Ken Borland

Cricket South Africa’s Interim Board have been attacking the problem of the Members Council’s intransigence with Dobermann-like tenacity over the last week and there are hopes that next week will bring a reconvened meeting of the provincial presidents and a revote that sees the new Memorandum of Incorporation for the permanent board passed.

Last weekend the Members Council rejected the proposed MoI that would have implemented the recommendations of the Nicholson Commission, specifically having a board made up of a majority of independent directors, chaired by one of the independent directors.

The Interim Board has spent this week engaging with the provincial boards and have discovered that the 8-6 vote against an independent board may not have been an accurate reflection of the actual wishes of the delegates. In their discussions it has also emerged that there were misunderstandings over the definition of an ‘independent’ director, in some cases because of misinformation from the provincial president sitting on the Members Council.

“The Interim Board has engaged with the affiliate unions and they have found an open mind. It seems there has been some misinformation and they did not understand how a majority independent board would work, with more specific focus on getting cricket people involved. There are thousands of cricket-lovers in this country who could be eligible as an independent director.

“It seems some Members Council delegates who are not keen on the change did not motivate the proposals correctly to their own provincial boards. Some false notions were peddled, maybe to try and ensure more seats for the non-independents. It also seems that the vote against the MoI may not have been properly recorded because some provinces actually voted yes but wanted more detail,” a source with intimate knowledge of the discussions told Saturday Citizen on Friday.

One of the arguments put forward against the new MoI is Sascoc policy that states members are to have boards comprising a majority of non-independent directors. But it is believed the Interim Board are willing to face down Sascoc as well if they do not allow the composition of CSA’s board to change.

Herschelle Gibbs was South Africa’s leading run-scorer as they dominated the group stages of the 1999 World Cup, only to fall agonizingly short in their notorious tied semi-final against Australia, but he believes all-rounders were the key to their success in England that year and that is an area that has the potential to be a problem for the Proteas as the tournament returns there next year.

South Africa had Lance Klusener, named the player of the tournament, backed by Jacques Kallis and Shaun Pollock, in 1999 and the current Proteas obviously don’t have all-rounders of that proven quality and experience at the moment.

“In 1999 we had three all-rounders and that led us to probably our best chance of winning the World Cup. A strong one-day team always has good all-rounders, but I think at the moment, all-rounders are our biggest headache. The depth is not quite there; we have Chris Morris in and out the side and Andile Phehlukwayo and Wiaan Mulder blow a bit hot and cold for me.

“So that’s going to be a big question mark for the selectors. Conditions in England could suit a guy like Vernon Philander perfectly. He can bat, but there are question marks over how effective he is in limited-overs cricket. Otherwise the bowlers are pretty sorted and it’s nice to see Dale Steyn firing again, bowling in the late 140s and looking great,” Gibbs told Saturday Citizen at the Sanlam Cancer Challenge, where he was playing golf as one of the celebrity delegates.

Like politicians trying to impress the voters, those players who are not assured of their places in the World Cup squad will be mounting one last desperate push to impress the selectors in the next couple of months. Gibbs believes there are still enough matches before the World Cup to sort out any deficiencies in the team.

“There are enough ODIs before the World Cup and there’s still a chance for some new faces. We’re probably also still lacking a bit in specialist batting depth. Dean Elgar was given a chance, but the selectors have probably decided that he’s not a one-day player. So there’s more pressure on Hashim Amla and Quinton de Kock, especially with AB de Villiers having retired, and Quinny is going to have to bear the brunt of the run-scoring I think.

“Our variety in the attack is also a bit short – Ngidi, Steyn, Rabada and Phehlukwayo are all right-armers, and then there’s Tabraiz Shamsi or Imran Tahir and JP Duminy to bowl a bit. So we might lack a bit of variety, but we might get away with it if the overhead conditions help us. But the all-rounders and the top-order are the two main question marks for me,” Gibbs said.

https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-citizen-gauteng/20181013/282428465149110

The only words South African cricket all-rounder Albie Morkel was able to get through the cellphone to his wife Marthmari, before he was bundled into a car and driven to prison were “I’m going to be stuck in Mozambique for a little longer, there’s a problem but I can’t talk now because the guards are coming with their AK47s”.

The harrowing ordeal, which Morkel, one of South Africa’s most internationally famous cricketers thanks to his nine years in the Indian Premier League, describes as “the most horrific two days of my life”, began a couple of hours earlier when the 37-year-old arrived at Chingozi Airport in Tete, north-western Mozambique, after a tiger-fishing trip to the lower Zambezi River in July.

The incident had its genesis in a hunting trip Morkel, who is known for his love of the bush, went on a couple of weeks earlier. Upon his return, he asked his gardener to clean his car. When the gardener found a small packet of ammunition in the vehicle, he wasn’t sure what to do with it, so he put it in the side pocket of one of Morkel’s old cricket bags.

That was the bag Morkel thought would be perfect to put his fishing tackle in when he went to Mozambique. Getting through O.R. Tambo International Airport and arriving in Tete without any problems, the drama only started when the Pretoria-based cricketer was about to board his flight back to Johannesburg.

“It had been a fantastic trip and I was at the airport on my way back when the airport security found some ammunition in my bag that I didn’t know about. With the language barrier, things escalated very quickly into a very big mess. I told the other guys in our party to go ahead and board and I’ll just sort this problem out and catch the later flight.

“But two hours later I was in Tete provincial prison for the two most horrific days of my life. I was held for the serious criminal charge of weapons smuggling and nobody at the court was willing to help me before it closed at 3pm so I was taken to jail. The situation got a bit ugly when the guy helping me jostled one of the policemen a bit and out came the AK47s, I was pushed into a car and next thing I knew I was at the gates of the prison,” Morkel revealed on The Dan Nicholl Show on Wednesday night.

Morkel was fortunate to find the help of two inmates when his spirits were at their lowest.

“I’ve never been close to jail before and this place was just inhuman, 800 prisoners, some of them clearly mentally unstable, all together in an open prison in 45 degree heat. They were so crammed together that at night they would just relieve themselves on each other.

“Luckily I met a couple of guys in jail, Andrew was a computer tech guy from Malawi, who had been inside for six months because he couldn’t show his papers after they had had a few drinks in the pub, and the other guy had been there for 11 months after being arrested for selling cellphone batteries that the police thought he had stolen.

“They told me who I should stay away from and that the shade belonged to the main okes. Fortunately I was allowed to sleep alone in the office at night and five minutes before the jail closed on Friday afternoon for the weekend, my friends on the outside managed to get me out,” Morkel recalls.

Quite how they were able to dig a famous sportsman, whose name meant nothing in northern Mozambique, out of his predicament, remains unclear, but Morkel has a reasonable idea.

“They never got into how they managed to get me released, but they knew how the system works over there.”

https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/2009079/albie-morkel-tells-of-his-hell-in-mozambique-cell/

To see so many tries scored against the South African teams in SuperRugby last weekend – 26 in all – was disappointing and it’s not great when your top franchises are conceding so many tries in particular, but the problem is that there has just not been enough emphasis on defence.

Look at the value SA Rugby put on defence after Jacques Nienaber left halfway through 2016: they appointed Chean Roux in his position and he will freely admit that he was an absolute rookie defence coach at that stage. What does that say about how they rate defence and defence coaches?

We’ve now had the national indaba and the Springboks are on to their fourth defence coach under Allister Coetzee, but I’m sure Brendan Venter will do a really good job because he has the experience and the skills, and was the architect of the Saracens defensive system that has taken them to the European Champions Cup final.

But there was no national defence coach when the indaba was convened, so I wonder if there was input on defence at that gathering? After conceding a record score against New Zealand, defence was an obvious area that needed fixing.

It’s not Allister’s fault of course because he was handed his staff; now he has been given the staff he wants and I expect to see a massive improvement in the Springboks this year.

There are problems, but the people who coach defence in the franchises will, of course, care deeply about the defensive performances. In 2013, I remember when the Springboks conceded five tries against the All Blacks at Ellis Park, but we needed the bonus point to win the Rugby Championship and we played a high-tempo game, which a lot of people said was one of the best Test matches ever played. But I stewed over those five tries for a month; but then at least we only conceded one try, to France, on the whole European tour thereafter.

So our defence in general is not in a great situation at present and whether it is due to conditioning problems or the speed of the modern game is open to debate. But you can never win a rugby match if you are conceding that many tries.

There’s obviously currently an emphasis on attacking skills but I’m certain the defence coaches are still being given sufficient time with their teams, and they would have done a lot of work on certain aspects of how the opposition attack. Like the Australian middle ruck attack, for instance, where the flyhalf goes hard for the line with a wing or centre like Israel Folau hard on their shoulder.

It’s no surprise when the New Zealand teams employ the kick-pass, especially the Hurricanes.

They employ the rush defence, therefore their wings have to be high and so there is always space behind them. Beauden Barrett would have had a lot of practice doing the kick-pass in training because he would see and have a high understanding of that space all the time.

The Stormers left too much of the field free, nearly 20 metres of space, and with players set in the wide channels, that’s not the smartest move.

In order to make sure you cover the width of the field, you need your tight five to work really hard close to the ruck, to set the breakdown correctly with good placing between the three pillars, and then the outside backs go wider.

The Bulls obviously had problems with their defence and if you said it started with their conditioning then you would not be far off. They also have folding problems, they’re just not setting the breakdown around the corner and so they end up with insufficient numbers.

They were also caught out by grubbers and so one has to ask questions about the back three’s positional play. They need to co-ordinate better to cover those and they need a much higher work-rate.

The Southern Kings have also had defensive problems and so it is only really the Lions and Sharks, who are defending in the same fashion as always, who can be satisfied with their defence.

The Lions have shown a great defensive improvement and one must credit JP Ferreira for improving their consistency in this regard.

The Lions are rolling through nicely and it will be a phenomenal tour if they can beat the Brumbies, which will make it probably the first unbeaten tour by a South African team – a tremendous achievement, and they’ve been winning with bonus points!

We know Australian rugby is at an all-time low and they have even more defensive problems, but their forwards are really their soft underbelly and the Lions have exposed that to great effect.

And the quality of finishing this weekend by Courtnall Skosan and Sylvian Mahuza was top-class. As we get closer to the Springbok selection, it’s a good time for players to remind the national coach that they are out there by scoring skilful tries like that.

In South Africa, skills development seems to be more coach-driven, but in New Zealand, the players take personal responsibility for it. An example at the Kubota Spears is Patrick Osborne, who has played at the top level as a wing, but he works hard on his kicking. He’s playing as a right-footer on the left wing, so he’s constantly working on his left-footed grubbers and other kicks, he does that consistently.

To see a top New Zealand SuperRugby player take individual responsibility like that was quite an eye-opener.

John McFarland is the assistant coach of the Kubota Spears in Japan and was the Springbok defence coach from 2012 through to the 2015 World Cup, where they conceded the least line-breaks in the tournament and an average of just one try per game. Before that, McFarland won three SuperRugby titles (2007, 09, 10) with the Bulls and five Currie Cup crowns with the Blue Bulls. In all, he won 28 trophies during his 12 years at Loftus Versfeld.