Ken Borland

It is typical of the negativity and destructiveness of so many in South Africa that even after the Proteas completed an outstanding 3-0 ODI whitewash of India, to go with their remarkable triumph in the Test series, there were still choruses of ‘Boucher Out!’ from many of cricket’s version of the RET faction and the naively woke.

Of course the major reason for those wanting Boucher’s head to roll has got nothing to do with what happens out on the field, which has sadly been a recurring theme in South African cricket for way too long. It is because of alleged racial slurs that date back 20 years to Boucher’s early playing days with the Proteas.

It is highly improbable that Boucher was the only one singing the offensive song in question, so why is he being singled out? Because it is the continuation of the same witch-hunt put in place by the same people who took Cricket South Africa to the brink of ruin before the Fundudzi Report and Stavros Nicolaou’s Interim Board sorted things out.

Of course, justice needs to be done for sins of the past, but when they involve entire teams and took place in a time very different from our own from which we are peering back in judgement, then rough justice will cause more harm than good.

Boucher’s evidence before his disciplinary tribunal will probably point out that, due to the total lack of sensitivity training and the state of society as a whole back in the 1990s, it was not just Paul Adams who had a nasty song written about him (the author of which is apparently a major surprise). The White players were called names too, as were the Black Africans and the Coloureds. For those who have never been in a fines meeting, it is all meant to be about poking fun. However misguided the lyrics were.

But confidence in CSA and their ability to ensure we have a competitive Proteas team will be severely dented if they summarily dismiss Boucher, just as the national side are starting to bloom again.

The last two months have seen not just any team vanquished, but the mighty Indians, the superpowers of the game and ranked No.1 in Tests before being knocked off their perch by South Africa.

To make the triumph even more memorable, the Proteas managed to overturn the previous history between the two teams when it came to playing and bowling spin. India’s spinners were previously able to exert a stranglehold over the South African batsman, including during the February 2018 series over here.

But in this series, the Proteas batsmen were terrific against the turning ball, in conditions that were going to suit the visitors, and they have said much of the credit for that should go to Boucher and batting consultant Justin Sammons.

And then when India batted, they were dominated by Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi, with even Aiden Markram keeping them under pressure, to such an extent that South Africa won the crucial middle-overs battle conclusively. The way the Proteas have embraced the use of spin and have become one of the best sides in the world in that department is another reason to commend Boucher, who has instituted a sea-change in strategic thinking.

Boucher’s immense playing experience is obviously helpful to the team as they navigate the varied challenges of the international game, but his knowledge of various team cultures and environments can also serve to help the current team as they forge a new identity.

When Boucher made his debut for the national team in 1997, the culture was pretty rotten with new arrivals treated very much as juniors and a threat to the places of the senior players. He lived through that and learnt from it, and he was also a key part of the Graeme Smith era when the team embraced Protea Fire and made big efforts to become more inclusive.

Getting rid of Boucher now would only serve as an exercise in bloodletting and scapegoating. CSA Boards have a history of giving baying mobs what they want; let’s hope Lawson Naidoo and Co can show stronger leadership at this crucial time.

Despite their dodgy origin, there are many who believed the Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) hearings would be a very good idea, something necessary to try and heal the increasingly polarised and embittered environment of South African cricket.

But now that the SJN report has been made public, what a grave disappointment it has been and what a waste of R7.5 million. So much evidence has simply been ignored or totally misinterpreted and the legal flaws within the findings reflect very poorly on Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza’s standing as one of our finest jurists. Never mind the poor job done by his assistants from Werksmans Attorneys.

It is now clear that the entire focus of the SJN was on getting dirt on Graeme Smith and Mark Boucher. Addressing historic wrongs and racial discrimination was just a side project.

Ntsebeza has found Smith’s appointment as director of cricket to be irregular and has also accused him of racist behaviour in the past. This is despite what I thought was compelling evidence presented by the likes of Cricket South Africa, the South African Cricketers’ Association and former Proteas manager Mohammed Moosajee.

The report almost entirely ignores all of that and goes way outside of its mandate in slamming Smith’s appointment. Surely Ntsebeza is aware that headhunting is a common occurrence in the corporate world and his appointment was approved by a number of people, the majority of whom were Black?

But no, it was racist. As was Boucher’s selection as Proteas head coach.

Enoch Nkwe is a very good coach and, in an ideal world, should be the successor to Boucher. But to say he was discriminated against based on the colour of his skin is ridiculous. It ignores the fact Boucher had more experience and more success coaching at the level below the Proteas and the wicketkeeper/batsman’s immense international knowledge from his playing days.

Three franchise trophies in one season point to Nkwe’s potential, but to equate trophies won in second-tier cricket in the Netherlands, semi-pro cricket or junior weeks, and even a second place in the Canadian T20 league, with Boucher’s achievements is ludicrous. The report also makes no mention of the 3-0 hammering South Africa suffered in India under Nkwe as interim head coach just before Boucher’s arrival.

The SJN could really have done with some advice from an ex cricketer or anyone with some idea of how high-performance sport works. The total lack of expertise in this regard has been made clear by the report. There was an early warning sign of this when legal assistant Sandile July asked why Imran Tahir had not stepped down from the Proteas team to allow another spinner a chance!

I also believe Mr July exhibited a lack of impartiality in his examination of those witnesses who had been implicated. He seemed to implicitly believe that the evidence of the complainants, even those dishonest individuals banned from the game for their involvement in matchfixing, was true.

The allegation made this week that over 250 paragraphs of the complainants’ heads of argument, which were written by July and Fumisa Ngqele, have been simply cut and pasted word-for-word directly into the ombudsman’s report, reflects poorly on the fairness of the SJN process.

These are not just minor matters that need amendment. Most damning of all is Ntsebeza’s own admission in his closing remarks that the evidence presented was not able to be tested. He says he cannot make definitive findings, describing his own conclusions as being “tentative”.

And yet he has happily painted Smith, Boucher, AB de Villiers and various other former players and officials as being racist. The decent thing for Ntsebeza to do would be to pay back half the R7.5 million to CSA for doing half a job, never mind the compensation he might have to fork out for the damage he has done to the reputations of people based on “untested evidence” and “tentative findings”.

What should have been a great summer of cricket, golf and rugby in South Africa is being threatened by the Omicron variant of Covid, which is an annoyance us sports lovers are getting used to, but what really angers me is the superior, hypocritical attitude of many overseas administrators and professionals.

The bio-secure bubbles that South African sporting bodies have put in place have proven to be exceptionally safe, a credit to the outstanding scientists and doctors we have in the medical sphere. But for many of those in the West, we are in Africa and therefore all the old stereotypes of being backward and unadvanced apply. It is an insulting and bigoted attitude.

Plus South African society is probably safer than many in Europe and America, where most people are ignoring preventative measures like masks, hand sanitising and social distancing. In America, there has also been a sizeable section of the population who have refused to get vaccinated.

It was the United Kingdom who began all the trouble by rushing to implement travel bans before they had even received all the scientific information about Omicron. The fact that the boorish Boris Johnson and his ill-informed medical advisors, who have grossly mishandled Britain’s Covid response over the last couple of years, are setting the tone for the global response is infuriating. We have someone who has presided over a country that now has more than 50 000 cases a day declaring South Africa, with 11 500 cases a day, a pariah.

And it’s not just those three major sports that have been affected: The U21 Women’s Junior Hockey World Cup was set to be held in Potchefstroom, the first time the sport would have staged a world cup in Africa, but that has been called off, and the Commonwealth Wrestling Championships, to be held this weekend in Pretoria, have also been deferred indefinitely.

The United Rugby Championship and the Sunshine Tour golf organisation have already seen their December events grossly disrupted by the Omicron panic, while Cricket South Africa will be hoping against hopes that the Indian tour, which is worth $100 million to the financially-strained organisation, will go ahead as scheduled.

The problem for all local sports bodies is that overseas competitors will now start using Covid fears as an excuse not to fulfil their commitments. India’s cricket players, safe in the knowledge that no-one in world cricket dares to ruffle the feathers of the BCCI, will do whatever they want, and we can only hope captain Virat Kohli’s love of Test cricket and desire to win a series in South Africa sways the day.

As we have seen in previous waves of Covid, things will happen quickly as the number of cases rises exponentially. But will overseas sportsmen be safer back home, where this variant almost certainly originated, or in a bio-bubble in South Africa?

Will the travel bans be lifted now that there is compelling evidence that Omicron did not originate in Southern Africa but was merely detected here first? One day the identities of the overseas diplomats who brought it into Botswana at the beginning of November will be revealed. The fact that the Munster rugby team had 14 positive cases by the start of this week, having been in a bubble since their arrival in South Africa, suggests they probably arrived with Covid, possibly catching it on the plane coming over, and have now been spreading it amongst themselves.

Of course it will always be the African countries that are at fault in the eyes of many of our Western visitors.

Cardiff rugby player Matthew Morgan ranted on social media about being dragged to South Africa in the middle of a pandemic and called the whole situation a “shambles”. Instead of being so privileged, perhaps he should be reading more of what leading scientists are saying.

Dylan Richardson’s inclusion in the Scotland squad for their Autumn Internationals may have surprised many people, but according to Sharks coach Sean Everitt, the doors have been open overseas to the barnstorming flank-cum-hooker since 2018.

The 22-year-old Richardson is one of four South African born players named in Gregor Townsend’s 36-man training squad announced in midweek, alongside another potential new cap in former Bulls prop Pierre Schoeman, loosehead Oli Kebble and utility back Kyle Steyn.

Richardson, although he was born in Durban, qualifies automatically for Scotland because his father was born in Edinburgh, unlike Schoeman, who has had to serve a four-year residency qualification.

But Everitt revealed on Thursday that the Scotland Rugby Union have had their eyes on Richardson for as long as Schoeman has been playing for Edinburgh.

“Scotland have been watching Dylan for the last four years, they actually approached him in 2018 to play in the World Cup. So a move was always on the cards.

“It’s a good career-path for him but always sad for South Africa to lose a player with great potential, especially at such a young age. We wish him all the best though and support his move.

“It’s a massive win for us that he is still contracted to the Sharks until 2024 because we hate losing home-grown players to other countries. He can now bring that international experience back to us,” Everitt said of the Kearsney College product.

The 1.84m, 110kg Richardson plays a wonderfully direct brand of rugby and his feistiness has ruffled the feathers of a few opponents back home. Little wonder he has earned the nickname ‘Thor’.

Everitt went so far as to draw comparisons with a great Springbok who he coached at Kings Park at U21 level in 2011-12.

“Dylan’s contribution to our team is immense. He has such a high tackle and work-rate, he’s a strong ball-carrier and good on the ground. It’s just the number of contributions he makes, he’s like a young Pieter-Steph du Toit. He has a massive engine and he can play for 80 minutes.

“That’s Dylan’s gift that he can go hard for long periods of time. He’s going to be a massive positive for Scottish rugby,” Everitt said.