Ken Borland

Bongi Mbonambi has been a key figure in the rampant Springbok pack that has spearheaded their hold on the No.1 ranking in world rugby, and Sharks coach Sean Everitt says the hooker is raring to go for his new team, his presence rubbing off on the rest of the squad.

Mbonambi will play his first game for the Sharks since leaving the Stormers in the rousing United Rugby Championship clash with the Bulls on Friday night at Kings Park and the veteran of 48 Tests has been roaring out encouragement to his team-mates all week .

“Bongi has a lot of experience and he sets a really good example,” Everitt said on Thursday. “He was fully prepared when he came to training and hit the ground running.

“As an all-round hooker, he’s one of the best in the world and certainly brings a competitive edge to our team. He really motivates and encourages the youngsters.

“Our scrums and lineouts have gone well this week and Bongi brings a lot of confidence which rubs off on the others, so he adds a lot of value,” Everitt said.

Although the frustration of having so little control over the rugby calendar is very real for Everitt, he has been a happy man this week with his Springboks back and a small crowd allowed to support the KwaZulu-Natal team at Kings Park on Friday night.

“A lot of preparation goes into games, so it has been frustrating to have all those cancellations, but we control what we can control and we are just happy to be playing.

“What is even more exciting is that spectators are going to be able to watch, it’s the first crowd we will have at Kings Park in a very long time.

“I was very confident that our Springboks would play this week too, especially after last week’s match was postponed, and we are very happy to have them. We’ve picked a formidable team, even though not all of our strongest side are available,” Everitt said.

Amongst the other key performers on Friday night will be Siya Kolisi, who Everitt described as “probably the form loose forward in world rugby at the moment”, and Lukhanyo Am.

Am has exuded immense composure and skill at outside centre for the Springboks this year, but he will be playing at inside centre against the Bulls. Everitt believes the captain will display some of his other many qualities.

“Lukhanyo is playing at 12 because we believe Jeremy Ward plays his best rugby at 13. Lukhanyo did a really good job for us in the 2017 Currie Cup at inside centre, he excelled in terms of his playmaking ability and he can still lead the defence from 12. He will also be alongside a young flyhalf in Boeta Chamberlain,” Everitt said.

Quinton de Kock said on Thursday that he comes from a mixed-race family and has always believed Black lives matter, and he will now be taking a knee along with the rest of the Proteas team in the remainder of their T20 World Cup campaign in the United Arab Emirates.

De Kock’s turnaround came after he issued a statement strongly denying any racist intent in his refusal to take a knee before this week’s match against the West Indies, as directed by the CSA Board, and his subsequent withdrawal from the game. The wicketkeeper/batsman said he was deeply hurt by people calling him a racist.

The chairman of the CSA Board, Lawson Naidoo, and two other directors also met virtually with the Proteas on Wednesday night to engage with the players and clarify why they wanted a unified stance on Black Lives Matter from the squad and management. According to a CSA statement, De Kock then agreed to follow the directive and issued an apology for his actions on Thursday morning.

“For those who don’t know, I come from a mixed-race family. My half-sisters are Coloured and my step-mom is Black,” De Kock revealed in his statement. “For me, Black lives have mattered since I was born. Not just because there was an international movement.

“I was raised to understand that we all have rights, and they are important. I felt like my rights were taken away when I was told what we had to do in the way that we were told.

“We were previously told we had the choice to do what we felt we wanted to do. … I didn’t understand why I had to prove it with a gesture, when I live and learn and love people from all walks of life every day.

“When you are told what to do, with no discussion, I felt like it takes away the meaning. If I was racist, I could easily have taken the knee and lied, which is wrong and doesn’t build a better society,” De Kock said. 

The key batsman is therefore available for South Africa’s match against Sri Lanka on Saturday and the whole BLM saga, that has rumbled on for over a year, is hopefully now over.

De Kock’s initial defiance is also, however, a warning to the new CSA Board that reactionary leadership and issuing edicts from upon high without properly consulting the players is only going to cause further divisions.

Even CSA’s apology for the timing of its directive – on the morning of a key match – is mealy-mouthed, merely saying that they “regret … that the timing … may have been unsettling for the players”.

The one man who is emerging from this week’s crisis with credit, however, is Proteas skipper Temba Bavuma, who De Kock praised in his statement when he said “he is a flipping amazing leader”.

There is no honour amongst thieves, so the saying goes, and it seems there is also no end to the greed and selfishness that characterises international cricket. Little wonder then that even The Big Three are starting to box each other, never mind their deplorable treatment of the rest of the cricketing world.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the associated quarantine protocols have given teams an easy excuse not to fulfill their commitments. England’s disgraceful exit from their tour of South Africa last summer was the first sign that The Big Three would not be beholden to anyone, not even the International Cricket Council, when it came to their board or players doing whatever they wanted.

Australia also refused to come to South Africa when the science actually showed their reasons were totally flawed, and India recently did the dirty on England by pulling out of the last Test of their series on the morning of the game due to a couple of positive Covid tests in their tour party.

Never mind that the Indians were probably to blame because they had been out of the bubble attending coach Ravi Shastri’s book launch and what not.

Poor old Pakistan have the added disadvantage of always having the ‘security risk’ tag hanging over their heads and both New Zealand and England have unilaterally pulled out of tours there. They say it’s because of security threats but they have never informed their hosts exactly what those threats were, and it is telling that Britain’s own High Commission in Islamabad supported their tour going ahead.

And let’s not forget that Pakistan toured England last year, staying in crappy hotel bubbles, at the height of Covid when their hosts were desperate for cricket.

Now even the Ashes are at risk because the English players don’t want strict quarantine rules to apply to them and their families in Australia.

It has all just led to a great diminishing of the image of international cricket. The pre-eminence of country-versus-country contests no longer seems to be in place and the ICC, the very custodians of international cricket, don’t seem overly invested in protecting their turf.

Of course, the Indian Premier League towers over all other cricket like the Drakensberg peaks tower over the surrounding midlands. No player ever pulls out of that tournament and every single recent change to the international schedule has benefited the IPL. If the Indian players had played that last Test against England, some of them would have missed the first game of the resumed tournament in the UAE due to quarantine arrangements. And many of the same players who were terrified of Covid in South Africa quite happily went to India when the pandemic was killing thousands of people every day.

The ICC should be like an Alsatian in being the guardians of international cricket, instead they are a lap dog for The Big Three. The consequences of this will be T20 tournaments continuing to ransack the calendar space and the players that should be available to international competition.

If all this double-crossing and use-and-abuse treatment of the poorer nations is allowed to continue, I can see franchise cricket overwhelming the international game. The ICC will limp along as a toothless body holding world cups every few years.

Lovers of T20 will be delighted as that format will dominate the calendar even more, but traditional cricket fans, especially lovers of the Test game, will be left angry and disinterested.

At the moment, those with the power in cricket all seem to just want to chow down at the banquet table without any consideration for those who produce or serve the feast. It is this greed and selfishness that is destroying the game.

Unless there is a sea-change in mindset and cricket gets some non-selfserving leadership in place, it will be a case of bad luck to the poorer nations as the rich get richer and the rest simply fade away.

The life of a professional cricketer on tour seems rather nice – practise for two or three hours, go for a massage, and then you have the rest of the day off apart from maybe an evening meeting. But in these days of Covid bubbles, the monotony of that treadmill and the lack of meaningful human contact can lead to boredom, frustration and bad mental spaces.

Proteas all-rounder Dwaine Pretorius is a husband and father of a little boy and he spoke on Sunday of some of the difficulties of being in quarantine in Sri Lanka ahead of their limited-overs series which starts next week.

“We have to train in smaller groups because of Covid quarantine, so you lose a bit of that connection. And we also have separate eating areas so you miss that team environment. But we are strong enough to get past that, it will only be for three or four more sessions. I think it’s actually more challenging for the coaches because instead of only being out there for two or three hours, it has now become five or six hours.

“The most challenging and disappointing part of it is not being able to see the country. I’ve always wanted to see Sri Lanka, which I’ve heard is a beautiful country, so that’s the toughest part. You sit in your room a lot trying to figure out how to stay busy, but also to relax because you can’t stay switched on all the time.

“You spend so much time alone that you have to make sure you’re not just thinking about cricket because you want to be mentally fresh. And it’s even more difficult not having our families with us. Luckily I have a wonderful wife and my boytjie is a legend. I chat to him on Google Duo that has effects like spaceships and funny faces.

“We keep each other busy, although he misses me too much to actually see me so I chat to him through a little rhino he was given at the World Cup by the hotel we stayed in. He puts it in my bag and I chat to him through that rhino called ‘Westin’, and he has also put a soft toy in my bag that I will be chatting through with him,” Pretorius said.

In terms of the actual cricket, Pretorius says the pitches at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, where all three ODIs and three T20s will be played, will be lowish scoring and the outfields are not particularly quick either.

“The pitches will be slow and it looks like the outfields will be too. I think spin and changes of pace will play a massive role and there won’t be much swing. In terms of batting, it’s about playing good cricket shots, hitting hard and hitting the spaces,” Pretorius said.