Ken Borland

The Proteas may not yet have all the answers for the T20 World Cup starting in Australia in October, but coach Mark Boucher said the 2-2 series draw in India has certainly dealt with many of the questions surrounding the side.

The fifth and decisive T20 was washed out at the weekend, and although there was disappointment that South Africa lost the previous two games and therefore failed to wrap up the series win, Boucher said he was satisfied with the overall result.

“It’s always tough coming here to play India. I know a lot of top players were not here, but the depth they have, largely due to the IPL, is really good. On the back of the IPL, those players were in good form and had been playing on these pitches,” Boucher said.

“I will take 2-2, even though we did not play our best cricket. But we asked a few questions in this series and we got a lot of answers. Our plans will probably change a bit in Australia, but we take confidence from this series.

“We had two good games and two bad games, and there were reasons for that. We tried a few options in these conditions, and there were periods we played really well and periods when there was lots to learn,” Boucher said.

The powerplay was the main area of concern for Boucher, the coach admitting that India had bossed the crucial first six overs of the innings, with both bat and ball. But the absence of Aiden Markram, who missed the entire series due to a positive Covid test, was the most disruptive blow to their plans.

“It was tough to lose Aiden before we even started. That put us under pressure because we wanted to play six batsmen with Aiden as our sixth bowling option. That was a massive loss to our batting up front,” Boucher said.

“The batting up front was probably the biggest thing to think about. We struggled to get going with the bat. We speak about it every game, the importance of intent. It’s about how we change the mindset. In the third game especially we did not show enough intent up front.

“The bowling was very good at stages, but at other times we looked a bit rusty. And our batsmen were up against quality bowling, I thought Bhuvneshwar Kumar was special the whole series, he really put us under pressure in the powerplay.

“In fact, India dominated us in the powerplay with both bat and ball,” Boucher said.

Covid-19 has dealt South African sports fans a cruel deck of cards, never mind a hand, with the much-anticipated British and Irish Lions rugby tour now almost certainly not happening in this country this year. But there is still something to look forward to with the Rugby World Cup Sevens coming to Cape Town next year.

Megapro, who are the giants of commercial rights and sponsorship sales in South African sport, were appointed as the exclusive sponsorship sales agency by WorldRugby earlier this month and they are busy ensuring they lay on a feast of entertainment. The overriding hope, of course, is that the pandemic has eased to such an extent by September next year that sport would have returned to normal with spectators cramming into the wonderful Cape Town Stadium.

It is reassuring to know that it is a former Sevens Springbok, Steven Hunt, who is spearheading this drive as the sales manager of Megapro.

“It’s a waiting game still for the Lions tour, which is sad because it only comes around every 12 years and we could miss out on the enormous benefits it brings to the country. But the light at the end of the tunnel is the Sevens World Cup next year and there is great excitement around that. Everyone wants to see sport return to normality and the hype of a big event.

“At the moment, putting on big sporting events is weighed down with challenges, but a world cup unites the country and to lose that feel-good factor is the major loss we are currently having. But it’s good to see the professional set-ups moving again, it shows why keeping sport going is so important. The Sevens World Cup could have a very similar impact to the Lions tour,” Hunt told me in their Bryanston offices this week.

High performance sport is like a fire that needs oxygen in order to burn, it needs spectators in order to oxidise and catch alight.

“Professional sport needs spectators, both for the commercial aspects and for the players themselves. It never happened to me in my career that we ever played with no crowds, but it affects the whole life cycle of the game. And Sevens is all about the fans and the fan engagements, the festivities and fun. The whole event lives on that energy.

“Obviously the positive about this Lockdown is that the supporters can’t wait to come back to live events and hopefully they come back stronger. We’re 100% expecting the crowds for rugby to come back bigger, better and stronger. There is still massive value in playing the tournament in an empty stadium though because we will still be putting it in front of the world,” Hunt said.

South African rugby was on an absolute high when Covid struck, having just won the XVs World Cup in sensational fashion in Japan, but now they are in a fight for survival. How long this ‘state of emergency’ for SA Rugby lasts is anyone’s guess because government is ill-equipped to provide many answers or an efficient vaccination programme.

“It’s terrible that the great momentum of the 2019 World Cup has been lost. SA Rugby pushes for answers about when fans can return but there are still none – the numbers could still go up, we just don’t know. And it boils down to WorldRugby whether there will be no spectators or not at the World Cup. Fortunately we have the Cape Town Sevens this year as the last event on the circuit and we can gauge a lot from that.

“The Cape Town Sevens has set massively high standards as an event so we will stick to that formula, keep how that is structured. SA Rugby also had success with the event in George and Port Elizabeth, so the World Cup is in good hands. It’s also the first global event that we have the exclusive rights for, so it is massive for Megapro. It will be a huge success, a top-class tournament, as long as there is no more Covid,” Hunt predicted.

South African rugby may miss out on the British and Irish Lions tour, but hosting the Rugby World Cup Sevens with international spectators will be like getting a kitten for Christmas.

Cricket South Africa and the chairman of their anti-corruption unit, former Judge President Bernard Ngoepe, need to be congratulated for the methodical and efficient manner in which they have dealt with the attempts to fix matches during last season’s T20 competition, resulting this week in Alviro Petersen joining ringleader Gulam Bodi and Jean Symes, Pumelela Matshikwe, Ethy Mbhalati and Thami Tsolekile as players who have received bans.

Petersen accepted a ban of two years this week and his was the most complex of the cases, the former Proteas batsman being both whistleblower and conspirator, both helpful and obstructive to the investigators.

That half-a-dozen players have now successfully been prosecuted – with just one more high-profile name believed to be on the radar – points to the systematic, detailed work of Ngoepe’s anti-corruption unit. There had been pressure on them early on in the investigations to speed up the process and some of the guilty were also politically-sensitive figures, but they ensured they followed due process every step of the way, even if it meant there was no news for a baying public for periods of time.

The acquittal of former New Zealand all-rounder Chris Cairns on matchfixing charges last November really upped the ante in terms of the evidence required by cricket administrators looking to pursue successful prosecutions of those involved in corruption and CSA chief executive Haroon Lorgat and Ngoepe and his staff have handled the latest South African case with the delicacy and precision of a surgeon.

While Petersen claims he raised the alarm about the nefarious activities Bodi was putting into play, the investigators always had questions about the 36-year-old’s continued involvement in the scheme. Did he pull out because he wasn’t going to get enough money out of the scam?

Petersen was implicated by the evidence of his co-accused as well as his actions in destroying key evidence, believed to be his cellphone records, and has basically been found guilty of that and of not immediately reporting the suspicious activities. Perhaps by trying to be the hero and bypassing the rules which all cricketers should know, he has probably ended his professional career.

It is fair to say Petersen is not well-liked by most of his team-mates, I have heard him referred to as “Lord Voldemort”, and, probably due to a really tough upbringing in the Port Elizabeth township of Gelvandale, he is a bristly, difficult character, always on the defensive.

Coming from a really poor background, perhaps the drive to make “easy” money was too strong; or perhaps his desire to be the hero and singlehandedly destroy Bodi’s matchfixing ring turned into hubris.

Perhaps he is guilty of merely showing poor judgement, something all of us suffer from at times, but he has paid a terrible price in his name being tarnished and losing two of his twilight years as a player, particularly in English county cricket, where he has been a prolific and highly-valued run-scorer for Lancashire.

But that’s the penalty under a system that rightly operates under a zero tolerance principle and no professional cricketer can claim that they are uneducated about the anti-corruption measures.

Petersen’s punishment is par for the course for what he did and thankfully he has accepted it without the need for protracted hearings and appeals. This frees up the anti-corruption unit to now zoom in on a former international pace bowler with especially strong political connections.

Perhaps they have left the toughest case to last.