Ken Borland

PORT EDWARD, KwaZulu-Natal (October 6) – The country’s leading golfers arrived at the Wild Coast Sun Country Club on Wednesday morning for the first round of the SunBet Challenge to find heavy rain pouring down, eventually leading to the postponement of the opening 18 holes.

The good news is that the Sunshine Tour have been able to push the finish to Saturday, so the R1 million event will remain a 54-hole tournament.

Tournament Director Gary Todd was hopeful of all three rounds being able to be played.

“We had to postpone the first round because of a waterlogged golf course. The golf course has had over 100 millimetres of rain over the last three days, and the water table is just too high at the moment. The forecast is good for the rest of the week and there is a bit of a breeze, so we are targeting a Saturday finish,” Todd said.

The first three-balls will tee-off at 6.40am on Thursday.

The postponement of Cricket South Africa’s hearings for their Social Justice and Nation-Building project offers the ombudsman, Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza, the opportunity to sort out the procedural problems that would have occurred if public hearings had gone ahead as scheduled on Monday.

CSA announced at 10pm on Sunday night that the opening day of proceedings had been postponed to ensure a fair and transparent process for all who are involved. “It has become clear that there needs to be clarity regarding the process of any public hearings. Failure to do so may compromise the legitimacy of any process embarked upon. My office will therefore be taking legal counsel as regards a proper process for any such hearings. I therefore welcome the postponement to ensure such procedural fairness,” Ntsebeza said in a statement.

Chief among the procedural problems that need to be sorted out is that it is believed the terms of reference for SJN say any hearings need to be private and confidential. But Ntsebeza wants public hearings and has reportedly even tried to get the SABC to broadcast them.

Public hearings could create other major problems for Ntsebeza and CSA because if any participant makes libellous allegations, it would open the organisation to legal action. There is apparently no scope for cross-examination in the terms of reference.

Former players like Ethy Mbhalati and Thami Tsolekile, both of whom are currently banned for their involvement in matchfixing, last year made public utterances alleging racism in cricket, but when there were shown to be holes in their testimony, they failed to back their allegations up with any evidence. They also tried in vain to reopen their matchfixing cases.

Some of the targets of accusations of anti-transformation bias have expressed concerns that SJN public hearings could become a free-for-all, where untested allegations are made, resulting in a form of mob justice.

The postponement of the ICC T20 World Cup and the cascading effect it has had on all the other world cups will give a rebuilding Proteas side some breathing space, but it is probably a blow to the hopes of veterans such as Dale Steyn, Faf du Plessis, AB de Villiers and Imran Tahir of playing in them.

The ICC have announced that the T20 World Cup scheduled to be held in Australia this October has been postponed by a year to October/November 2021, with another edition of the shortest-format world cup to be held at the same time in 2022.

The next 50-over World Cup will still be held in India in 2023, but it has also been pushed back, from February/March of that year to October/November.

But delaying the T20 World Cup by a year is probably good news for a new-look Proteas side that has battled to hit its straps in the format, winning just seven of their 14 matches since February 2019.

South Africa used 27 players in those matches, so their T20 unit is far from settled. With key player JP Duminy having retired, Faf du Plessis having scored just 65 runs in his last four innings and AB de Villiers not playing in nearly three years, there are plenty of questions to be answered in the batting department.

But De Villiers will be 37 by the next T20 World Cup and how willing he is to be seriously involved in the build-up to that competition will probably determine whether he gets one last hurrah.

Du Plessis will also be 37 and there is a chance that the Proteas selectors will just focus on building a settled, younger batting order with a middle-order built around the likes of David Miller, Rassie van der Dussen and Heinrich Klaasen.

Steyn has bowled 19 overs for 166 runs and taken six wickets since last February and he will be 38 in October 2021, while champion leg-spinner Imran Tahir, who has played just once in the same period, will be 42.

The T20 squad needs to be using the extra 12 months of preparation they have been given to develop into a slick, tight unit, especially given how dismally South Africa performed in the previous world cup, the 50-over event in England last year. Integrating these veterans, given their various commitments all over the world, into that side is going to be a challenge for coach Mark Boucher.

Cricket South Africa chief executive Jacques Faul admitted on Monday that the organisation were “a bit naïve and ambitious” to think the sport would be let out of its Covid-19 Lockdown cell as early as this weekend, following the postponement of the Solidarity Cup.

The new format of the game, devised by 3TCricket, and a return to onfield action were launched amid much fanfare last week, with SuperSport Park in Centurion set to stage the contest involving three teams playing a 36-over match on Saturday, June 27.

But by the weekend CSA were forced to backtrack as government said they had not yet approved the plans, despite director of cricket Graeme Smith saying SuperSport Park had been “cleared” and “permits were in place” for the event to take place.

“We were a bit naïve and ambitious with the date because it did not leave us with a lot of time to work through all the protocols. Because SuperSport Park is in a hotspot, we now need Department of Health approval too. But we will take it on the chin and plan better. We really want to seek the correct procedure and it’s not something we can just push through,” Faul told The Citizen on Monday in a phone call.

CSA expect to be able to announce a new date for the Solidarity Cup in a few weeks.

As part of their efforts to convince the Department of Sports and Arts and Culture that they have measures in place to ensure a safe return to cricket, CSA have conducted more than 100 Covid-19 tests on their staff and those of the franchises, including players. Sport24 revealed on Monday that seven of those tests had returned positive results.

But those safety processes now have to be approved by two government departments so the wait to get back out on to the cricket field will last a little longer.

But if thousands of golfers are out and about on hundreds of courses around the country, then it surely won’t be long before cricket, in what is going to be a tightly-controlled environment, returns too.