Ken Borland

Proteas coach Mark Boucher says the team has found a new vision and identity for themselves and also a new way of playing that will hopefully bring greater success as a rebuilding side looks to regain their glory days.

The South African cricket team’s Culture Camp at Skukuza last month not only dealt with wrongs of the past, especially those that involved racial discrimination, but also plotted a way ahead for the future. #ProteaFire, the mantra of the team that went to number one in all three formats with Boucher as a player, has now officially been extinguished, replaced by three watchwords: Belonging; Empathy; Respect.

“One of the biggest changes came in terms of #ProteaFire, which gave us direction and the values to become the number one side, especially when under pressure. But none of those guys are playing anymore and we have outgrown that, it’s an outdated identity. Maybe it became too commercialised, it ended up just being on paper and the guys no longer live it.

“There are more cultures in the team now and it was time those came through. It’s important for a new team to create a new identity and that’s exactly what we got – a new set of values. It will start with how we play and the players chose the same route that myself and Enoch Nkwe [assistant coach] wanted, everything aligned without us really trying. It’s also about how new guys coming into the team must feel and management did not choose the vision, the players did,” Boucher said in an audio interview released by Cricket South Africa on Monday.

Boucher said the Culture Camp also gave the larger group of players from which the Proteas will draw the opportunity to talk about their pet peeves and he found the revelations to be eye-opening.

“We all come from different backgrounds and have been brought up in different ways, and we must understand our shortfalls in the past. We can’t turn a blind eye, we must acknowledge them, that’s empathy, which is a big word for us. We need to use our four or five different cultures to our advantage and I came out of the camp with a completely different understanding.

“I educated myself, I found it quite fascinating, things I have never thought about before. The camp opened my eyes in a massive way and I would encourage people to get out there and try and understand the feelings of different races. Now the best thing for the game would be for our biggest assets – the players – to be able to take over the headlines for good things, let the game do the talking rather than the other things that have been hogging the headlines,” Boucher said.

A physical, ball-carrying No.12 has almost been one of the consecrations at Loftus Versfeld through the years, but new Bulls coach Jake White looks set to deviate from that formula, which is why he released former captain and stalwart Burger Odendaal from his contract.

The 27-year-old Odendaal, who played 56 Super Rugby and 50 Currie Cup games for the franchise, has moved across the Jukskei River and will turn out for the Lions once rugby resumes in South Africa, hopefully within the next two months. It has left the Bulls with a very inexperienced midfield comprising Clinton Swart, Stedman Gans, Diego Appollis, Dawid Kellerman, Marnus Potgieter, Jay-Cee Nel and Wian van Niekerk, none of whom have any Super Rugby experience.

“The way the Bulls played in the past, there’s no question Burger was very important to the team as a captain and leader and added value as a player. But it was going to be very difficult to continue with him as a player if I could not guarantee him a starting spot and because of the new salary caps you can’t afford a high-earner like him if he’s not going to play.

“It’s like back in 2004 when I became Springbok coach and De Wet Barry and Marius Joubert were the centres, two great players and people. But in the 2007 World Cup my centres were Jean de Villiers, Francois Steyn and Jaque Fourie because I had evolved as a coach from using a player like De Wet into looking for something else. So when I looked at Burger I thought it would be like going back to De Wet Barry and we want to play differently.

“So telling him that up front meant he was able to go with the market value as captain, rather than staying and not playing and losing value, so he decided to go. Our CEO Edgar Rathbone was previously with the Lions and he helped broker the deal such that the player didn’t lose any money and has guaranteed playing time, so it’s a win/win for everybody,” White explained to selected Bulls media on Thursday.

While the Bulls’ midfield may be raw and young, there is plenty of experience elsewhere with the likes of Gio Aplon, Cornal Hendricks, Morne Steyn, Duane Vermeulen, Arno Botha, Juandre Kruger and Trevor Nyakane, and White says he is encouraging an avuncular approach in order to help a new-look squad gel together.

“We’re not like other teams which have the luxury of being settled and how quickly we can become a team is a big question. Duane Vermeulen, for example, does not know half the guys because they have never trained together. But there are things we can do to help that, which we are busy with, such as every week the players draw a name out of a hat and they have to have coffee with that guy and find out his story.

“Psychologist Henning Gericke has also been helping because we are probably the one team that needs cohesion. I heard there’s a possibility of us playing in two bubbles, the first six weeks with the four Super Rugby teams and then in the second round an eight-week Currie Cup like tournament with Griquas, the Pumas, Free State Cheetahs and Southern Kings. I’m sure in 14 weeks we can get them tight-knit and we just want to make sure we get into the finals in December,” White said.

Former Proteas all-rounder and current Warriors coach Robin Peterson says he felt like he was one of the first Black players to be ‘planted’ in South African domestic cricket after unity and one of his first experiences was being called a “K…..” by his favourite cricketer growing up.

Peterson made his first-class debut in January 1999 for Eastern Province B and went on to play 183 franchise games for the Warriors, Cape Cobras and Knights, as well as representing South Africa in 15 Tests, 79 ODIs and 21 T20 Internationals.

“I was probably one of the first players of colour to be planted in the system, I say ‘planted’ because it felt like that. When I played for Eastern Province, there were only two players of colour in the team, myself and Garnett Kruger. We were in the minority, everyone else was White. And I was called the K-word in a provincial game years ago by someone who represented South Africa in a lot of Test matches.

“He was actually my hero growing up and I respected him, so it was a very sad thing. As one of the first generation of Black players, I didn’t have the confidence to put up a fuss, who do you go to, there were no protocols in place. But it made me angry and motivated, and I got a hundred in that game. He is no longer involved in cricket in South Africa, I don’t feel it’s necessary to go back into that space, I just feel pity for him. And I want to confront the issues of today and not dwell in the past,” Peterson said in a recent webinar for the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation on racism in cricket.

In his new role as coach of the Warriors, Peterson called for greater consultation when it came to transformation policies, which he called ‘outdated’. This year is the 22^nd anniversary of the establishment of Cricket South Africa’s transformation committee, while the decision to make the rapid Africanisation of cricket a priority is celebrating its seventh anniversary, and it is four years since the existing quota of six players of colour, three of which must be Black African, was implemented.

“As a coach now in the system, I find it very divisive and our policies on transformation are a bit outdated, calling each other Black Africans and Coloureds. Do they align with high-performance sport? I find it very difficult as coach to keep a united changeroom, all these silos just create more division. We are the people who implement the policy so we need to be consulted.

“We need a more collaborative and consultative approach because at the moment people are fighting each other in the changerooms. We want a united South Africa and the current policy does not reflect that. The coaches were never consulted and we have to implement it. We need 11 players of different skills, not just numbers like 6+3. The relevant people need to start being consulted,” Peterson said.

The differing domestic circumstances of the Proteas women’s squad meant some of them had done no cricket-related work since the beginning of Lockdown in March when they arrived at their training camp in Pretoria, but coach Hilton Moreeng said on Friday that he is happy with the intensity shown this week.

A high performance squad of 24 was named to gather at the University of Pretoria for a skills-based training camp that ended on Friday. The Proteas were last on a cricket field 143 days previously when they were narrow losers to hosts Australia in the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup.

“The last time we were together was at the World Cup so we needed to get back into the swing of things. The camp went well, even though the environment is now totally different, there’s a new normal, which we realise and are slowly getting used to. We needed to press the reset button and if our tour to England happens in September then we need to know we’re ready and can hit the ground running.

“We needed to see where the players’ skills are. For some of them it was the first time they have picked up a bat since the World Cup because not all of them had the facilities to train properly. But I was very happy with the intensity I saw, that was good to see for our preparation for a possible tour and the upcoming 50-over World Cup. We needed to assess where the squad is and get everyone in the right frame of mind,” Moreeng said on Friday.

Moreeng was assisted by Dillon du Preez, the former Knights pace bowler, and the head coach, who still has to finalise his assistants, said he was impressed by his work.

Proteas vice-captain Chloe Tryon, who has been signed again by the Hobart Hurricanes for the Women’s Big Bash in Australia, said by focusing on the basics she has come out of the week-long camp happy with her progress.

“I just went back to basics in all aspects – batting, bowling and fielding – because it’s been a while since I played. So I just tried to keep it pretty simple and not just jump right in. I wanted to make sure that I mastered that first and my skills are now pretty good,” Tryon said.