Ken Borland

Despite Afghanistan inflicting a bitter ODI series defeat on South Africa in Sharjah, former Proteas fast bowler Allan Donald has nothing but praise for coach Jonathan Trott’s team and their suite of exciting talent.

Afghanistan hammered South Africa by six wickets with nearly half of their overs left in the first ODI, before humbling the Proteas by 177 runs in the second match. The 2023 World Cup semi-finalists were bundled out for just 106 and 134 in those first two matches, but they did record a face-saving seven-wicket win in the third and final game.

Champion leg-spinner Rashid Khan took five for 19 and left-arm orthodox Nangeyalia Kharote four for 26 in the second ODI, but Allah Mohammad Ghazanfar was arguably even more of a mystery to the batsmen as he took three for 20 in the first match.

Opener Rahmanullah Gurbaz was outstanding with the bat, scoring 194 runs in three innings, including a matchwinning, fiery innings of 105 in the second victory.

“It’s a quality Afghanistan team and Jonathan Trott does not get enough accolades for what he has done there. He has built that team over two years. It’s been so cool to see the rise and rise of Afghanistan cricket and they play with such flair and confidence. It is great for the world game,” Donald told sportsboom.com in an exclusive interview at the Wanderers, where he is now the bowling coach for the Central Gauteng Lions, the champion first-class and T20 team in South Africa.

“Afghanistan will be more and more a force to be reckoned with if they can sort their batting out. I love the way Trott has demanded that Gurbaz take more responsibility, he’s been on his neck a bit because he wasn’t that type of player before. But him batting like he is now will rub off on the top six and it sets Afghanistan up with the bat.

“And dealing with the spin of Ghazanfar is really hard work. Plus he’s a dangerous hitter as well. That whole spin attack just causes chaos for the opposition,” Donald said.

The great fast bowler, who took 330 wickets in 72 Tests for South Africa at just 22.25, and 1216 first-class wickets at 22.76, said he is not overly concerned by the Proteas’ performance, pointing out that coach Rob Walter was resting several first-choice players. While the likes of Kagiso Rabada and Heinrich Klaasen are actually resting in their jacuzzis and reclining chairs, David Miller, Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi are currently playing in the Caribbean Premier League.

“I can see what Rob is trying to do and he has to rest certain players,” Donald said. “It’s another chance for the next-best players and I get it, it gave him a guide as to where the fringe players are at, where the depth is. It was a great time to blood some players, to show them he backs them.

“So South African fans shouldn’t be too upset. I half-expected it, especially in Sharjah against that quality of spin bowling. I think Rob pretty much knows what his team will look like in 2027 for the World Cup and that team will play together the majority of the time.

“It’s Wiaan Mulder’s time now, Bjorn Fortuin as well, and Reeza Hendricks just needs to keep chipping his way back into form. Kwena Maphaka has three years to get ready and Nqaba Peter definitely offers something different. He was great last year for us, but there’s no doubt his second season at top level will be tougher. We’ve had those conversations with him, told him to expect a difficult challenge this season,” Donald said of the Central Gauteng Lions stars in the Proteas mix.

Proteas captain Dean Elgar admitted he found the batting conditions in their Test series in England to be extremely tough and, like an elder brother protecting his siblings, he said he had nothing but sympathy for the inexperienced other batsmen in their squad.

South Africa were bowled out for just 118 and 169 in the third and decisive Test at The Oval, losing by nine wickets on Monday. In the second Test at Old Trafford, they could only manage totals of 151 and 179 as they lost by an innings.

Elgar, who has now played 79 Tests, scored just 107 runs in five innings in the series. He, Sarel Erwee (127 at 25.40) and Keegan Petersen (122 at 24.40) were the only Proteas batsmen to score over a hundred runs in the three Tests.

The rest of South Africa’s top seven at The Oval had only played 44 Tests in total and they were all on their first Test tour of England. No wonder Elgar identified inexperience as the key weakness of South Africa’s batting.

“This series was really up there with the toughest conditions I have faced in my career. So I can imagine how the guys with just one or two Tests to their name must feel,” Elgar said.

“We had a lack of experience, a lack of exposure to Test cricket and the conditions in the UK. There was swing and the ball nipped quite a lot. Coming to England, you can be exposed if the conditions are tough.

“It was tough for them, they are trying to learn at the hardest level with no experience around them. I always bank on experience, but we don’t have that at Test level.

“We’ve got to try and ease the blow for them, but who do we have in first-class cricket back home?” Elgar said at the post-match press conference.

Having now lost the series, Elgar was once again subjected to the questions about ‘Bazball’ he loves so much, but he said England had played good, accurate Test cricket rather than anything ultra-aggressive.

“I thought England played at the correct tempo, nothing extraordinary, but when their tail was up then they would strike when they had to. They showed just general, good Test awareness.

“They weren’t ultra-aggressive, they just played at a really good tempo. But you can manage and control that when you are ahead of the game.

“I didn’t see the B-word come to the fore at all. They just controlled the last two Tests well, they played really good cricket and they were pretty accurate,” Elgar said.

Travel from South Africa may be blacklisted now by many Western nations due to the discovery of a new Covid variant, but the Netherlands cricket team made it clear on Saturday that their decision to postpone their series against the Proteas had nothing to do with safety concerns but was all about the uncertainty created by the travel bans that have been instituted.

Cricket South Africa and the Koninklijke Nederlandse Cricket Bond released a statement on Saturday afternoon saying they had agreed to ‘defer’ the remainder of the ODI series. That means the matches at Centurion on Sunday and the Wanderers on Wednesday will no longer take place. The first ODI at SuperSport Park was washed out two overs into the Netherlands’ pursuit of the Proteas’ target of 278.

“We have been taken care of by Cricket South Africa in a magnificent way, they have done everything to make us feel safe,” Netherlands manager Steven van Dijk told The Citizen on Saturday.

“So it’s not that we feel unsafe at all, the bubble has been executed perfectly. The only insecurity we have felt is not being able to fly home.

“So we have not been able to end the series because there is so much uncertainty. Some guys need to fly to New Zealand, others to England, which is a problem, the Netherlands too, people had to sit for hours at the airport.

“The players are getting phone calls from home, worried messages, some of them have young kids at home or pregnant partners. So we are looking at all the options for flights – two people getting tickets here, another three there,” Van Dijk said.

Worries about how welcome the players will be upon their return to Europe are also weighing on the minds of the squad. Van Dijk said there was also no clarity over what will await the team on the other end of their flight.

“The conditions of entry change by the hour. The people on Friday’s flight to Schiphol had to wait seven hours to be tested and if they were negative they were allowed to leave the airport and go home for a 10-day quarantine.

“If they were positive then they had to quarantine in a hotel. Of the 600 people on that plane, 61 tested positive. But at the moment we are all just guessing what will happen when we land.

“We were booked to fly on December 2 but we are not sure if we can leave earlier. That’s probably the worst-case scenario and the guys who urgently need to get home, like those with pregnant partners, we are trying to get home sooner,” Van Dijk said.

Nothing damages a relationship more than dishonesty and Cricket South Africa should bear that in mind when it comes to their relationship with Proteas fans, who have already had to put up with so much.

The selection of world cup squads has always been controversial simply because everyone has their own favourite cricketers who they believe should be in the team. But the announcement this week of the squad for the T20 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates next month has caused uproar because CSA have taken their fans to be fools.

George Linde, who has played in 14 of South Africa’s last 18 T20 Internationals – and done really well, was omitted from the squad of 15. The two orthodox left-arm spinners chosen, Bjorn Fortuin and Keshav Maharaj, have played just six and zero matches respectively over the same period. Linde is also the best batsman of the three.

Convenor of selectors Victor Mpitsang struggled to provide cogent reasons for why Linde, who has taken 15 wickets and has an economy rate of just 7.08, has suddenly been leapfrogged and I have yet to see any valid cricketing reasons put forward for the decision.

The elephant in the room – as it always seems to be – is quotas. For at least the last decade, no Proteas squad has gone to a World Cup with less than seven Black players. Which is the exact number chosen this time around too. Where the public was taken for fools was when Mpitsang said “there just happens to be seven players of colour” and when director of cricket Graeme Smith said “no policy was given to the selection panel”.

I get that the likes of Smith, Mpitsang, coach Mark Boucher and captain Temba Bavuma are caught between a rock and a hard place. Do they acknowledge that there is a quota to meet and risk undermining any fragile psyches amongst the players or do they pretend like nothing’s going on and alienate the public?

CSA’s new board need to be honest and come out and say what is more important for them: Ensuring the Proteas tick certain boxes when it comes to demographics or ensuring the very best combinations can go out and be competitive on the ruthless international stage.

Of course transformation and winning are not mutually exclusive – the Springboks have shown that. But when it comes to selecting between someone who has spent the last year meeting all expectations in his role or another player who has always been behind him in the pecking order, the colour of skin really should not come into it.

As much as some people want to ignore quotas, they are there. Denial is not going to stop that realisation seeping into the changeroom either.

After the Proteas lost the ODI series against Sri Lanka, what do you think the first question was in the post-match press conference with Boucher? Was it about the failure of the batting line-up or whether two seam-bowling all-rounders was the right selection?

It was neither.

“Are you happy with the balance of the side in terms of transformation?” was the first question. If the most pressing issue for the media is that only five players of colour were selected, including just two Black Africans (Bavuma and Lungi Ngidi were both unavailable), then why can’t CSA just be honest about quotas?

The CSA Board hire people to do a cricketing job but then also expect them to ensure political objectives are met, without ever talking about those ‘targets’. (What a euphemism that is as Ashwell Prince found out when he missed his ‘target’ once as Cape Cobras coach and was immediately hauled before a disciplinary hearing).

Just in case there is any doubt, I am a huge Maharaj fan and his T20 debut is overdue, plus he provides valuable leadership to the squad. I am also a Fortuin fan, but it is going to be hard on him to replicate Linde’s role at a World Cup given how few T20 Internationals he has had the opportunity to play in.