative Hendrik Hugo told ENCA on Wednesday.

A four-year ban for a second offence involving serious drugs would appear to be a light punishment, however, given that some first-time offenders, such as Welshman Owen Morgan in 2017, have been given four-year sentences.

Springbok wing Aphiwe Dyantyi is facing a four-year ban himself after testing positive for three different steroids last year. According to SAIDS, a virtual hearing to the 25-year-old’s case should be held in the next two months.

At the other end of the spectrum, former Swansea hooker Dean Colclough was banned for eight years in 2014 for possessing and distributing steroids.

Nollis Marais and Pine Pienaar are old friends who have been up and down the Bulls’ coaching structures ever since they arrived at Loftus Versfeld in 2011, but now they have been reunited on the SuperRugby coaching team as director of rugby Jake White announced his overhaul of the senior staff on Wednesday.

Marais was the Bulls’ head coach in 2016-17, a period marked by poor results and an even worse working relationship with high performance manager Xander Janse van Rensburg, who has subsequently been investigated for fraud and corruption. Marais was demoted when John Mitchell arrived at Loftus, but White has now elevated the man with probably the best junior rugby record in the country to the new position of dedicated breakdown specialist for the Bulls SuperRugby team and all sides representing the union.

Pienaar has been the Bulls’ defence coach but has now been shifted to the role of technical advisor, with Joey Mongalo, a former Bulls Currie Cup player, taking up the defence role he fulfilled at the Lions under both Johan Ackermann and Swys de Bruin.

“Teams have always had consultants or forwards coaches addressing the breakdown as part of their broader roles. This will become a key focus area for us going forward, especially with the breakdown laws being changed.

“It also speaks to the type of rugby we will be looking to play. Nollis has been around the block and knows exactly what we need. I have no doubt that he is the perfect man for this job,” White said in a statement released by the Bulls on Wednesday.

White had previously announced the appointment of Russell Winter, formerly with the Lions and Stormers as the forwards coach, and former Springbok flyhalf Chris Rossouw will continue as backline coach.

The Bulls have released Daan Human, who helped turn Lizo Gqoboka and Trevor Nyakane into one of the best propping pairs in SuperRugby last year, to the Springboks and White said a new scrum coach would be announced “in the near future”.

CJ van der Linde, who played 75 Tests for South Africa and was a member of White’s 2007 World Cup winning Springbok squad, and subsequently coached with him at Montpellier, is favoured to replace Human.

In the last week the Bulls have also boosted their playing resources by confirming the return of Springbok wing Travis Ismaiel and the signing of talented youngsters in former Western Province hooker Schalk Erasmus and Walt Steenkamp, a 2.03m, 121kg lock who has played for both the North-West Leopards and the Free State Cheetahs.

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.