Ken Borland

Being a South African cricket fan can certainly be like a sugar rush as they have demonstrated this summer with their sterling deeds against India and in New Zealand. But it can also be like the massive shot of glucose that leads to hypertension and diabetes, especially when one considers all the boardroom shenanigans and our previous World Cup woes.

Which is why the last week has been an especially sweet one – in the healthiest sense possible – thanks to the irrepressible form shown by our Women’s Proteas at the World Cup in New Zealand and the great news that Cricket South Africa have finally found their new, permanent CEO.

And he was there all along, hiding in plain view, if you like, in the form of Pholetsi Moseki, who has been serving as acting CEO anyway for the last 15 months. Choosing the right person, which CSA did when Moseki replaced the disgraced Kugandrie Govender, has borne fruit for the organisation since December 2020. I am confident Moseki will continue to be the glue that is fixing many of the cracks and wounds the organisation suffered in recent years.

As the saying goes, to get the juice out of an orange you need to apply pressure and it has been incredible to see how Marizanne Kapp and the rest of the Proteas have blossomed when their matches have been on a knife-edge at the World Cup. Kapp has enjoyed a phenomenal week and is displaying the sort of all-round stardom that has previously been the preserve of Lance Klusener and Ben Stokes at World Cups.

In the sterilised, rarefied atmosphere of a World Cup, the Proteas are producing the goods and, with Australia, are the only unbeaten team after four matches. It is encouraging though, that with South Africa probably just one win away from the semi-finals, they have not yet produced their best cricket. There are still areas of their game that need cleaning up.

The Proteas will be anxious to sort out the middle-order batting collapses that have made it necessary for Kapp to produce her late heroics with the bat, in the company of, at various times, Chloe Tryon, Trisha Chetty, Shabnim Ismail and Ayabonga Khaka.

Two key batters have not fired at all, with Lizelle Lee scoring just 28 runs in three innings and Mignon du Preez making 27 in four knocks. Plus Tazmin Brits has been uneasy at the crease and her 51 runs in four innings have come at a strike-rate of just 40.

If a couple of those batters can click next week, then South Africa will be hard to stop as they head into the knock-outs.

Magnificent is probably the best description of the Proteas bowlers, who can comfortably claim to be the best attack at the World Cup.

Ismail, Masabata Klaas, Khaka and Kapp apply such consistent pressure on the opposition throughout that the Proteas’ relatively low totals have proven to be enough.

As for the Proteas men’s side, they have their chance to once again enthral us in their series against Bangladesh. The ODIs are all on the highveld and South Africa will be favoured to win comfortably, having seen off the might of India 3-0 in their previous 50-over series.

Victory in the Test series will have to be achieved via their reserve strength, with five regulars deciding not to delay their departure for the IPL.

The fact is the IPL is their chief employer, at least in financial terms, so it is difficult to criticise the players for putting their livelihoods first.

But it is also unavoidable that Aiden Markram and Rassie van der Dussen have both put their shaky Test careers in doubt by not playing against Bangladesh in the two-match series.

One of them was going to fall by the wayside anyway with Keegan Petersen returning, and Ryan Rickelton has been in such good form this summer that, if he finally gets the chance, he might just imitate Sarel Erwee and make an immediate impression.

For most observers, the Sharks rugby squad would seem to already have a special team environment going, representing the demographics of the country and, at the same time, leading the pack in terms of performance on the field and in the boardroom. But Springbok captain Siya Kolisi is confident that their culture is still budding, the best is yet to come.

Kolisi joined the Sharks a year ago amidst much fanfare and, even if his international commitments have meant he has not played as many matches for them as he would have liked, he has clearly settled in well and is contributing in a big way.

As the man who has driven so much of the highly-successful new Springbok team culture, Kolisi is ideally placed to comment on how the Sharks are building a new environment as well.

“Every sporting culture has a past that you have to take into account,” Kolisi said at Kings Park during a media weekend. “We’re still working towards something brilliant here.

“You have to acknowledge the past, you can’t change it but you need to learn from it. You need to have the conversations and understand what gets people going.

“Like with Eben Etzebeth, who was my first White friend. I love him as a person and we love each other’s families. So we have braais together but on some days we’ll go to the Chesa Nyama.

“It’s about being comfortable in your environment, but sometimes what is important to one person is not so much to the other. It doesn’t mean you can’t stand up for what you believe in,” Kolisi said.

Kolisi’s Springbok team-mate Lukhanyo Am is the Sharks captain and, as one of the most likeable and talented players around, he has had a key role in growing a successful culture at Kings Park.

“When you’re driving a culture, having a good environment off the field is nice too. We want to maintain high standards on and off the field.

“We try to keep the environment pure, not just me but everyone. Fortunately we have managed to get it right and keep the standards high,” Am said.

And then six months ago came the dreadful civil unrest in Durban that had the areas around Kings Park cowering behind barbed wire, using civilian patrols to protect themselves against the waves of looting and destruction. It was surely the greatest test of the Sharks’ culture.

“Last year was worse than the craziest scene you’d see in a movie,” Sharks CEO Eduard Coetzee said of the rioting. “It was such a test of our culture and we stood together.

“We’re trying to grow an inclusive culture here, both in terms of lifestyle and our community, and we’ve managed to grow in uncomfortable spaces, like Black Lives Matter.

“There’s not going to be any conflict if you talk about an issue like that, but there’s guaranteed to be conflict if you don’t talk.

“I don’t think we have our team culture dead right yet, it’s a thing that lives and evolves. A player could come into the culture tomorrow and not use the right language or not be accepted, and then we won’t get the performance side right,” Coetzee said.

They’re going to be spluttering into their gin and tonics at the Marylebone Cricket Club after England’s humiliating start to the World Cup, but it’s no more than they deserve after all the boardroom shenanigans that have been going on in the so-called home of the game.

It’s amazing how English cricket has managed to marry such smugness and superiority with such abysmal performances on the field of play, but it makes every hiding they receive in the World Cup even more pleasurable.

I generally don’t enjoy seeing sportsmen humiliated on the field of play, but I’ll make an exception in this case because of the thoroughly distasteful manner in which the England and Wales Cricket Board went to the dodgy lair of Narayanaswami Srinivasan and ingratiated themselves into the so-called “Big Three” that have hijacked the game.

My biggest bone of contention with the Big Three is that they seek to monopolise the game for their own benefit and are actively trying to halt the progress of the up-and-coming Associate nations by removing them from future World Cups. As veteran Ireland opener Ed Joyce pointed out, cricket is the only sport which is trying to contract its World Cup, while every other sport on the planet (yes, even American Football) is trying to expand its reach.

As the ANC, and the National Party before them, are showing so clearly, concentrating all the riches in the hands of an elite minority can only put a country or a sport on the road to destruction.

England will be the venue for the next World Cup, in 2019, and it is set to be a 10-team tournament. There’s little doubt that English cricket, having plundered talent from this country for so long, stand to benefit if the likes of Ireland and Scotland are barred from the highest echelon of the game; their top players will surely be tempted to play for England, just like their current captain, Eoin Morgan. England clearly need some reinforcements.

That the Associates and minnow nations like Zimbabwe and Bangladesh are adding value to the game’s global showpiece cannot be doubted. Zimbabwe did themselves proud against South Africa, Ireland have already beaten the West Indies and Scotland did substantially better against New Zealand than England.

The plucky United Arab Emirates have some elegant batsmen and a genuine quick bowler in Mohammad Naveed, Bangladesh’s Shakib al-Hasan is a world-class all-rounder, while Afghanistan’s mere presence is a tremendous story of sportsmen rising above incredible challenges.

Sadly, there is a South African man at the centre of these efforts to push back the Associates – former wicketkeeper/batsman Dave Richardson, although he is probably just taking orders from those who pay his salary as ICC chief executive.

I say this because Richardson has been quoted as saying having Associate teams in the World Cup leads to too many one-sided matches and has also been quoted as praising the unpredictability and charm that these same teams bring to the tournament!

There are, of course, places nine and ten open for qualifiers at the next World Cup, but Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, who vote in favour of the Big Three and receive financial rewards and more exposure for their teams as a result, will be heavily favoured to take those spots as the system is in their favour.

Apart from England’s dreadful performances, the other key features of the first week of the Cricket World Cup have been New Zealand’s invincibility at home, a new benchmark of 300 runs per innings being set by the powerful batting sides and the importance of taking wickets in the middle overs otherwise set batsmen in the death overs will run amok.

Last October seems a long time ago now for Lions fans as their union gets knocked from all sides, not just on the playing field but also in the boardroom.

John Mitchell, having overseen their fairytale Currie Cup triumph on October 29 last year, has now been suspended, adding to all the financial worries and the threat of SuperRugby expulsion hanging over the Lions’ heads.

To say Mitchell has an overbearing personality would be putting it mildly. There are very few people in Lions rugby who are willing to say they will be sad to see him go.

The New Zealander deserves credit for restoring pride to the Lions, but once he had done that, his limited man-management skills came to the fore and Mitchell’s old-school views on discipline and treating players like kids in boarding school eventually lost him the team.

In this professional era when even the players’ breakfasts are measured,  getting them to run a marathon around the Johannesburg Stadium athletics track just two weeks before their opening SuperRugby fixture looks pretty dumb.

Mitchell has had a simmering relationship with the media as well. While any dissenting voices amongst the team were quickly put in their place, any questions from the press that Mitchell did not approve of would lead to cold-shoulder treatment and public ridicule.

I was not the only journalist who was told “Well I don’t know what match you were watching, mate.” Mitchell seemed to take delight in cutting down the media, preferably in front of large audiences in the Lions auditorium, as he did one day to the 94.7 Highveld Stereo man, who’s question was totally well-meaning and non-confrontational. And that’s the same radio station that have been long-term sponsors and supporters of the embattled team.

The players have been the brunt of some criticism suggesting they wanted to get rid of Mitchell because they just wanted a nice holiday when it came to training.

But it took enormous courage, led by impressive captain Josh Strauss, for them to stand up to their bullying coach. There is a good spirit of hard-working endeavour at Ellis Park, as president Kevin de Klerk pointed out.

“The spirit in the camp is very good and, if you think where the Lions were three years ago, we are substantially better off now. Rugby is a dynamic business and we would love it to be a plain-sailing ship, but we fool ourselves if we think that will be the case. We will deal with the John Mitchell matter with the correct protocol,” De Klerk said.

When De Klerk says the correct protocol, he is not beating around the bush – the Lions will have to religiously stick to the straight and narrow in the disciplinary process if they are going to successfully rid themselves of Mitchell.

The 48-year-old will show the same street-fighting attitude he imbued in the Lions in challenging his suspension. Mitchell has done it before – in 2008 the Western Force’s senior players staged a similar intervention, but his watertight contract meant they could not sack him.

Which is why there has been no criticism of Mitchell spewing forth from either the players or the board, and why De Klerk has made an about-turn and stressed that the suspension was not driven by the team.

“It’s inaccurate to say it was player-driven, it was not just the players on their own. And one can’t say Josh Strauss led the complaints, that would be inaccurate too. There were a number of issues,” De Klerk said.

The reason for this is that if it was just the players that had complaints about their treatment, Mitchell could turn around and say he was merely doing his best as the coach to make them a winning team, tough-love if you like. A lot of what coaches do to their teams could be considered unfair, but would it be illegal in terms of labour law?

Fortunately, it’s not just the players and media that Mitchell has alienated. It’s sponsors as well.

Did you see a whole heap of extra Lions coverage during their SuperRugby tour this year?

No, and that’s despite the considerable amount of money that MTN were willing to pay for two journalists to travel with the team. The sponsors obviously felt that their effort would be rewarded with extra coverage for the Lions and exposure for themselves.

Unfortunately, the journalists were left to survive on the same scraps given to the Australian and New Zealand reporters … Mitchell would not go out of his way to give them anything extra.

The Lions, under pressure from all sides, desperately need good PR, so it is time they called an end to the John Mitchell era.