Ken Borland

After all the disappointment, pain and sadness the Proteas have put their supporters in England through, there was at least one wonderful moment of happiness that brought back the simple joys of the game to savour for those who had made their way to Weybridge, some 25km southwest of central London.
Former South African top-order batsman Gary Kirsten, who played in three World Cups between 1996 and 2003 and then coached India to their first triumph in 28 years in 2011, has turned his attention to grassroots development and the Gary Kirsten Foundation team that toured England is a shining light in terms of what can be achieved.
It all started about five years ago when Chris Hani High School principal Madoda Mahlutshana was giving Kirsten a tour of the non-existent sporting facilities in Khayelitsha on the Cape Flats. A shocked Kirsten immediately committed himself to building two concrete nets and supplying a full-time coach.
From there, the Gary Kirsten Foundation’s involvement has just kept expanding, reflecting the hunger in the area for proper cricket facilities and opportunities. The foundation has now built five artificial net facilities around the township and there are seven full-time academy coaches working there.
“These kids get the chance to play and have coaching every day after school in an area where there is no formalised school sport. Our main push is to create a proper hub for cricket, as well as teaching the kids life skills and building their personal skills. And we also want to build up the number of township coaches,” Tim Human, the business development manager of the Gary Kirsten Foundation said.
Typical of the man of action Kirsten is, he then set a new goal – to take a team from Khayalitsha to England during the World Cup and for them to play a few matches against English schools.
After five months of sourcing sponsors, organising passports and travel arrangements for 10-to-13-year-olds who have never been out of Cape Town let alone overseas, that team completed their UK tour by beating the Weybridge Cricket Club U13s, coming from one of the most wealthy areas of England (Cliff Richard lives here) and a Premier League club. It was their second win on tour, the other results being a tie and a loss, and it was completed in comfortable fashion in front of a large crowd as former Springbok captain Bob Skinstad organised a function that pleased the masses no end.
“This tour was a dream from five months ago. A lot of school teams tour England because mom and dad fork out the money, but you never see a township team doing it because who pays for it? I’m very proud that we managed to raise the money because our friends and supporters came to the party. We are all about rolling out opportunity.
“I told the parents in February that we would be taking their kids to England to watch the World Cup and they said I was mad in the head. But we are stakeholders in that community and it’s taken us a long time to do this, but they trust us now. It is their programme and we are just enablers, this programme is township focused,” Kirsten said.
While there have been other “development programmes” that have enjoyed time in the limelight, what sets Kirsten’s efforts apart is that they are all about the community.
While he accepts that the absolute stellar talents he unearths will more than likely be snapped up by rich schools elsewhere to complete their education and earn SA Schools caps for their benefactors, Kirsten’s efforts are all about uplifting the entire community of Khayalitsha and not mining the talent from there for export to better-off schools.
“I would never try and stop a kid from getting a scholarship if they were offered one, but to put a kid through a year at an ex-Model C school probably costs R50 000 plus boarding. So that’s R250 000 per child for their whole education, so it gets steep. Of the 19 Black Africans who have gone on to represent the Proteas, only Mfuneko Ngam was fully educated in a township.
“If your chances of making the national cricket side from a township are non-existent then I have a fundamental issue with that. Has our country not moved forward enough that we don’t say that you can’t make it from the townships, that you have to go to a Hilton College to make the Proteas? Sure, they can cherry-pick the best talent, but I don’t think we should be dumping any talent. I would rather see them stay in their schools and community and make sure the system works, that’s our focus,” Kirsten said.

With 13 players missing from the 23-man squad that beat the Stormers in their last SuperRugby game back in mid-March, Sharks coach Sean Everitt will be anxious that his team’s level of performance does not plummet into the depths of a virtual Kloof Gorge when they travel to Pretoria to take on the Bulls on SuperFan Saturday.

Everitt named his 30-man squad for the trip on Thursday and he will be leaning heavily on established combinations like Ox Nche and Thomas du Toit in the front row, locks Ruben van Heerden and Hyron Andrews, halfbacks Sanele Nohamba and Curwin Bosch, and Jeremy Ward and Lukhanyo Am in midfield.

“Saturday’s match is all about preparation, because we’ve been out for six months we need to reinstall and revise our game-plan. We need to make sure everyone understands it and we’re taking a few youngsters up with us to see where they are too in terms of fitting into our system. I’ll be looking at our tempo, accuracy and conditioning because we don’t know where we are right now with those.

“The players we have brought in suit the way we want to play. A guy like Manie Libbok is multiskilled, really versatile and has dangerous x-factor. He offers something in the same mould as Bosch and Aphelele Fassi when we play him at fullback. Werner Kok is also a workhorse and his work-rate epitomises the energy and enthusiasm we want to play with. He’ll start on the wing and then we’ll play him a bit at centre in the second half,” Everitt said on Thursday.

After such a promising season was washed down the basin by Covid-19, the Sharks are in a rebuilding phase and several new faces have the chance to establish themselves in the senior team. Saturday’s match at Loftus Versfeld is an important step in testing the depth of the squad.

“We were happy where we were, but we had been very fortunate from an injury point of view and were reaping the benefits of a long pre-season in which we did a lot of work on the changes to our game. We were on a roll, but dwelling in the past is not something I do, we are looking forward. It was sad for guys like Louis Schreuder, Tyler Paul and Andre Esterhuizen, who were in their last season with the Sharks.

“But it’s all a clean slate now, it’s a whole different competition because the Bulls have done some really good recruiting and the Lions too. We’re going back to the drawing board to see how we can improve. We’ve had some bad luck with injuries and we are missing some quality players like Fassi, Tambwe and Nkosi, but we started preparing a while ago with two squads,” Everitt said.

Players not considered for this weekend’s squad due to injury were fullback Fassi, loose forwards Henco and James Venter, hooker Kerron van Vuuren and wings Madosh Tambwe and Sbu Nkosi.

Squad: Ox Nche, Mzamo Majola, Dylan Richardson, Dan Jooste, Thomas du Toit, John-Hubert Meyer, Ruben van Heerden, JJ van der Mescht, Hyron Andrews, Emile van Heerden, Evan Roos, Adam Mountfort, Celimpilo Gumede, Tera Mtembu, Sikhumbuzo Notshe, Phepsi Buthelezi, Grant Williams, Sanele Nohamba, Jaden Hendrikse, Curwin Bosch, Jordan Chait, Muller du Plessis, Caleb Dingaan, Jeremy Ward, Marius Louw, Lukhanyo Am, JP Pietersen, Werner Kok, Manie Libbok, Thaakir Abrahams.

Recently-retired Proteas hero JP Duminy was first chosen for South Africa in 2004 and he says the honour of first representing his national team was spoilt by the “eye-opening” divisions he saw in the squad back then.

“I acknowledge that when I made my first-class debut for Western Province in 2002, the main reason I was selected was not necessarily based on performance, I was 17 years old and seen as a talented youngster with potential. I wasn’t a victim in the cricket structures, I got opportunity based on the colour of my skin, that kickstarted my career and two-and-a-half years later I was representing South Africa.

“My family and I were ecstatic but my experience on that 2004 tour of Sri Lanka was quite an eye-opener, the team was so fragmented, all in different groupings. I needed to find my comfort zone because I was very fortunate in my upbringing that I never really experienced Apartheid, my family shielded me. So I came into the national team all excited and wanting to engage. But the tour did not go well and I was left out for a while.

“We had no idea what it meant to come together and represent something bigger than ourselves, we all just gravitated to our own cultural groups. Outside the game, we were certainly segregated. I wanted to explore new relationships, asking people ‘Can I go out to dinner with you?’ You need your team-mates to be successful and it was only in 2010 that we took cognisance of that,” Duminy told a recent Ahmed Kathrada Foundation webinar on racism in cricket.

Duminy’s graduation to top-class Proteas batsman came on the 2008/9 tour of Australia and although he admits to probably not fulfilling his true potential in Test cricket, he became one of South Africa’s best and most enduring white-ball cricketers. He was there in the thick of things when the Proteas changed their culture to become more inclusive and embrace diversity under the captaincy of Graeme Smith.

“We had a culture camp in which Ahmed Kathrada himself shared his experiences. Those were the kind of stories we needed to hear to understand where we came from. Even now, people have probably still not healed and we can’t move on until we acknowledge that people have been hurt. How Lungi Ngidi was treated speaks volumes for what still happens in this country.

“I played 326 games for my country so I had my opportunity. People obviously saw a lot of ability and you can ask ‘Did I fulfil my talent?’ Probably not in Test cricket, but the white-ball numbers are there. I have seen things happen, just not necessarily to me. But I have been on the field when others have been emotionally abused in how they were spoken to.

“An example was batting with Ashwell Prince in a provincial game and he received harsh words, including the K-word. But the type of character he is, it just fuelled him to show them what he can do. Why I did not speak up is an important reflection for me and it’s probably because I was in a fortunate position, I was benefiting. I need to take responsibility for that,” Duminy said.

The elegant left-hander now wants to nurture grassroots talent through his JP21 Foundation and he says transformation needs to move away from merely ticking boxes.

“Transformation has become a humungous topic but do we really understand what it means? A tick-box scenario means the game is not going to transform, that’s an external focus and it needs to be internal, hearts need to transform. Transformation represents opportunity, not just a name on a sheet of paper, which unfortunately has been the government approach.

“The foundation used to have a bursary scheme but I’ve come to realise that is not the way to go because it takes those kids out of their comfort zone. We need to plough back into their own communities, ensure they have better facilities and coaching. There is not enough focus on grassroots and we are trying to revive the game in local communities. There are millions spent on transformation and these funds need to be used properly,” Duminy said.

Hopes that domestic cricket would be in full swing by October seem to have been knocked to the kerb by CSA but they are hoping to have international cricket back as early as August.

While it was fortunate that the Covid-19 pandemic only struck South Africa when the cricket season was just about over, the effects look set to ironically have an even greater impact on the 2020/21 domestic campaigns, with Cricket South Africa chief executive Jacques Faul admitting on Thursday that only “half a season” is likely.

“It depends on the government levels of Lockdown and we are hoping to meet with the Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture to make a case for us to start playing cricket again earlier. Our initial plan was to start next season as normal, but that seems unlikely now. Our second plan was to have half a season and that is now more likely, with the Mzansi Super League at the start in November/December.

“There are factors like getting permission for domestic travel and the costs – there will be risk involved in playing domestically and I don’t think we can afford the cost of the bio-bubbles for that, with our broadcast deals not so much focused on domestic cricket. But we can probably start with the Mzansi Super League in November/December, even with restricted capacities in stadiums.

“The good news is we have had a teleconference with India and we are encouraged by their willingness to still play three T20s in August, although maybe a bit later in August. We will play behind closed doors if necessary because the India tour is very important to us. That additional content is worth a significant amount of money for us, there are some very important tours in terms of broadcast deals,” Faul said in a teleconference on Thursday.

The Proteas’ first bit of action could come in early August, however, as that is when CSA and Cricket West Indies are hoping to stage the two Tests and five T20s that were initially scheduled from July 15. But the West Indies have had their tour of England rescheduled for July and that has caused a clash of dates with South Africa.

“It’s time to get cricket going again and we’re trying to find a schedule that works with the West Indies. They should finish in England on July 29, which means we have to shift our dates. India should be coming here at the end of August for three T20s, so the West Indies series will have to be before or after that. Obviously this all depends on government regulations on both sides,” CSA Director of Cricket Graeme Smith said.

“Trinidad is favoured by the West Indies at the moment, but we could play at a neutral venue or even here, nothing is cast in stone. The players are preparing though for coming back to cricket and we believe we can get that done behind closed doors if necessary. We will explore all options – neutral grounds, having more than one team at a time because of the 28 days quarantine at either end.”

Cricket South Africa Chief Medical Officer Dr Shuaib Manjra said their scenario planning for the return to play included studying the measures put in place by intercity football competitions like the La Liga in Spain and the Bundesliga in Germany.

“We’re drawing from the England Cricket Board, Cricket Australia, La Liga and the Bundesliga in terms of best practice and we’re also engaging with SA Rugby and Safa to ensure we’re on a common platform when it comes to returning to play. A bio-bubble or Cordon Sanitaire is at the extreme end of the spectrum, but it would ensure all stadia have strict access protocols.

“The stadia would be sanitized, there would be strict control over who comes in and goes out and regular testing – a couple of days before people go in and again just before. We don’t envisage spectators being allowed and things like saliva on the ball are clearly a no-no, there is the sweat option which is believed not to be able to carry the virus but we don’t have adequate research on that,” Manjra said.