Ken Borland

Many professional cricketers have suffered the indignity of not having their contracts renewed, but very few have rebounded and proven their former employees made a mistake as rapidly and emphatically as Eldred Hawken.

A year ago, the fast bowler who hails from Limpopo had been let go by the Titans and was contemplating playing club cricket in Johannesburg because at least he had family he could stay with in the city. But at the weekend Hawken was named both the Lions’ Player of the Year and the Players’ Player of the Year after his key role in the franchise defending their four-day title and being their best seamer in the Momentum One-Day Cup.

“It has definitely all caught me by surprise. When I lost my contract last year I felt hard done by and defeated. But my old man took me out to golf and said I should give professional cricket one more year, I had managed to build up some savings and he said he would cover me if I needed more. But I felt my future wasn’t moving forward in cricket,” the 31-year-old told The Citizen on Monday.

“I had tried to find a franchise contract somewhere with my agent, but it’s not easy. But Northerns coach Mark Charlton is a good mate and his opinion was that I should keep going, we did some one-on-one work and he said I should play some club cricket in Johannesburg and you never know where it will go. So I was living out of a suitcase, moving between relations, it was a crazy time,” Hawken said.

Having signed with Old Edwardians, Hawken had yet to play a game for them when North-West coach Monty Jacobs phoned him and asked if he was interested in playing first-class cricket for the Potchefstroom-based team. What followed on October 31 at Senwes Park was a pure sporting miracle as Hawken took nine for 14 against Easterns, who had won the toss and elected to bat. Not many have recorded better bowling figures, in fact they are the fourth best in South African first-class history.

“Monty was great to me, he said when I feel like training I must come through to Potch. I did pretty well but then North-West did not play in December and I was on three weeks holiday in Tzaneen when Lions coach Wandile Gwavu phoned to say they needed bowlers and I must come through for a few training sessions the next week.

“I guess taking those nine wickets in an innings said they must take notice of me, it got me into the mix. And then I took five wickets on debut against the Titans, I was man of the match, we won the game and the Lions just backed me from then on, I played every game,” Hawken said.

The wiry Merensky High School product is a bowler blessed with the ability to swing the ball late and, when he is on song, has wrecked many a batting line-up as a first-class record of 205 wickets in 53 matches at an average of just 21 attests.

“I guess I just get hot at a particular moment, all of a sudden I feel things just snap together and I can create things, you just want to jump on it and ride it when that happens. But I felt like I was also a more consistent bowler last season and I’m trying to focus on that. My economy rate proves I am becoming more consistent. Before I lacked confidence in white-ball cricket.

“For the Titans I never really got into a rhythm of playing week in week out, every game I played you felt under heaps of pressure to impress and you still might not play the next match. My goal is still to play Test cricket for South Africa and I know I can get there; if I lose my belief that I can do it then that’s when I should hang up my boots. In the short-term I just want to be part of another season in which the Lions do well,” Hawken said.

As the last year of Hawken’s life has shown, cricket is a queer old game and, if he can produce another great franchise season, who knows where his journey will end?

Cricket South Africa are hopeful that club cricketers will be able to return to training in the next month or two, which will be excellent news for the many people who are employed in that sphere even though it is strictly speaking amateur sport.

CSA cricket services manager Eddie Khoza told The Citizen that amateur cricket was very much part of their planning because they were well aware that many people earned a living from the game at that level, and that the grassroots are the foundation of the game.

“At the moment only professional teams have been given permission to play by government and that under strict regulations. But as part of our scenario planning, CSA have implemented a phased approach for the amateur game because it also provides a lot of employment i.e. private coaches. And if we don’t, by the time we get to Level I there might not be any clubs to get back to.

“But the medical protocols required to play at the moment are not really affordable for amateur teams. Which is why we applied for one-on-one coaching in Level III and in Level II five players and a coach are allowed. Hopefully in September/October we can start pre-season activities, by October we can be having a really thorough pre-season for clubs, schools, universities, and we would like all matches to commence on January 1, 2021,” Khoza said.

Amateur cricketers can breathe easy that CSA have not forgotten about them, but they are also trying to ensure that the thousands of club and school cricketers stay safe as well.

“The medical advice we have received is that in order to play competitive cricket again, the players need six-to-eight weeks of training, so October to December will allow that. Many schools and universities have anyway already said that they won’t be having any extramural activities for the rest of the year,” Khoza added.

Cricket South Africa Director of Cricket Graeme Smith on Saturday described all the leaks coming from the organisation – many of which have promoted falsehoods targeting him personally – as a “cancer” and said the e-mails he had sent to the Board complaining about them had not yet been addressed.

Smith has even had his contract details leaked to the media and there was also a fraudulent document circulated which alleged he was a shareholder in 3TCricket.

“These leaks are a cancer within the organisation and you just wonder who in a senior position would do this? What is their end goal? It’s clearly a high-profile person because of some of the stuff that has been leaked. This kind of thing doesn’t help build relations, it feels like some people have ulterior motives, so we end up spending all our time speaking about these things and not the game.

“I have written a few e-mails about it to the president [Chris Nenzani], the board and the company secretary [Welsh Gwaza], who has been part of all my processes. And there hasn’t been a huge response. But it was good to see the president put a few things straight in an article today and there are a lot of very good people in CSA, especially at staff level, in cricket services,” Smith said in a teleconference on Saturday.

While Smith defended his appointment as director of cricket, saying he had gone through the whole chain of appropriate processes, and was keen to continue in the role, he added that he would step aside if there was someone better equipped for the job. He also defended his choice of Mark Boucher as national coach.

“I feel I have been extremely unfairly targeted over the appointments, I feel there’s a bit of an agenda. It comes back to why I got into the job in the first place – I wanted to put cricket straight and improve CSA as an organisation – and CSA courted me for a while. I went through the interview process and initially turned the job down. But in the absolute chaos of last December I decided I wanted to be part of the solution.

“I don’t feel like I’m going to be perfect or not get anything wrong, but my intentions and value system are good. But if someone can do a better job then they must tell me. I did not appoint myself, I went through a rigorous interview process presided over by mainly Black African people. You ask yourself what you can achieve in this role, but that’s why I decided to sign an extension to my contract.

“In terms of Mark Boucher, the team need a strong leader and he’s done enough coaching at domestic level and had a lot of success, his personality and experience is what was needed. He and Enoch Nkwe [assistant coach] can form a strong partnership, that’s an important dynamic. They are the right team to take the Proteas forward … theoretical qualifications are not the be-all and end-all,” Smith said.

It took some daring for Smith to accept the post of director of cricket back in December and South Africa’s most successful captain described CSA as being in “chaos” at the time.

“I fearfully got involved in December in a situation that was chaos, absolute chaos, there was zero trust between anyone. There’s still an element of internal agendas pulling in a lot of different directions and I would like to align those. Life was a lot simpler as a broadcaster! But I was sad to see South African cricket fall from its perch, that’s why I got involved.

“It’s feeling chaotic again, so I keep revisiting why I took the job in the first place. But you ask yourself lots of questions – What are the motives? What is the end game? What are these people trying to create because in the end it’s only the game that suffers. But I was captain for a long time so I have formulated ways of dealing with the stresses and public pressures of a high-profile job,” Smith said.

While Smith’s decision to take a knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement during the 3TCricket Solidarity Cup went down like a flat beer with those of a right-wing persuasion, the director of cricket said he did it to show he is serious about creating a South African cricket culture in which everyone can feel comfortable.

“The BLM movement provided the opportunity for everyone to have an open discussion before the Solidarity Cup, which is why we all decided to take a knee, to show solidarity to creating a better environment going forward. We’ve got to create a culture where everyone feels safe to talk. I was most surprised that players did not feel they had a voice in the past. “As far as I was aware, there have always been channels, but obviously these players did not feel that way, so hopefully we can improve on that. I was very taken aback by Makhaya Ntini’s stuff. When I came into the team, I never thought of him as being the silent type, he was a senior player then. He gave me a different explanation when I asked him about running to the ground and not taking the bus,” Smith said.

In the first two editions of the Mzansi Super League (MSL), feted cricketers like AB de Villiers and Chris Gayle have been marquee players allocated to one of the teams but that is all set to change, along with many other aspects, in this year’s T20 carnival.

The third instalment of the MSL will see only eight CSA-contracted players allocated to teams. The plan is for each of the eight franchises to then be able to choose one Kolpak or non-contracted South African and one overseas player from the draft.

In that way the MSL draft will become a much more exciting extravaganza with the eight teams competing for some truly top-class attractions. It means someone like De Villiers, who is a non-contracted player, will no longer be allocated to the Tshwane team but will no doubt cause something akin to a bidding war amongst the eight teams as he will be available on the draft. And there will also be much jostling for international players, who have been of mixed quality over the first two seasons.

Quinton de Kock, formerly of the Cape Town Blitz, has been mooted as the new marquee player for the Centurion-based side.

The other change will be in the names of the teams. The six domestic franchises will now be able to choose whether to continue with their MSL brands or revert back to their own names – i.e. Cobras, Dolphins, Knights, Lions, Titans and Warriors.

It means cheesy names like the Tshwane Spartans, which have developed little traction with fans (what are Spartans anyway?), will be ditched.

Franchises will also be able to source their own sponsors and will share in whatever profits the tournament makes.

A new broadcast deal has yet to be signed for MSL III, but CSA are known to have offered the rights to SuperSport. The first two editions of the MSL were broadcast for free by the SABC, contributing to the massive losses the tournament made.