Ken Borland

The DP World Lions scored the least number of runs in the powerplay out of all the teams in the CSA T20 Challenge, and yet they went on to top the log and win the competition in convincing fashion, which points to how smart their cricket was, and in the last two weeks it had a lot to do with the riches of experience brought to the number three position by Rassie van der Dussen.

The final at the DP World Wanderers Stadium last weekend was a case in point. The Momentum Multiply Titans went hard in the powerplay and consequently made a poor start on a tricky pitch, crashing to 34 for three in the first six overs. That became 54 for six in the ninth over and our DP World Lions were in a powerful position early in the game.

“Aiming for around 40 in the powerplay has served us well,” head coach Russell Domingo said after claiming the title with a clinical eight-wicket win with 29 balls to spare. “I’m a bit old-fashioned in that I like to have wickets in hand, be more circumspect up front, especially at the DP World Wanderers where the ball does a bit. A lot of people think the first six overs are the most important, but I think the last six are.”

Van der Dussen has epitomised that smart cricket since he returned to the team from duty overseas for the last two round-robin matches and then the playoffs – notching scores of 43 (off 33 balls), 59 (38), 40* (37) and 44 not out in the final off just 31 deliveries. That saw him to the top of the final batting averages with 186 runs at an average of 93 and a healthy strike-rate of 133.81.

“We know how to play at the DP World Wanderers and it’s not as if the pitch gets better in the second innings. So in the first 10 overs we’ve been happy to be around run-a-ball as long as we’re not too many wickets down, because from 60 for six there is no coming back, like we saw in the final,” Van der Dussen said.

“So we’re happy if we’re 60 for two or three at halfway because then we are set up to get 160/170. We’re really trying to guard our wickets. At a place like SuperSport Park, where it’s really flat and the ball flies, you can take on the powerplay and you can be 70 after six overs. But we use our home advantage.

“I’m happy playing a certain way and I do have a few years of experience. My stats get nit-picked and it’s been said that I don’t score enough runs in my first few balls. So I’ve had to find the balance between righting those stats and the fact that I really want to win. I will do whatever is needed to win, whatever it takes to get to the playoffs. People use stats in whatever way suits them, but there’s only one thing that’s always at the forefront of my mind and that’s what’s needed to win in the current situation. I love playing for the Lions and I just want them to win,” Van der Dussen said.

The other obvious feature of our DP World Lions’ triumph was how the absence of Proteas stars like Temba Bavuma, Ryan Rickelton, Wiaan Mulder and Kagiso Rabada did not stop the charge of #ThePrideOfJozi to the title.

“It’s been great to see that despite having lost Ryan, Temba, KG and Wiaan to the Proteas, and myself, Reeza Hendricks, Nqaba Peter and Bjorn Fortuin at the start, we were still able to defend our title,” Van der Dussen said. “To see others coming in has been fantastic, like Junaid Dawood, who still finished as the leading wicket-taker in the competition, with Kwena Mapahaka, even though he didn’t play the last few games.

“That’s always our challenge at the DP World Lions, to rectify the loss of our Proteas, to fill the gaps. Russell communicated with us at the start of the season that it was not a long tournament, so he also had to balance giving guys playing opportunity. The back-up guys also need to get game-time, you need to give them responsibility so we can see what we’ve got after the internationals.

“They have filtered in really well and it’s been a totally different team to win the competition this season. And it’s been great to see the same principles that we aspired to last season – things like work ethic, not getting ahead of ourselves and there being no egos, speaking the same language – have been there again.

“But when you have leaders like Jono Leaf-Wright and Russell Domingo, then they keep you so grounded. Jono is just the best human being and Russell is always really direct and honest with us,” the veteran stalwart of #ThePrideOfJozi said.

Our DP World Lions men’s team has only had to endure the bitter taste of defeat twice in this CSA T20 Challenge campaign, without playing their best cricket yet, which speaks to their ability to get the job done in tight situations.

They were at it again at the weekend when they beat the Auto Investments North-West Dragons by five runs in Potchefstroom to ensure they finished top of the log and will host Qualifier 1 at the DP World Wanderers Stadium on Tuesday evening. Win that and we go straight through to Sunday’s final, defeat would mean a second chance when they take on the winners of Wednesday’s Eliminator between the Dragons and WSB Western Province.

The DP World Lions were defending a total of 170 for three against the Dragons, built around a classy 59 off 38 balls by the veteran No.3 Rassie van der Dussen and a punishing 62 not out off 39 deliveries by young Connor Esterhuizen, who was the Batsman of the Match.

North-West were then restricted to 165 for six in their 20 overs, #ThePrideOfJozi attack once again producing the goods, even when the home side needed 27 runs off the last three overs. Evan Jones kept his nerve as he conceded just nine runs off the last over, but it was the thrilling left-arm paceman Kwena Maphaka who produced the matchwinning over as he conceded just three runs in the penultimate over.

Maphaka had earlier bowled both Dragons openers with superb deliveries as he finished with excellent figures of two for 28 in his four overs and the Bowler of the Match award. Tshepo Moreki also took two wickets, while spinners Nqaba Peter and Reeza Hendricks kept things tight with five overs between them going for just 29 runs.

“We’re finding ways to win, even though we haven’t played our best cricket yet. We’re coming out on top in those big moments and to finish top of the table was a good feat,” happy head coach Russell Domingo said.

“Connor has a lot of potential, he’s only 23 and hasn’t played a lot of cricket. I have plenty of hope for both him and Mitchell van Buuren, they can be very, very good players. And then it’s great to have Rassie’s calmness coming in at three.”

Our DP World Lions’ opponents on Tuesday evening will be the Momentum Multiply Titans, a team that will boast several players who have really mastered the T20 format. The fact that the Titans beat the Pride by 117 runs in our home den in the opening round of the competition, and yet the DP World Lions still ended up topping the standings, illustrates their tremendous resilience.

“The past will have no bearing on the Qualifier, it’s a one-off match between two teams who have some seriously good matchwinners. We take real confidence in the way we played after that first game,” Domingo said.

“The current structure of global cricket is unsustainable and countries outside of the ‘Big Three’ (India, England and Australia) will play less and less bilateral series cricket, with some in danger of disappearing altogether from the Test cricket scene,” Tony Irish, who is an independent director of cricket’s global players’ body, the World Cricketers’ Association, has warned.

The only international cricket that really makes money now is India at home and abroad, and England and Australia tours. Any other bilateral cricket loses money. Bilateral cricket is those tours between countries playing Tests, ODIs and T20 matches.

The Future Tours Program previously ensured every team would play each other twice in a four-year cycle, home and away. But Narayanaswami Srinivasan [India], Giles Clarke [England] and Wally Edwards [Australia] deregulated everything in 2016, making bilateral tours a free-for-all. There are no rules, and therefore there is no context to so much international cricket.

It has become like Liverpool playing Arsenal and Chelsea five times a year and Bournemouth just once. But the BCCI [Board of Control for Cricket in India] don’t want more regulation and a well-structured calendar. That would mean they cannot wheel-and-deal, give and take games away from countries depending on whether they vote with them or not.

They want the status quo to continue so they can maximise their own revenues. England and Australia just go along with them and no-one stands against them.

There also needs to be a more equitable distribution of ICC revenues. India take nearly 40% of the revenues and they already get huge pots of money through the IPL and bilateral cricket.

There is huge financial inequality across the game with India at the top of the pile. India has resources of approximately $1.5 billion dollars per year; the country in 13^th place gets $6 million per year yet these two teams must compete against each other. How do they expect this to be a contest? There are 108 International Cricket Council (ICC) member countries and 50% of ICC revenues go to the ‘Big Three’, 87% of bilateral revenues are retained by England, Australia and India; while countries ranked 13 to 108 get 2% of total cricket revenues. ICC revenues are those generated from ICC events i.e. world cups, and is different to bilateral revenues which are the aggregate of what all of the countries generate from their series against each other.

Why must the ‘Big Three’ take such a huge slice? The system is just so inequitable and so incoherent. The whole structure, even ICC events, is set up for them and they have won 19 of the last 22 major ICC events.

While life is obviously good for Indian cricket, and they do deserve consideration for being the biggest market in the game, the second-biggest sport in the world is in danger of becoming like gridiron or baseball, which are minor sports in all but a couple of countries.

The ‘Big Three’ are just maximising revenue for themselves now, but it’s very short-sighted because in five or six years they might have no-one else to play against. People will get bored of just watching England-versus-Australia-versus-India. It’s a bad strategy and it’s one of the reasons the players are gravitating towards franchise leagues.

The ICC held their AGM in late July and set up a working group to make recommendations to the ICC board on an improved system of playing international cricket. But Irish, who is also a former chief executive of the South African Cricketers’ Association, told kenborland.com that despite this initiative and the phenomenal interest created by the magnificent five-Test series between England and India, “bilateral international cricket for other countries is highly endangered unless structural changes are recommended by this group and those structural changes are implemented”.

“The current system is broken,” said Irish, “primarily because there is no coherent playing schedule centrally controlled by the ICC, and bilateral cricket consists of a matrix of individual deals between countries, with no rules.

“This allows the ‘Big Three’ to play more and more against each other and less and less against the smaller countries. In a landscape where the global media rights revenue pie is also getting smaller, the commercial value of series between the smaller countries is dropping and these countries will soon no longer be able to afford to play bilateral series, which includes Test matches.

“This is also happening in a system where there is an inequitable sharing of revenues from ICC events. The combined effect is that in the current system the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The smaller countries will, in addition, struggle to retain their best players for bilateral cricket as these players can earn more playing in T20 leagues around the world than they can playing bilateral cricket for their countries.

“The ICC sees all these franchise T20 leagues purely as domestic cricket, but in reality they are not – they all use international players and because of that they compete with bilateral cricket for players. In an unregulated schedule they also compete for calendar space. For a number of the small countries, the leagues are winning this battle against bilateral cricket; and Test cricket being the longest format, and the most expensive to stage, will suffer the most.

“In South Africa, despite the Proteas being the world Test champions, the team is scheduled to play only four Test matches over the next 12 months and there is no home Test cricket in the coming season,” Irish pointed out.

Amidst this pessimistic outlook, however, the World Cricketers Association released its Game Structure Report (https://theworldca.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Global-Game-Structure-Report-Final-1.pdf) in March. The report is the only holistic review of the structure of cricket and is based on over 60 detailed interviews with game stakeholders (including administrators, media and commercial partners, players, team owners and broadcasters and journalists), extensive player surveys, statistical and scheduling data, and financial and economic data. Among the recommended structural solutions are:

1. A centrally controlled (by ICC) global calendar which includes all bilateral cricket, ICC events (eg World Cups) and T20 leagues using international players
2. Simpler and easier to follow competition structures across all formats with credible points systems to provide context
3. Workable windows for core international bilateral (including Test) cricket
4. A more equitable distribution of ICC event revenues
5. A regulatory framework across the cricket system.

“This shouldn’t be all doom and gloom because there are solutions to this. They however require structural change to the whole system and not a tinkering with the current system. The introduction of windows for bilateral cricket is part of a workable solution to ensure bilateral cricket, including Test cricket, can co-exist with T20 leagues rather than compete with them,” Irish said.

“In the current system, no top countries play during the IPL, so that effectively has its own window. The IPL is fantastic for the game, but that window will continue to grow because of the billion-dollar investments in it and its insatiable market. It’s already gone from six weeks to nine weeks and this growth cuts into the playing calendar of other countries.”

“In addition, we’re now seeing cross-ownership of teams with the IPL franchises having sides in the SA20, The Hundred, Caribbean Premier League and Major League Cricket (USA). Eventually we’ll get to the stage where T20 franchises will offer the best players contracts to play for all of their teams across multiple leagues.

“If this happens, the national Boards will lose contractual control over their most important assets, being their players. If anything should act as a warning sign to the national Boards that the system must change, it is this.

“In a restructured system, the World Test Championship could also be improved. Currently it is confusing because the points system is contrived to fit the existing matrix of bilateral deals which has some teams playing more matches than others and some countries not playing others at all.

“Very good Test teams like the Proteas and New Zealand are playing fewer and fewer Tests, which will translate into less and less domestic four-day cricket – the breeding ground of Test cricketers. A four-day domestic first-class competition is one of the biggest cost items for every national Board, but if Test cricket loses money and less and less of it is played, then it is obvious that Boards will cut back more and more on four-day domestic competitions,” Irish said.

“We believe, said Irish, “that by making these changes it would significantly improve the global cricket product and that this would result in additional annual global revenues of approximately $250 million. The Boston Consulting Group, which has done a significant amount of work on the economics of the game, believes that the global cricket industry revenues should be about double what they currently are.

“We presented the World Cricketers Association Game Structure Report at the World Cricket Connects conference at Lords in June (just before the World Test Championship final) and it was well-received by the majority of those present at the conference.

“We know however that our proposals are being met with resistance at the ICC level. I think that most countries know that the current system is either broken or that it should be significantly improved. If the ICC group looking into the global structure don’t like our proposals, then it will be interesting to see what recommendations they make to deal with the current problems.

“I don’t believe the current system can carry on much longer without some countries being forced to abandon aspects of bilateral cricket or them losing their most important assets as the game continues in the current direction of travel,” Irish said.

If we want international cricket to be a healthy product then we can’t just go on doing the same thing. Even the richer countries will eventually fall off the edge, it’s a downward spiral. It’s all going in the wrong direction, especially if you’re a smaller country, and no-one is stopping the train.

The Global Game Structure Report calls for four 21-day protected windows reserved for bilateral cricket in which no T20 leagues can be held. It would mean every country would play at least one match per format against all other teams. Promotion and relegation between two divisions would provide greater context and jeopardy.

To save bilateral cricket, we need structural change, not a little plaster. Day/night Tests, pink balls, four-day Tests – none of it has worked to meaningfully change things.

Previously, the Woolf Report was specifically about ICC governance, but India didn’t like it and so the ICC dismissed it. It was the same three countries getting their way because India don’t want to lose their bargaining chips. Remember when Haroon Lorgat stood up to them and India cut their tour to South Africa in half and CSA lost a billion Rand?

The ICC and the ‘Big Three’ seem intent on allowing such great cricketing nations as South Africa, New Zealand and the West Indies to fade into obscurity, their heroes and entertainers seen only in dusty old archival film footage.

Allan Donald has seen a lot in a legendary career that has taken him all over the world, but he admitted to being blown away by the passion with which the youngsters he was coaching recently at the DP World Wanderers Stadium are chasing their cricket dreams.

DP World Lions bowling coach Donald, as well as the men’s team’s head coach Russell Domingo, conducted a coaching clinic as a reward for the winners of the best batter and bowler awards in each division of the Diadora Jozi Cup held over the winter. Donald said it was a most rewarding experience for himself as well.

“It was a lot of fun because it’s not every day that I get to work with youngsters. The passion for DP World Lions cricket was just extraordinary, the enthusiasm and love for the game. And also their knowledge of the game, they were all talking about their heroes.

“You tend to think that everything is about the Springboks these days, so it was refreshing and really cool to see that passion for cricket. It stems from the schools and it tells me how the schools look after their facilities and the level of coaching, including the pipeline coaches. It shows that we have a proper cricket culture in this province. There’s a lot more talent in our cricket than people think.

“I just really admire the work Jono Leaf-Wright [CEO] puts into the pipeline, he doesn’t get enough credit for it. Russell says the same thing, it’s a real eye-opener. I was stunned by the amount of leagues, blown away. I had heard about the Diadora Jozi Cup but it has really struck me how much effort the DP World Lions put into it, their heart and soul. And there’s also the Black Widow League.

“I haven’t seen this sort of well-run effort before and it’s a bit of a culture shock, in a good way of course,” Donald said.

Retaining all this talent in the great game is vital and Donald is mindful of how the different levels of cricket have different needs.

“It’s not often that I get to coach at this junior level, maybe 2% of the time, so you hope to influence them positively. Then again we even had one of the Over-40 winners batting in the nets!

“But with the little guys I stay away from technique because they won’t really understand those details until they are more senior. It’s just cool to see them enjoying themselves and it’s amazing how quickly they adopt what you are telling them. They must be allowed to fail; I was lucky I didn’t have parents or uncles or grandparents in my ear all the time when I was growing up.

“But it shows how healthy our school system is and hopefully they can get a lot more exposure, like schools rugby does on TV, that takes things to a different level. The problem with cricket is when the players leave school and go to Varsity, they get lost and despondent that they’re not being looked at. These players who are adrift in the system is why the academy was brought back,” Donald said.

Reuben Mandlazi, the DP World Lions amateur cricket manager, was a proud onlooker at the coaching session.

“This is testament to the work of the Diadora Jozi Cup, which caters for everyone from U11s to veterans. Cricket is our core business at the Lions, we have to ensure the game gets stronger and I’m excited where this is going – it is a feeder to our clubs and our pipeline. I’m very pleased, even though there is still a lot to improve on in certain areas.

“This is the first time we have had this MVP experience for the best batter and bowlers in each division, and any aspiring youngster could not ask for more than to be coached by Russell Domingo and Allan Donald. They understand what it takes to get to the top, they know what high-performance cricket takes,” Mandlazi said.