Ken Borland

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.

It seems a lot of people owe Faf de Klerk an apology. We are all used to seeing the blonde-haired scrumhalf dashing all over the field looking more like a loose cannon than a guided missile at times, but you have to hand it to the 29-year-old for knowing the laws of the game better than most.

And that includes Matthew Carley, the referee for last weekend’s match between the Wallabies and the Springboks who gave De Klerk a yellow card for playing the halfback from an offsides position at a ruck inside the South African 22. Incorrectly as it turns out.

That’s according to no less of an authority than Nigel Owens, the man who has refereed more Tests than anyone else. On this week’s Whistle Watch video for WorldRugby (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsmXBuDGEps), Owens said because De Klerk was bound in the ruck, on his feet and did not attempt to slap the ball out of opposite number Nic White’s hands but just played his arm, he was onsides and should not have been deemed to have done anything illegal.

“My yellow card was disappointing and it put the team under pressure, but I honestly don’t think it was a yellow card. I clearly played the arm and not the ball, which to my understanding is fine and I would do the same thing again. The same with Willie le Roux’s yellow card, he was trying to intercept the pass, it’s not as if we were doing anything stupid.

“I think our discipline has actually been pretty decent, there have just been a few errors when we have gone off-system. We just need to be a bit more sharp and in the referee’s head a bit more. We know we can’t concede a lot of penalties against the All Blacks or we will really struggle. But the last five times we have played against New Zealand they have been close games,” De Klerk said.

Returning to recent history in the 100^th Test between the two great rivals is perhaps the first thing the Springboks need to do in Townsville on Saturday because De Klerk feels they moved away from the strategies that made them the No.1 side in the world in the two successive losses to Australia.

“Maybe we strayed a little away from how we normally play and that led to errors. We were forcing things a bit and our game-drivers tried to play when it was not on. We fell into the trap of maybe overplaying too much, which puts our forwards under strain. We know we need to be better at that.

“As a team, our main focus is on just getting back on track and hopefully stay in contention to win the Rugby Championship. But we know how to play against the All Blacks and how to capitalise on their weak points. In our last game, at the World Cup, it was basically two kicks that we did not handle, which gave them turnover attack and they scored, that’s when they flourish,” De Klerk said. 

The sweet fragrance of blooming confidence and the reward for hard work put in seems to be permeating through the Proteas batting line-up in Sri Lanka at the moment and South Africa are hopeful they will hit their peak in the third and decisive ODI in Colombo on Tuesday.

The Proteas have posted scores of 286 for six and 283 for six in the two matches thus far. Their defeat in the first ODI was mostly due to some shoddy bowling and fielding. As a measure of their improvement with the bat, of their last 20 innings totals on the subcontinent, only five have been higher.

“Sri Lanka is known for spin bowlers, we were well-aware of that before the tour and a lot of work was put in behind the scenes, especially at our camp in Potchefstroom, which really helped. Coming here, our focus has been on how we face spin. Fortunately all that hard work is paying off, we’ve adapted well and we are playing nicely,” top-order batsman Reeza Hendricks said on Monday.

“We would now love to play our best game in the decider. It’s just about mindset. We played well in the first game but we came up just short, we leaked 15-20 runs too many in the field. The good thing is there are a few guys contributing and we are quite confident with the team we’ve got and the way we’ve been playing.”

Hendricks batted particularly well in the second ODI, coming into the side for the injured regular captain, Temba Bavuma. The 32-year-old, playing his 22^nd ODI, came in at 43 for one in the ninth over and scored at pretty much a run-a-ball from the outset, making the Sri Lankan bowling look pretty friendly as he cruised to 51 off 54 balls.

“I still took some time to get myself in and then I was able to play freely. My role was to keep the intent going and the scoreboard ticking over. I would have loved to go on further though,” Hendricks said.

He most certainly fulfilled his role as he helped increase the run-rate in a second-wicket partnership of 96 with brilliant centurion Janneman Malan.

Speaking of friendly, fast bowler Kagiso Rabada was decidedly unfriendly as he rocked the Sri Lankan reply with two for 16 in his six overs up front. Unfortunately he then sprained his ankle fielding and had to pull out of the rest of the game.

According to team management, Rabada was “progressing well” on Monday and will do a final fitness test before the match on Tuesday.

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.