Ken Borland

Proteas coach Mark Boucher says the team has found a new vision and identity for themselves and also a new way of playing that will hopefully bring greater success as a rebuilding side looks to regain their glory days.

The South African cricket team’s Culture Camp at Skukuza last month not only dealt with wrongs of the past, especially those that involved racial discrimination, but also plotted a way ahead for the future. #ProteaFire, the mantra of the team that went to number one in all three formats with Boucher as a player, has now officially been extinguished, replaced by three watchwords: Belonging; Empathy; Respect.

“One of the biggest changes came in terms of #ProteaFire, which gave us direction and the values to become the number one side, especially when under pressure. But none of those guys are playing anymore and we have outgrown that, it’s an outdated identity. Maybe it became too commercialised, it ended up just being on paper and the guys no longer live it.

“There are more cultures in the team now and it was time those came through. It’s important for a new team to create a new identity and that’s exactly what we got – a new set of values. It will start with how we play and the players chose the same route that myself and Enoch Nkwe [assistant coach] wanted, everything aligned without us really trying. It’s also about how new guys coming into the team must feel and management did not choose the vision, the players did,” Boucher said in an audio interview released by Cricket South Africa on Monday.

Boucher said the Culture Camp also gave the larger group of players from which the Proteas will draw the opportunity to talk about their pet peeves and he found the revelations to be eye-opening.

“We all come from different backgrounds and have been brought up in different ways, and we must understand our shortfalls in the past. We can’t turn a blind eye, we must acknowledge them, that’s empathy, which is a big word for us. We need to use our four or five different cultures to our advantage and I came out of the camp with a completely different understanding.

“I educated myself, I found it quite fascinating, things I have never thought about before. The camp opened my eyes in a massive way and I would encourage people to get out there and try and understand the feelings of different races. Now the best thing for the game would be for our biggest assets – the players – to be able to take over the headlines for good things, let the game do the talking rather than the other things that have been hogging the headlines,” Boucher said.

The Proteas were meant to make their return from the Covid-19 Lockdown with a tour to the West Indies in the southern hemisphere winter, but it seems it will be England touring South Africa that will provide them with their first taste of international action.

England are keen to play three ODIs and three T20 internationals from mid-November to early December, with domestic action kicking off in South Africa on November 2. While British media have speculated that the series will take place in a bio-bubble in Cape Town, it is known that Highveld venues have also been told to prepare to host the 50-over world champions.

The series against one of the Big Three provides an opportunity too good to waste for CSA to start generating some much-needed income after all cricket came to a standstill in March.

Despite this week’s series loss to Australia, England remain a powerhouse white-ball outfit and their tour could be one of the highlights of the summer, particularly since Sri Lanka will be the Test opposition over the traditional festive season schedule.

Then again, the Proteas have a score to settle with Sri Lanka, who became the first sub-continent team to win a series in South Africa with their shock 2-0 triumph in 2018/19.

South Africa’s cricketers will have four-day cricket in November and December in which to get up to full power, with the Momentum One-Day Cup scheduled for early next year. While the Mzansi Super League has reportedly been scrapped for this season due to the constraints of Lockdown, it is possible that a franchise T20 competition will be played to end the summer.

While Neil McKenzie will return to South African cricket as a batting coach, the appointment of Malibongwe Maketa and Shukri Conrad as the chief breeders of talent for the Proteas will arguably have an even greater effect as director of cricket Graeme Smith announced his high performance management team on Thursday.

McKenzie, who played 58 Tests and 64 ODIs for the Proteas, is the new batting lead and while this means he will replace Jacques Kallis as the batting consultant for the national team, his appointment is a full-time one and he will work with batsmen at all levels of the pipeline.

Conrad, as the new SA U19 men’s lead, and Maketa, who is now the full-time South Africa A and National Academy lead, have been given key roles in that pipeline.

Maketa was a Proteas assistant coach from 2017-2019 as well as enjoying a successful time in charge of the Eastern Cape Warriors, so the 39-year-old knows exactly what is required for talented cricketers to progress through the system. He told The Citizen on Thursday that he sees himself as the go-between for the Proteas management and the franchise coaches.

“They are two very important roles and fortunately I’ll have a lot of highly qualified coaches around me as we try to prepare cricketers for both the franchises and the Proteas. The Academy is there to empower the players with skills and I will be assisting them with their game-plans and execution. It’s great to be back in a full-time role with Cricket South Africa.

“I’ll be looking to assist Mark Boucher and Enoch Nkwe in creating a bigger base for the Proteas and my contract runs concurrently with their’s. It’s also about monitoring and identifying talent and lending a hand to the franchise coaches, making sure we are all speaking the same language, from Graeme, Mark and Enoch to the franchises. I intend to get my hands dirty and throw lots of balls,” Maketa said.

Conrad, a vastly-experienced coach who has been heading up the National Academy, will now take over the crucial U19 programme.

“I’ve loved every minute of it at the academy and I know what is required to get to those levels as I now get involved earlier in the pipeline. The U19s are a great challenge because it is such an important stage in development and South African cricket as a whole. The challenge is to ensure we give every young cricketer every opportunity to play and perform.

“Excellence in coaching is critical at provincial and school level, and schools have a massive role to play. I would like to work together with them, private coaches and the Hubs and RPC coaches because we have been in our silos for far too long. Plus we have a scouting system and a wonderful database run by John Bailey and Niels Momberg to ensure nobody falls through the cracks,” Conrad said.

Other appointments confirmed on Thursday were those of Eddie Khoza as the Acting Head of Cricket Pathways, Vincent Barnes as the High-Performance Bowling Lead, Dinesha Devnarain as the Women’s SA U19 and National Academy Head Coach, and Dr Shuaib Manjra as the Chief Medical Officer. Follwing the rather dilly stink created over the appointment of certain consultants, these announcements should be sweet-smelling for the majority of SA cricket fans. They all have considerable amounts to add to the high performance programme.

Paul Harris, whose expert knowledge of the physics of spin bowling has led to him being used as a Proteas bowling consultant, said on Wednesday that he is yet to receive any official confirmation from Cricket South Africa that his part-time services will no longer be used and that allegations he was earning astronomical amounts for his work are ridiculous.

CSA acting chief executive Kugandrie Govender has confirmed that they told the sports minister this week that from now on only Black people would be used as consultants and there has been speculation that the organisation was spending more than a million rand a month to use the services of Harris and batting coach Jacques Kallis.

Harris told The Citizen on Wednesday that while he could not speak for what South Africa’s leading run-scorer was earning, allegations of a million rand were farfetched.

“CSA have not said anything to me yet but all I want is for South African cricket to be better. If CSA or the spinners believe there is someone better to do that then they must go for it, if they feel I’m not the right person then they must use someone else, I have no problem with that. I’m sure someone like Robin Peterson would also do a great job, but he’s already got a full-time job as coach of the Warriors.

“I also have a full-time day job and since January I have not earned a cent from CSA, even though I’ve been helping the spinners in my own free time. Just the other day I was sent 10 videos and asked what I think, which I’m happy to do for nothing. Consultants generally get paid a higher rate per day than a full-time employee because they only work so many days in a month.

“But I don’t see how the consultants’ fees could add up to a million rand a month. In terms of myself, I earned nowhere near that, not even a quarter of that amount. I only worked 20 days for the Proteas over the whole of last summer,” Harris told The Citizen on Wednesday.

Harris was initially appointed as the spin bowling consultant after South Africa’s number one Test spinner Keshav Maharaj requested his help, and has subsequently been profusive in his thanks for the help of the fellow left-armer who played 37 Tests and played a key role in the Proteas gaining the number one ranking.

And it is not just Maharaj who Harris has been helping, the 41-year-old businessman now building relationships with the other spinners to match the great one he has with the Dolphins star.

With CSA adopting what would now seem to be a “No thanks, we’re fine” attitude towards enlisting the help of many White Proteas who took the country to number one across all three formats less than a decade ago, it is worth noting that South African consultants are paid considerably less than those former players who are helping countries like England, Australia and India.