Ken Borland

July 18, 1944 was the day the patent for a combined pepper and salt shaker was issued in the United States and on the same day 76 years later, Cricket South Africa and 3TCricket will look to spice up the game by combining three teams in the same match playing for the Solidarity Cup.

Perhaps a more significant reason to remember July 18, 2020 though will be that that is the day live cricket action will return to South Africa after the 2019/20 season was halted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Having eventually received approval for a return to practice and play from the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture last weekend, CSA on Wednesday announced that the groundbreaking 3TCricket match will now take place on July 18, Nelson Mandela International Day. The event was originally meant to take place on June 27, but government approval was delayed because the venue, SuperSport Park in Centurion, was in a Covid-19 hotspot and CSA’s plans needed to be approved by the Department of Health as well.

Now that the bureaucracy has been satisfied, 3TCricket will still be launched at SuperSport Park, starting at 11am, and the pay-TV channel will also broadcast the action live, with Kagiso Rabada’s Kingfishers looking to bombard Quinton de Kock’s Kites and the Eagles team led by AB de Villiers into submission.

“It’s very exciting to get live cricket, featuring our top players, back on our TV screens again. I can’t think of a more appropriate day on which to hold this game than Nelson Mandela Day when its prime objective is to raise funds for those who have been badly affected by the Corona Virus. It is still nearly three weeks away, so it also gives our players more time to prepare properly and to minimise the chance of injuries.

“I would like to thank the government and our own medical team once again for everything they have done to make a return to training and playing possible, and I would also like to add special thanks to the incredible sponsors involved in this event for their continued commitment towards the match and its beneficiary, the Hardship Fund,” Jacques Faul, CSA’s chief executive, said in a statement released on Wednesday.

The fact that CSA are allowed to stage this event in a hotspot shows just how finely tuned their precautionary measures to mitigate against the risk of infection are.

“First of all it will be an empty stadium, we’re looking at the minimum number of people being there for the event to happen and be broadcast, which is about 200. We will limit the number of team staff, otherwise it will just be the broadcast personnel, officials, players and stadium staff. There will also be thorough cleaning of the stadium beforehand.

“The players will get in three days before and be kept in a sanitized eco-system, at the hotel, when they travel and at the stadium. We will test the players before they get to Centurion and again five days afterwards in order to get rid of any false negatives. On average it takes five days from infection for someone to test positive. In the stadium, everyone will wear masks and doors will be kept open along with other safety measures,” CSA’s chief medical officer Dr Shuaib Manjra said.

The fact that almost all of them have international playing experience was first and foremost in fast bowler Lutho Sipamla’s mind this week when he spoke about the effect the Proteas coaching staff have had on his own fledgling career for South Africa.

Since making his Proteas debut in a T20 against Pakistan at the Wanderers in February last year, the 22-year-old Sipamla has played four ODIs and five T20 Internationals. For all his inexperience, he has been quick to recognise the value of all the experience around him.

“Guys like Charl Langeveldt, Mark Boucher, Jacques Kallis and Justin Ontong have walked the talk, they know what it takes to be a good international cricketer. It’s awesome to have them as coaches because they have been in our shoes and they have done it all before. So they can relate to what we are going through because they’ve experienced it themselves.

“Someone like Charl, when it comes to bowling at the death, he’s had to defend six or seven runs to win the game and done that. So he knows the processes involved, he’s been successful and he passes that on to the bowlers,” Sipamla said.

Bowling coach Langeveldt played 72 ODIs, but the respect he is held in by local cricketers suggests he should have played many more; head coach Boucher played 147 Tests and 295 ODIs, batting consultant Kallis is South Africa’s most-capped player ever with 166 Test and 328 ODI appearances, and fielding coach Ontong was unfortunate to play just two Tests, 14 ODIs and 28 T20 Internationals.

Last year was a pretty terrible one for the Proteas, but there were signs of the tide starting to turn when they whitewashed a powerful Australian side 3-0 in the ODI series in February/March.

“It was a great experience making my debut in the limited-overs format and it was a really good win over Australia, a wonderful experience and a great time for me. We had a very young squad but we all worked together towards our goal and gelled nicely. We all knew what we had to do, everyone knew their roles and we were able to execute.

“In that campaign we all grew as individuals and players, and it was something special to be part of it. And now we’ve had a long wait to play again and I’m really excited just to get back to practice and crafting my skills again. As my Dad always tells me when I’m having a tough time, I must just make sure I keep working hard and make sure I’m still doing all the right things,” Sipamla said.

Kagiso Rabada said playing cricket in midwinter on the Highveld will remind him of the freezing water in ice baths during school camps in the off-season, but the new Solidarity Cup 3TCricket match to be played at SuperSport Park in Centurion on June 27 might be an even bigger shock to the system for cricket purists.

South Africa’s first taste of live sport and cricket’s return to action after the Covid-19 Lockdown will be a day of cricket lasting just 36 overs. But while this may seem to be a watered down version of cricket to go with such gimmicks as T10 and The Hundred, 3TCricket does at least bring some interesting innovations to the game.

Having three teams playing against each other at the same time, batting in six-over blocks, will change the flow of limited-overs cricket. And the Last Man Standing rule could provide for some thrilling conclusions to games. Paul Harris, the former top banker and Cricket South Africa independent director who is now chairman of wireless tech company Rain, who will present the Solidarity Cup, came up with the concept, and sharp cricketing minds such as former Hampshire captain and leading commentator Mark Nicholas, CSA director for cricket Graeme Smith and Proteas coach Mark Boucher have fine-tuned the idea. Former Springbok captain and Rugby World Cup winner Francois Pienaar, who has made such a success of the innovative VarsitySports stable, has come on board as CEO of 3TCricket.

“This is a new format and I’ve always believed that you can’t have too many formats of cricket. Just from my playing days we’ve had single and double-wicket competitions and limited-overs cricket has gone from 65 overs a side to 10 and everything in between. An eight-player, three-team format is perfect for kids and clubs who don’t have many resources, and the game has long searched for a format that will embrace all the players, no-one will be left at third man wanting to get involved.

“So we are throwing it out there, we think it is exciting and fresh, and hopefully as we come out of Lockdown it will inspire children to watch. Of course the stadium will be empty, but hopefully there will be full lounges watching on SuperSport TV. Last year’s World Cup in England showed that ODI cricket is not dead but we think this could breathe new life into the middle overs,” Nicholas, one of the founders of the 3TCricket company, said in a virtual launch on Wednesday.

The country’s leading limited-overs cricketers – barring the unavailable Dale Steyn and Imran Tahir – have all signed up for the game and superstars Rabada, Quinton de Kock and AB de Villiers have been chosen to captain the three sides that will launch a brave new era on June 27. Government have come on board with the Solidarity Fund being the beneficiaries of the fundraising efforts on the day.

“We envisage this format helping our pipeline and we will introduce it to schools and clubs. As temporary custodians of the game we are tasked with taking the game to the people, which is difficult in a country with such inequality, but this is another vehicle to do that, which is wonderful. We think it will have a big impact, maybe even internationally.

“The world has been starved of cricket and the goal is to have it televised worldwide and we are in conversations with our broadcast partners about that. It’s great to be part of something innovative, launching a new product, and it’s a nice opportunity to share it. But it’s going to be tremendous just to be able to see live sport again,” Smith said.

Having a sponsor called Rain is always running a risk for cricket, but in midwinter they should be fine.

Springbok great Bryan Habana spent enough time playing in Europe to know exactly what it would entail for South African rugby to ditch Sanzaar and move into Northern Hemisphere competitions, and the 2007 World Cup winner is not totally sold on the idea, he said on Wednesday.

There has been global speculation that the world champions will leave Sanzaar after the 2023 World Cup to play in an expanded Six Nations tournament as well as their SuperRugby franchises joining European competitions like the Pro14 and Champions Cup. There has also been talk emanating from Australia of Sanzaar excluding teams from both South Africa and Argentina and focusing on just a trans-Tasman competition with New Zealand.

Habana, who scored a South African record 56 SuperRugby tries for the Bulls and Stormers, finished his career spending five years playing for Toulon so he has intimate knowledge of European competition.

“There’s been a lot of debate about South Africa joining the Northern Hemisphere but right now nobody even knows when rugby will be back in South Africa. Probably the one thing most needed by rugby is a global season. But I suppose the one question is whether Sanzaar need SA Rugby, they have been an important part of Sanzaar for the last 25 years.

“For those in the UK and Europe it’s much easier to watch games in South Africa than those in New Zealand or Australia. But it’s important to see where the Springboks and SuperRugby teams could fit in and they would have to fit in with the Northern Hemisphere schedule. I don’t see our guys enjoying playing in 5⁰ in December/January and how are our rugby fans going to enjoy watching rugby over Christmas when they’re on holiday?” Habana said on Wednesday in a virtual press conference to announce the launch of MatchKit.co, a mobile tech platform intended to help athletes grow their commercial brands, set up by the Retroactive agency of which he is a partner.

There have also been suggestions South African teams could play in both Sanzaar and the Northern Hemisphere, expanding the current involvement of the Free State Cheetahs and the Southern Kings in the Pro14, but Habana said the workload on the players even if they were just involved in Europe would be immense.

“When Toulon won the double in 2014/15 they played more than 40 games and player welfare is important. If we’re going to add four more teams and include the Springboks in the Six Nations then that would mean even more matches. There are advantages to both hemispheres, the players would learn more about foreign conditions and that allows you to develop more as a rugby player and as a person.

“To say who has the better standard of play though is very subjective because what determines a good standard? The Northern Hemisphere has come strongly to the fore in the last few years: In the 2015 World Cup the top four sides were all from the Southern Hemisphere, but in 2019 it was very different [England, New Zealand, Wales, South Africa]. Hopefully our decision-makers will choose what is best for the game as a whole,” Habana said.