Ken Borland

There’s a kind of maturity and boosted confidence that comes from having experienced playing at the highest level and one can tell the DP World Lions’ young star Karabo Meso has come back from her debut stint with the Proteas even better equipped to be a major contributor for the Pride going forward.

The 16-year-old Meso played in the recent series against Sri Lanka that was hosted in South Africa and, while her playing opportunities were limited to two T20s and a lengthy stint behind the stumps in the third ODI as a replacement for the injured Sinalo Jafta, she still had plenty of stories to share.

“Eish, it is a different level, especially in terms of how everything is managed. Being able to do things together with the other Proteas, you can see how those players manage their space. I could see how they get ready before a game, how they are the day before and how they are after the match,” Meso said.

“I was really happy to be there and I was able to learn lots of stuff. Experience-wise, while I was not playing I was able to sit with the coaches and just talk about the game. It was a great experience to have at a young age and I think I handled it nicely with all the support I had and my grounding at the DP World Lions,” Meso said.

Marizanne Kapp is one of South Africa’s all-time greats, but at 34 years old, she is very much part of a different generation to Meso. Kapp made her international debut back in 2009, when fax machines were still being used, but Meso and the veteran all-rounder were still able to connect.

“I was scared at first, but it was a very welcoming team,” Meso said of the Proteas. “I was able to sit with different players and I learnt a lot chatting to them. Like Marizanne, most people think she’s quite scary but she’s not, she’s actually very nice.

“I thought I wouldn’t be able to talk to her, but I ended up drinking coffee with her and she told me all about her first game and her experiences as a Protea, at the Big Bash and just how she manages her life.”

The Soweto resident was thrown into the deep end in the ODI series decider against Sri Lanka, having to replace fellow DP World Lions star Jafta behind the stumps in the closing stages. There were obviously nerves, but Meso bundled together all the advice and support she had received from her team-mates to handle herself with aplomb.

“It was quite an ODI intro! Things happen quickly at that level and you have to show that you are ready, no matter what. You have to be switched on, even though you’re not playing,” Meso said.

But being ready is a quality Meso has shown in abundance with the DP World Lions; coach Shaun Pretorius has never had to babysit her even though she made her debut when she was just a child.

“Karabo is a phenomenally good cricketer, especially mentally, her cricket understanding is so good. We forget that she was just 13 when she debuted for the Pride and she has grown a lot,” Pretorius said.

“She has such maturity and a really good head on her shoulders. She is strong-minded, firm in her belief in her game-plans and how she operates. Karabo wears her heart on her sleeve and whatever she does on the field she does with pride.

“She’s definitely one of the upcoming stars of the DP World Lions and Proteas set-ups and her recent success is testament to all the hard work Karabo has put in.

“But most importantly she is just such a good human being, you just want to be in her space and feed off her energy and positivity. We are all very proud of Karabo at the DP World Lions,” Pretorius said.

We are indeed.

The cricket season just past has seen Wiaan Mulder freed from his cell of self-imposed pressure and doubt, and the Central Gauteng Lions all-rounder’s reward has been a return to the Proteas T20 squad, albeit for the warm-up series against the West Indies in Jamaica at the end of this month and not the World Cup.

The Lions were the outstanding domestic team of the summer, winning both the four-day competition and the CSA T20 Challenge that ended last weekend in a final at the Wanderers, with the Gautengers easing past the KZN Dolphins by seven wickets with 14 balls to spare.

Mulder was at the forefront of that successful chase, blazing his way to a ferocious 55 not out off just 26 balls, with four sixes. It capped a superb tournament for the 26-year-old, who scored 248 runs at an average of 35.42 and a strike-rate of 139.32. Mulder also took 11 wickets and conceded just 7.10 runs-per-over, making him the only player to appear in the top-20 of both the batting and bowling averages.

It followed his destructive performances in the SA20 league, where he scored 297 runs at an average of 37.13 and a strike-rate of 157.14 for Durban Super Giants.

In the Lions’ triumphant four-day campaign, Mulder was their leading run-scorer with 549 at 54.90, which included a couple of centuries. He also claimed 16 wickets at an average of 26.50.

Little wonder then that the Proteas have come calling again. He played in the ODI series against India last December, but Mulder is set to play his first T20 international since September 2021 in Sri Lanka.

But in a candid interview before his selection was announced this week, Mulder admitted that he had not made the most of his previous Proteas call-ups.

“The biggest thing for me at international level is mental. I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself, which is made worse when you think every game could be my last,” Mulder said after the Lions’ T20 triumph.

“I do my best when I am just given the freedom to go out and play; unfortunately I’m an over-thinker and then I try too hard and get a bit down on myself. I’ve done relatively well with the ball for the Proteas, but I haven’t really shown what I can do with the bat. But maybe my time will come in the next couple of years,” Mulder said.

The all-rounder’s mantle is a tough one to bear in South African cricket because we have been blessed with arguably the greatest of them all – Jacques Kallis – as well as a succession of legends who could both win matches with the bat and double as a proper fast bowler: Mike Procter, Clive Rice, Kallis, Lance Klusener and Shaun Pollock have spoilt us.

Mulder does not bowl express pace, but he is a very handy practitioner who can fulfil a variety of roles. The St Stithians product says the presence of another great – Allan Donald – on the Lions coaching staff has helped him enormously in terms of growing his skills and even becoming a little quicker.

“Allan Donald has been massive for us and for me personally. I’ve been working with him to get more energy behind the ball, being able to bowl back-of-the-hand deliveries. It’s difficult bowling in the powerplay at the Wanderers, the ball really flies here, so I’ve had to up-skill a lot.

“I feel like I’m bowling well and it’s nice to be consistently bowling. Not bowling five matches in a row in the SA20 gets a little frustrating,” Mulder said.

The up-skilling Mulder has done on his batting will also hopefully pay off at international level.

“Russell Domingo [head coach] said there were certain things that have to get better in our game and there was an expectation to up-skill. There was a lot of hard work in the transition period after he became coach.

“And you could see when Reeza Hendricks and I were batting together in the final, we made sure the required rate never ran away from us even though we weren’t hitting boundaries. We were getting the ones and twos and making sure there were no dot-balls,” Mulder said.

The constrained new reality that faces the Proteas Test team calls for a different approach and national red-ball coach Shukri Conrad says he also wants the squad to adopt a new way of thinking.

Because South Africa will be playing so little Test cricket for the foreseeable future – there will be just four Tests at home this summer – the Proteas need to make the most of every game and extract as much as possible from every outing.

But the ever-pugnacious Conrad also doesn’t want the team to start feeling sorry for their lot and sink into a victim mentality. The home Test programme opens on November 27 against Sri Lanka at Kingsmead in Durban, and they then take on the islanders at St George’s Park in Gqeberha from December 5.

That is the exact same schedule as in February 2019 when Sri Lanka claimed an historic 2-0 series win, their first in South Africa. Previous Proteas teams have made little effort to disguise their unhappiness with having to play on spin-friendly surfaces at home, especially at Kingsmead, but that has changed under Conrad’s watch and he states emphatically that he considers South Africa to be “heavy favourites” for that series.

Pakistan then visit for the Boxing Day and New Years Tests in Centurion and Cape Town respectively, which will suit their pace-heavy attack.

“I think it’s great to be playing in Durban. We had a camp there in the winter and it’s a fantastic facility, CEO Heinrich Strydom has done some unbelievable stuff. It’s lekker to play there and we should be heavy favourites, but without being complacent,” Conrad told kenborland.com in an exclusive interview.

“We should start wearing the favourites’ tag more at home and it’s going to be four massive home Tests this summer, not just in terms of the World Test Championship but also for the growth of the team.

“Given we don’t play enough Tests at home, speed-growth is required. Unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of playing 15 Tests a year, so we can’t give players good runs and bring them along slowly. The schedule demands making big calls on players and they have to produce the goods quickly, like Tristan Stubbs, who has shown enough already at number three.

“But this squad has dispelled any talk of not wanting to play at certain venues. It’s a bunch of young bucks and a couple of old hands and they just want to get on with it. They want to get back to being a leading Test side,” Conrad said.

The Test coach was speaking at Willowmoore Park in Benoni after his SA A team had just been soundly beaten by Sri Lanka A to lose their red-ball series 2-0, having earlier gone down 2-1 in the one-dayers. It was a terrible day for South African cricket in general, with the men’s side being bowled out for just 106 and being thrashed by Afghanistan in the first ODI in Sharjah, and the women’s team losing by 13 runs to Pakistan in their T20 series in Multan. Our ladies did at least bounce back and win their series by winning the third T20 on Friday.

Conrad was unequivocal in saying the national teams’ struggles are mostly due to not enough cricket being played at domestic level.

“We’ve actually gained very little from this A series, except the confirmation of the gap between international and our domestic cricket. These are the guys who have done very well at domestic level, so it’s not a great advert for that. They’ve been out-bowled, out-batted and out-thought by Sri Lanka.

“These SA A fixtures are a lot about who can take the step up and the message is quite simple really: what’s below the Test side is concerning. But it’s not entirely the players’ fault – to get better they have to play more, both in Tests and in more first-class cricket.

“If you’re only playing seven first-class games a season then you’re not going to get better. I don’t want it to be about me fighting the system, but we only play 42 days of domestic cricket this season! We can’t have that and whatever the format, we need to be playing more of it.

“CSA obviously have good reasons for the schedule and they also want to know what the best solution is for the domestic game, but at the end of the day we need to find a way to prioritise domestic cricket, even at the expense of the SA A team. If we don’t have quality players feeding into the SA A squad then that structure means nothing.

“I understand the constraints and CSA can only cut their cloth to what they have. But every coach wants more cricket and CSA have committed to it. And first-class cricket is the most important. A lot of cricketers start as hotshot T20 players, but they don’t realise their full potential until they have cut their teeth in first-class cricket.

“Red-ball cricket teaches you about option-taking, you get to understand your game and the different situations you get to face out in the middle. First-class cricket is the breeding ground for all formats and the shop window for talent. It’s how you become a better white-ball player. You still need the art of batsmanship and that has gone out of our game a bit, as seen by our batting on a ragging pitch in Sharjah,” Conrad said.

Two possible Tests in Bangladesh from October 15, depending on CSA getting clearance from their security team this weekend, will be a welcome addition to the schedule, but Conrad knows he has to fast-track everything if South Africa are to make any progress in the red-ball format.

Now that the painful Test series in Australia is over, the critics no longer need to sit in their chairs in front of the TV in the early hours of the morning and jeer the Proteas, and the anticipated extravaganza that the SA20 will be should distract attention anyway.

But one hopes what transpired in Australia is not forgotten, lost in the hurly-burly of the new T20 league and just the sheer volume of cricket and sport that constantly competes for attention. Let’s not forget that the Proteas also spent October and November in Australia, playing in the T20 World Cup, where they bowed out at the hands of minnows the Netherlands. The anger over that fiasco may have died down a bit, but the promise of a full review by Cricket South Africa has not been forgotten. The outcome of that review and the rebuilding strategies decided upon are now overdue.

The responsibility for making sure lessons are learnt from the 2-0 hiding (it surely would have been 3-0 but for rain) lies with the administrators, who now have the opportunity to ensure something good comes out of the ruins.

The current team and their coaches, plus the former players working as commentators in Australia, have all pinpointed the amount of domestic first-class cricket, as well as the standard, as being the main cause of the woeful performances of the Proteas lately. So that is surely where CSA need to start their autopsy.

CSA’s current executives inherited a house that was in drastic need of renovation and Proteas fans need to realise that there are no quick fixes at international level. But that is no excuse for inaction and CSA need to come up with definite plans that have the health of the Proteas – still by far their greatest source of income – as the greatest priority.

It is all very well if the next month is spent admiring the dazzling front garden of the house that is the SA20, but the fire that is raging in the kitchen needs some attention too.