Ken Borland

It will be a momentous weekend for Boland cricket as their thrilling climb to the summit of the CSA One-Day Cup standings, playing top-class 50-over cricket to win five of their seven matches, has rightfully been rewarded with hosting rights for the final in Paarl, but it has been a week in which the credibility of Cricket South Africa has taken another beating.

That’s because Boland’s opponents in the final were basically decided in the CSA boardroom, with the troubled organisation’s directors imposing an almost unprecedented penalty on the Eastern Province Warriors for failing to meet their transformation targets against the KZN Dolphins in Durban in their first match on February 16.

The controversial penalty raised eyebrows enough; the fact that it took CSA’s hotchpotch Board three whole weeks to decide on what they, but not many others, believed was appropriate action, led to much head-shaking. It’s a blow to the image of CSA because it suggests yet again that their leadership is a mess, focused more on political agendas than providing direction to the game they are meant to be serving and bettering.

Arriving at Kingsmead and finding a very spin-friendly pitch, the Warriors decided to choose a third frontline spinner in Jason Raubenheimer, a Coloured from Schauderville, undoubtedly a disadvantaged part of Gqeberha. But that created a problem in balancing the side because it meant leaving out a Black African player, leaving EP with just a couple in their starting XI – wicketkeeper Sinethemba Qeshile and all-rounder Andile Mogakane.

It was a breach of CSA’s stringent quota rules, which require three Black Africans and a total of six generic Black players to be included in every XI. The Warriors registered a massive 126-run bonus point victory, riding a brilliant unbeaten 148 from opener Jordan Hermann. Ironically, it was seamer Mogakane who destroyed the Dolphins batting in a devastating burst of four for 23.

(Upon reflection, I have decided on a small edit here: Credit does need to be given to the Dolphins for the way they bounced back from such a poor start, winning four of their next six matches. They too are victims in this whole mess, which has detracted from their good performances.)

Teams have sometimes failed to meet their race quotas in recent years, but have been able to apply to CSA for permission, based on injuries or illness. Head of Domestic Cricket, Eddie Khoza, is a reasonable man, a lover of the game, and he has generally been sympathetic in this regard. But because EP did not get permission and made their selection for ‘cricketing reasons’ i.e. tactical, and not because of injury/illness, it is believed the decision to severely punish them was made by the Board.

The last time a team was deducted points for missing quotas was twenty years ago, but then last Sunday night, after tournament broadcasters SuperSport had already announced the playoffs line-up, news leaked from CSA that the Warriors were going to be docked all five points for their flouting of the race laws.

But that’s not all!

Eastern Province Cricket were also hit with a R500 000 fine and, even more astonishingly, the Dolphins were given four points for a match in which they were utterly thrashed. It was a meritless gift to KZN that punished the Northerns Titans, a totally innocent party in this fiasco. They had finished the end of the round-robin stage in second place and were due to host the Qualifier that would decide who went to Paarl to play Boland.

But the four boardroom points given to the Dolphins lifted them above the Titans and Kingsmead hosted the Qualifier. A typical spin-friendly, slow pitch was produced for the Highveld visitors, and the Dolphins predictably triumphed to reach the final.

When this new leadership of Cricket South Africa took over a few years ago, it was hoped that they would be a unifying force following the divisive tenures of the previous guard. Hyphens and em-dashes look very similar; the former is used to connect words while the dash is employed to separate thoughts or ideas in a sentence. The current CSA Board seem to have confused them, judging by their recent decision-making. Remember the David Teeger mess a year ago when they rushed to take action, used spurious reasons to justify it and then lied about it being a security issue?

Taking three weeks to make a decision and then choosing the most incendiary option has to be down to poor leadership; there are not enough ‘hyphenators’ on the CSA Board and too many ‘dashers’. There is talk of a big rift between the independent and non-independent directors of the body running cricket in South Africa.

Dashing the trophy hopes of a Warriors team that represents the nursery of Black cricket in this country is bad enough, but CSA’s spraygun reaction has unduly prejudiced the Titans, as well as teams like Western Province, North-West and the Free State Knights.

By gifting the Dolphins four unearned points, they have also allowed them to score five bonus promotion/relegation points for finishing second and not fourth on the One-Day Cup log, leaving them two points ahead of WP in the crucial battle to stay in Division One, and level with EP and the Dragons, and just one point behind Free State.

It’s not just the cricket-loving public who have been left dismayed by CSA’s decision. Imagine how the players feel. Are the CSA mandarins saying Raubenheimer is not deserving of benefiting from transformation initiatives, or that playing a third Black African player would have negatively affected the Warriors to such a huge extent that it would have cost more than 126 runs? Because that’s what one can infer from their decision to take all five points away from the winners on the field and give four to the losers … 

Never mind the irony that it was a Black African player in the promising Mogakane who inflicted the most damage with the ball on the Dolphins.

Does the CSA Board really care about the true transformation of our playing resources or are they just content to tick boxes and satisfy a government that is notoriously callous when it comes to actually improving the lives of the disadvantaged rather than just talk about it?

While government certainly must foot the blame for the dire lack of facilities in disadvantaged areas and the stifling effect that has on the pipeline, CSA need to stop hiding behind the incompetence of the ANC and acknowledge that transformation is failing. That is the biggest takeaway from this week’s shambles.

There is plenty of Black talent coming through the number of excellent cricket schools we have in the country, but too many of those fall off the grid. Instead of hauling a forward-thinking coach and great cricketer like Robin Peterson over the coals, the CSA Board should be focusing on that pipeline.

The grim reality is that the CSA Board don’t really care. Too many of them have their eyes set on scoring political points and riding the cricket gravy train as far as it can take them. Otherwise they would surely have done one simple thing to help the bleak state of our domestic cricket: Let our local teams operate under the same transformation rules as the national sides. That would mean the average use of Black and Black African players is tallied at the end of the season and teams that fail to reach their targets can then rightfully have the book thrown at them. Small infringements like that of the Warriors in February would then not lead to such a disproportionate reaction.

EDENVALE, Gauteng – Your first professional win is always a momentous occasion, and even for someone who has achieved as much as Cara Gorlei has, it was a special day at Glendower Golf Club on Friday as she claimed the Jabra Ladies Classic title for her maiden triumph.

In the four years that Gorlei has been a pro, she had racked up 11 top-10 finishes and earned more than R600 000 in prizemoney and has also qualified for the Ladies European Tour, before sealing the deal and getting her hands on the trophy by a stroke at Glendower on Friday.

Gorlei was lying second, two shots behind at the start of the final round, and she kept herself in the conversation throughout, even as Stacy Bregman, Moa Folke, Gabriella Cowley and Lisa Pettersson all made a charge, while overnight leader Maiken Bing Paulsen also stayed in contention.

A bogey at the par-three sixth meant the 28-year-old Gorlei was level-par for her round. But she immediately followed that up with birdies on the seventh and eighth holes. Others faltered as Gorlei reached the turn and the pressure of the situation brought out the best in the Capetonian as she was inspired on the back nine. Three birdies in four holes from the 11^th put her in front and she reached the last hole with a two-shot lead, making her bogey on the 18^th all the more palatable.

She still posted her third successive 68 to finish on 12-under-par, one ahead of Pettersson, who shot an outstanding 67 to finish on 11-under.

“I was trying not to think about the lead, until the 11^th, when I started to get a bit nervous. My first win started to play on my mind a little bit and then on 13 I saw on a leaderboard that Lisa Pettersson was right up there with me,” Gorlei said.

“But it just made me focus harder because I realised it was not done yet. I knew I was playing well enough and I just stuck to my routines. Obviously it’s awesome to get the win done and I am really happy that I stayed level-headed.

“I’ve been in two playoffs and lost them both, so it was nice to get the monkey off my back without having to go to another playoff. I have my first pro win and now I can start going,” Gorlei beamed.

In a sign of her mental maturity, Gorlei realised that she may not have had her A-game with her on Friday, so she settled into a prudent approach.

“I struggled a bit off the tee today, which made it quite tough. My game was not in the right place for me to play aggressively; I enjoy playing that way, I like to chase and sneak in from behind, but today I was pretty conservative.

“Different parts of my game showed up at different times. At times my putting really saved me, down the stretch my irons were pretty solid, but they weren’t on the front nine. So it was a little bit of everything that came together,” Gorlei said.

While Pettersson’s 67 was bogey-free as she charged up the leaderboard from four shots off the pace, the other contenders made costly errors.

Folke reached the turn in four-under and was leading, but three bogeys in a row from the 11^th meant her challenge faded and the Swede finished fourth on nine-under-par after a 69.

Bregman also went through the front nine in 32, but bogeys on the par-four 11^th and par-three 14^th saw her fall four strokes short in a tie for fifth on eight-under.

Paulsen, who led after the first and second rounds, was level-par on Friday through eight holes, but she then dropped four strokes to also finish on eight-under, alongside Bregman and Nina Pegova (69).

Cowley was five-under through 13 holes, but then a bogey at the par-five 15^th saw her end in third place on 10-under-par.