Ken Borland

The daunting All Blacks are South Africa’s next opponents in the Rugby Championship and they need to get down to business this week and fix the many aspects of their game that have not been functioning over the last two weekends and the back-to-back losses to Australia.

The only problem is coach Jacques Nienaber said at the weekend that he doesn’t really know where to start, which is as much of an admission of the numerous problems the Springboks have as anything else.

Captain Siya Kolisi did put his hand up and say the players are to blame because they have been given a plan – which we know has worked in the past – by the coaching staff. But any plan is only as good as its implementation … and the Springboks’ execution has been terrible.

Over the last two weeks they have produced sloppy rugby that is not worthy of either the world champions tag or the number one ranking.

What is certain is that the senior players, the World Cup winners, need to step up now and be willing to get their hands dirty on the gainline and at the breakdown, and make their tackles. The Wallabies have thoroughly dominated those crucial departments of the game, where the usually famously physical Springboks have been strangely timid. Their ball-carries have been faltering and tactically they seem to have ignored the enormous pressure the Wallabies put on the breakdown.

In terms of personnel changes, including Cheslin Kolbe on the wing will provide some x-factor, but South Africa’s many efforts to get the ball wide at the weekend were fruitless because a lack of direct running in the build-up meant Sbu Nkosi and Makazole Mapimpi received the ball with not enough space to work with. Centres Lukhanyo Am and Damian de Allende quickly need to regain the form they showed in the British and Irish Lions series.

Likewise Duane Vermeulen has been a pale shadow of his usual self at eighthman, but more game time will hopefully work, while Eben Etzebeth’s lack of dominance is perhaps due to too much rugby.

Franco Mostert was one of the more industrious forwards on the field at the weekend, but would he not be better employed at lock, especially if Lood de Jager is still not over his concussion? That would allow a powerful ball-carrier like Dan or Jean-Luc du Preez to be included on the blindside flank.

The much-vaunted Stormers front row of Frans Malherbe, Bongi Mbonambi and Steven Kitshoff have also not had their usual impact, although South Africa’s set-pieces have been solid.

Chasing boundaries and trying to get to 200 on a subcontinent turner can be as tempting as the allure of a huskey-voiced temptress, but it can be disastrous and Proteas batsman Aiden Markram says these are the lessons he has had to learn as he adapts to a new role in T20 cricket.

With South Africa enjoying so many top-order options – Quinton de Kock, Temba Bavuma, Reeza Hendricks and Janneman Malan are all in the mix to open – Markram has slipped down a bit into the middle-order. Particularly on the subcontinent, that can be the toughest place to bat, but the 26-year-old seems to be learning when to be patient and when to go for it, judging by his well-paced 48 off 33 balls that took the Proteas to a winning total of 163-5 in the first T20 in Colombo on Friday night.

“It’s quite tough to judge what a winning total will be sometimes, and I haven’t been in that situation too often. You have to trust the information you get from the sidelines, Quinton de Kock usually gives a rough ball-park figure and I was able to chat with David Miller, who is very experienced. We thought 160 was good, slightly above par in those conditions, but we still had to bowl well.

“It’s a new challenge not opening the batting, obviously I have not done it much. But I’m enjoying it and it requires you to be street-smart in how you approach your innings. I’m used to being up front where your game-plan is fixed, set in stone. But you can’t be like that at No.3 or 4, your approach has to be flexible and it changes from game-to-game,” Markram said.

The Proteas cross swords again with Sri Lanka at the same venue on Sunday and stand-in captain Keshav Maharaj wants the same intensity to ensure his team wrap up the series at the first opportunity. They will then be able to go into next month’s T20 World Cup in good form having won eight of their last 10 matches. The home side will be angered by their defeat and will come out firing.

“It’s really important for us to show intensity and energy. We understand what’s at stake and we want to be as clinical as possible. We need to stick to the basics and repeat what was good from the previous game. In terms of our preparation for the T20 World Cup, we must make sure we take care of the series by winning the next game, knowing that Sri Lanka will bounce back.

“I’m a very open-minded captain, but I do demand a lot of energy and intensity. That’s the best way to bring out your character and the best things in your game. Body language is also important because it conveys a message to the opposition.

“The batting is starting to get better with Quinny and Reeza Hendricks setting a foundation and Aiden and David were sublime at the end. The bowlers set the tone in the powerplay – to only concede 34 runs is almost unheard of on the subcontinent – and then they were superb in finishing the game off,” Maharaj said.

Lions coach Ivan van Rooyen admitted after another chastening defeat against the Sharks at the weekend that the franchise is going to have to get some reinforcements to ensure they are competitive in the United Rugby Championship that is set to start next month.

The Lions bowed out of the Currie Cup at Ellis Park with a dismal 14-56 hiding at the hands of the Sharks, which has condemned them to last place on the log. Having won just two of the nine matches they took the field for, concerns have been expressed over whether the Lions are going to be slaughtered by the even tougher European sides.

“The most logical thing will be to pull players from elsewhere and there are discussions about that going on. There is an opportunity for the company to get some additional hands in the squad. We are understaffed so we have to do it and there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes,” Van Rooyen said.

It is, however, looking likely that Van Rooyen will no longer be at the helm of the side for the URC with the Lions administration openly talking about “restructuring”. Van Rooyen’s contract, and that of his assistant coaches, ends in October and last place in the Currie Cup is not a good look for someone trying to get a renewal.

While there has been speculation that CEO Rudolf Straeuli, a former Springbok coach, will take over the coaching reins, weekend reports suggested that former Springboks Victor Matfield and Jaque Fourie, a Lions legend, are also being looked at as potential replacement coaches.

Cricket South Africa’s Social Justice and Nation-Building hearings are set to resume on Monday and now those implicated in the first three-and-a-half weeks of testimony will get the chance to sell their side of the story to the ombudsman, Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza.

So far the SJN hearings have been anything but boring as nearly 50 respondents have come before Ntsebeza and his fellow advocates and testified with great zeal about how they have been hurt or discriminated against by the game of cricket in this country.

Unfortunately, numerous critics and commentators have been a bit slow to realise that we have only heard one side of the story thus far. None of this evidence has been tested or cross-examined, but that hasn’t stopped sensational headlines and vicious social media attacks being made.

While many of the stories of hurt were eloquently and movingly presented, sadly some people abused the process to continue the campaign against CSA director of cricket Graeme Smith and Proteas coach Mark Boucher, making them the focus of their presentations. As if Smith and Boucher are personally responsible for all the awful things that happened in the 1990s and 2000s. And, judging by some of the hysterical reaction, they would already be locked away in a cell before being allowed to give evidence according to certain people’s idea of how justice works.

Discrimination based on race is what the SJN is looking for, but several of the complaints around selection ignore the fact that Linda Zondi was national convenor of selectors at the time, or Russell Domingo was the Proteas head coach. So is it Black people being discriminatory or are we going to deny both these great cricket servants their agency and say they were merely stooges for the few White people involved in the running of cricket at the time?

Omphile Ramela, the former president of the players’ association, has been one of the most vocal voices claiming rampant discrimination in cricket. His personal complaints centred around him no longer being contracted by the Highveld Lions as a batsman and for CSA turning down his application to succeed Zondi as the convenor of selectors. Enoch Nkwe was the Lions coach who decided not to renew his contract and Victor Mpitsang was rightfully given the job of selection convenor, given his broad knowledge of the players in the system through both his coaching and commentary work.

There are many witnesses who have every right, however, to be angry about how they were treated, especially in the earlier days of unity. Selection frustrations are always a part of cricket though and a player not being selected cannot automatically be ascribed to racism. While Khaya Zondo was no doubt embittered by what happened to him in India in 2015, it is probably true that the only South African cricketer who was definitely dropped from the Proteas XI due to the colour of his skin was Kyle Abbott in the World Cup debacle earlier that year.

Watching our gloriously transformed and brilliant Springboks in action and listening to the painful SJN Hearings around the same time, I cannot help but feel it is the strict quotas in cricket that have caused much of the anger, strife and bitterness.

Rugby has never had quotas as strictly enforced and their transformation has been more organic. And to try and paint them as ‘targets’ in cricket is totally disingenuous – if they were just targets then why was Ashwell Prince, according to his own testimony, hauled before a CSA disciplinary committee after failing to meet the requirements on one occasion as Cape Cobras coach?

White players, who lose their places in the team due to quotas, are naturally upset and wonder if the player replacing them is there on merit. This unhappiness has now extended to Coloured and Indian cricketers and is not good for changeroom morale.

The other side of the coin is that Black players also wonder if they are in the team on merit (as the majority are), and that type of self-doubt is lethal in a sport like cricket which relies so much on confidence and self-belief.