Ken Borland

Cricket South Africa (CSA) chief executive Thabang Moroe could still obtain the selection veto powers he is seeking for himself, with the matter to be decided at the next board meeting, in Johannesburg on May 17, CSA themselves confirmed on Monday.

The Rapport newspaper reported at the weekend that Moroe’s bid to be able to veto Proteas selections was initially approved by the board last June, when president Chris Nenzani was absent as he was attending a family funeral. The report stated Nenzani then removed the proposal from the agenda at the next meeting he attended.

But a CSA spokesman told The Citizen on Monday that Moroe’s suggestion is still on the table.

“A final decision on that has not been made and it’s currently sitting with the board. A final decision on that will be made in the next board meeting. Confirmed it with Thabang now”, the spokesman said in a message.

While Moroe stated publicly two weeks ago that there would be no quotas in terms of selection for the World Cup squad that will be announced on Thursday, according to ICC rules, South Africa can make changes to their squad up until May 23.

A return to a high-ranking CSA official having a selection veto would take the organisation back to the dark days of 2008, when the veto was abolished after several controversial meddlings by then president Norman Arendse, who is now believed to be advising Moroe.

The players’ union, the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA), were at the forefront of efforts to do away with the veto and on Monday they were still under the impression that the CSA board had shelved the idea. If Moroe is given a selection veto, it is certain to only add further strain to the relationship between the players and CSA.

“A veto used to exist but the players and SACA campaigned for a number of years to get rid of it and CSA eventually did. We opposed the veto on the basis that nobody should be involved in selection except the selectors and the selectors should not be micro-managed. Any decision to reintroduce the veto would be a concern for us collectively,” SACA chief executive Tony Irish explained to The Citizen on Monday.

What has worked well for both the Proteas and CSA over the last decade has been a system where the national selection panel must know and comply with CSA’s policies, especially those regarding transformation, and the board have recourse if they are unhappy because they appoint the selectors on an annual basis. Whether the Proteas have reached transformation targets is also judged over the whole season and across all three formats.

The Proteas players will have no trust in a selection system that allows an administrator to arbitrarily intervene in order to add whatever player he fancies at the time or remove a cricketer he does not personally like.

The Proteas want to take young, courageous cricketers without the old baggage to the next World Cup, and much of the coming season will be dedicated to finding those players, according to the captain Faf du Plessis.

The 2018/19 season was officially launched in Centurion on Tuesday and, despite the attraction of the Test series against Pakistan, the focus of the summer will be on what happens at the end of the season – the World Cup in England.

“Our focus is not on the short-term, everything is looking ahead to the World Cup, so sometimes the team that is selected might not be the best available, but that’s how we get guys more experience ahead of our goal, the World Cup. We want to give a few guys more time and we will speed up that process now, even though our results have not been as good as we would have wanted.

“But it means we can see some young, courageous cricketers, and I believe that’s how we can win the World Cup, by losing the baggage. We don’t want the players to be limited and so mentally challenged; the mental side of things is the only hurdle we have left to conquer because we have the skills and we’ve done the planning, we’ve just lacked in mentality,” Du Plessis said on Tuesday.

The road to the World Cup includes ODIs against Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Sri Lanka at home, as well as a short tour to Australia, and Du Plessis said the matches will be used mostly to fine-tune the side mentally as well as sift through the last few pieces of the selection puzzle.

“We want to try and free up the guys mentally, so there’s no fear of failure, the players must get out there and be able to do the job, and we must equip them for that time. That extra 10-20% mentally is where we have not been as good as we could be. I’ve been to two World Cups and we’ve had different approaches in the lead-up and also mentally.

“So I’ve seen the benefits of what has worked and we will try and take from that, but I’ve also seen the bad. A few guys have shown that they are made for international cricket, they’re ready, and a few guys need more time. So we’ll probably only have a more settled team when we play Pakistan and Sri Lanka next year, then we can look more at the style of play we want for the 15-man squad,” Du Plessis said.

https://citizen.co.za/sport/south-african-sport/sa-cricket-sport/2004903/faf-proteas-want-fearless-men-without-baggage-for-world-cup/

It is not yet clear whether Frans Ludeke will be catching the next train out of Loftus Versfeld for a permanent exit, but the Bulls coach has stood down from his SuperRugby and Currie Cup duties with immediate effect after eight years in charge.

Bulls coach Nollis Marais admitted that his team were never able to produce the attacking play they are aiming for after they went down 31-8 to the Waratahs in Sydney at the weekend, leaving them with must-win games against the Stormers and Lions at home over the next fortnight.

The Bulls only crossed the tryline in the 74^th minute against the Waratahs, at which stage the game was already gone, having spent most of the second half pegged back in their own territory.

“We’re focusing on how we want to play and I know it did not look like that today. We were in the game in the first half, but we weren’t accurate enough, we should have scored but we didn’t use those opportunities. The next 30 minutes we weren’t in the game at all, there were too many turnovers and easy exits for the Waratahs.

“But they are a good, experienced side and there’s a huge difference in the number of caps between the two sides. We always knew that it would be a long road this year with a dozen guys making their SuperRugby debuts. But we have to be better next week against the Stormers, our arch-enemies, and then against the Lions. We have to beat those teams if we are to have hopes of contending,” Marais said.

While there was some endeavour in the first half, the Bulls played slow, risk-free rugby after the break, but still managed to make numerous mistakes, and it sadly resembled much of the rugby they played last year before Marais came in with his new approach.

“It’s always difficult travelling and if you have five to 10 minutes when you slip tackles and concede too many penalties then you can get a hiding. We just need to focus on what we need to do better and there are so many things we need to focus on,” Marais lamented.