Ken Borland

Sharks eighthman Sikhumbuzo Notshe certainly has the x-factor gene in abundance, but he says his focus is on the basics as he continues his comeback from serious injury. It is an attitude the profligate Sharks team in general would probably benefit from after their embarrassing lack of finishing cost them against Edinburgh last weekend.

Notshe ruptured his patella last May and only returned to action at the beginning of February. Starting in the Currie Cup, his form has been good enough to see him reinstalled as the Sharks’ first-choice eighthman in the United Rugby Championship side.

“There are always a lot of extras one can focus on in rugby and I know I’ve got x-factor,” Notshe said on Tuesday. “But that’s not my focus going into games.

“I just try and get into as many battles as I can, make as many tackles as I can, make sure I set the maul properly if that’s my job.

“I just try and do the industrial work first, my other abilities will come naturally. In terms of my best, I’m not there yet and I am still working hard.

“The road to recovery was tough, but I had the best rehab and support I could get here at the Sharks in Dean Macquet [head physio] and Jimmy Wright [head biokineticist]. But it was a helluva road,” Notshe said.

In terms of fixing the disgraceful finishing shown in their last match, when they spent much of the game in the Edinburgh 22 but could only score one try, Notshe said you needed to look at individual errors, which can only be fixed on the training field.

“Our conversion rate in the 22 has not been great, we know how to get there but we just can’t finish off our opportunities.

“It comes down to individual errors and we need to clean up our own personal games. You can only do that through time in the saddle, on the training pitch. We need to put ourselves in those situations over and over again.

“And you can never make the weather an excuse. We’re playing at home, in front of our people, so we must always have energy. We can control that but we can’t control the weather.

“We don’t want to be a side that makes excuses and you can’t wait for a sunny day in Durban. We must always express ourselves,” Notshe said.

Cricket South Africa have been de-recognised by Minister of Sport Nathi Mthethwa in a move that will have serious consequences for the sport in this country.

The failure of the Members Council to accept a new constitution that would institute a majority independent board and an independent chair has led Mthethwa to take drastic action. He and the Interim Board he put in place at CSA have been negotiating with the Members Council since the end of January to try and get the new MoI approved.

The Members Council have called a meeting for Saturday afternoon and there have been suggestions that, far from finally caving in, they will look to take legal action against the Minister to try and prevent him from invoking his powers as laid out in the Sports Act. But the fact that they have to get approval from the Interim Board in order to launch any legal action suggests that route is also denied to them.

Losing the recognition of government will have major effects on CSA, both financially and in terms of the Proteas men’s and women’s teams.

It is believed many of their sponsorship deals will have clauses in their contracts making them dependent on CSA being the recognised body running cricket in this country. In these economically constrained times of Covid, sponsors looking for an excuse to pull out now have a watertight reason. It is also believed that four potential sponsors that were lined up to come on board later this year have now withdrawn their interest.

The International Cricket Council have been kept up to date on developments in the crisis by Mthethwa and they have been happy to take a back seat because the Sports Minister’s involvement is seen as being a bid to improve the governance of the sport.

But Mthethwa’s de-recognition of CSA now means they are not allowed to use the Proteas emblem or the national flag. Any teams they choose will not represent the country and, in fact, government could deny the teams the right to leave the country or block overseas sides from entering.

Rebel touring teams have been a controversial part of South Africa’s cricket history, and now the national side itself could be considered a rebel team.

It is at this stage that the ICC will have to take action because technically any match involving the ‘Proteas’ would be a friendly, unofficial contest. That would seriously detract from the international game.

The other major blow that will strike CSA will be the cancellation of broadcast deals. The amounts being paid for broadcast rights have been decreasing recently, mirroring a lessening of interest in the product, and the current broadcast deals will be premised on the actual Proteas playing proper international cricket.

No broadcaster will be willing to part with their millions of dollars to show what will amount to friendlies because no cricket involving or played in South Africa will have official standing.

Eight teams in the top division and promotion/relegation are two good adjustments that Cricket South Africa have made to their domestic structure, but the fact that, from 2023/24, one or two teams will automatically climb from Division II to Division I is going to ask serious questions about the quality in depth of the competitions.

While the complacency that comes from teams being entrenched in the top division is not good for the game, automatic promotion/relegation means there is no guarantee that the team/s coming up are going to be better than the team going down. There should be a playoff game to make sure the top division is not being perpetually weakened.

And a lowering of standards seems inevitable because the team/s being demoted is going to lose sponsors and players, while the team/s coming up from Division II will not have the resources of the other Division I teams. Without television exposure, and the fact none of the Division II sides are based in major centres, there is not going to be a level playing field. In fact, the inequality is already written into the system because the Division I teams that will start playing next season will each receive R9.3 million from CSA and can contract 16 players with a maximum salary of R1.035 million.

Division II teams, however, will probably only receive around R5 million, can only contract 11 players with a maximum salary of R600 000 if private sponsorship can top up the CSA-prescribed maximum of R400 000. So it is clear that leading players are not going to be signing for Division II outfits.

The only feasible way a Division II side is going to avoid being relegated from Division I after just one season is if most of the players from the team they are replacing jump ship and join them. But those are the same players who were not good enough to avoid relegation anyway, so South African domestic cricket is set to be trapped in a merry-go-round, or more accurately a vicious circle, in which the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and there is precious little development of either players or teams.

The need for stability in the South African game has been the consistent call from the office of the South African Cricketers Association CEO Andrew Breetzke, but this new system does not seem to be bringing that. Even less so if the disastrous decision for two teams to be automatically promoted every season is made.

There are still so many questions surrounding the new domestic structure, not least of them being whether it is one or two teams that will be promoted every season and how the mechanism of promotion/relegation works. Will there be separate teams going up and down in each format or will some sort of averaging take place so that one team moves in all three formats?

These questions were also sent to those responsible for the communications portfolio at CSA but no response has been received. One would think for a decision of this magnitude to be passed, there would be a set of documents detailing the restructuring task team’s position on all these matters in order for the Members Council and the Interim Board to meet their fiduciary duties when approving the changes, but no-one seems to have seen them. At the moment they are as mysterious as the Fundudzi Report.

It is a massive change to make based on what, judging by what has been revealed so far by CSA, are flimsy reasons and little concrete financial planning. A good idea is at the kernel of the change, but, as has often been the case, CSA don’t seem to have considered the unintended consequences.

The process of doing away with the franchises and going back to provinces is a complex administrative task that includes dissolving companies, setting up new ones, sorting out all the tax implications and putting in place an entirely new contracting model for players.

And it all needs to be done within the next month because that’s when player contracts have to be finalised.

So far, the restructuring does not seem to make sense on many levels and the cynic in me believes the only reason the 15-strong Members Council have pushed this through is so the tail can wag the dog and two of the smaller provinces get to join the six major centres at the R9.3 million big table on a rotational basis.

Not making use of the facilities at your disposal is one of the serious crimes of the sporting world, and Proteas captain Heinrich Klaasen said his team wasting a handful of their 20 overs cost them the match in the first T20 against Pakistan and is what they have to put right in the games on Saturday and Sunday in Lahore if they are to win the series.

South Africa fell three runs short in the first T20 in a gutsy effort, but they would have expected to chase down 170 on a good pitch for batting. But having been 51 without loss after the six powerplay overs, the Proteas then lost their way, but the next six overs saw them slip to 83 for three, leaving them to score 87 runs off 48 balls. Which was too steep a task.

“I thought that Pakistan were 10 runs short and I was very happy with our effort in the field and to be chasing 170. But it was just four or five overs in the middle where we made life very difficult for ourselves. Usman Qadir bowled two overs and had two for four in that middle phase and that put us on the back foot in the middle overs.

“Hopefully we can lift our intensity in that middle phase and then we’ll get over the line. Our standards are high, we don’t like losing although we played a good game of cricket. One or two bowling things didn’t go to plan, we need to reassess one or two overs, but I was generally very pleased with how the bowling went, and I was quite pleased with the fielding, but not the two dropped catches at the end,” Klaasen said after his first match as Proteas captain.

Among the positives in the batting was that Janneman Malan and Reeza Hendricks came off as an opening pair. Malan blazed his way to 44 off 29 balls before becoming Qadir’s first victim as he was made to look silly by a superb delivery, while Hendricks batted as the anchor and made it through to the 18^th over, scoring 54 off 42 balls. Some critics have described Hendricks’ innings as being too slow, but with wickets tumbling at the other end he obviously saw his role as being to bat for as long as possible until someone could form another partnership with him.

“I was very happy with the start and Reeza only faced 12 balls in the first seven overs, so Janneman was always going to score more quickly. Unfortunately Janneman got out when we could have completely taken the powerplay away from them, then we lost the game between overs seven and 10. We didn’t do too badly tonight, but we just slipped up in the crucial moments.

“But that’s part of the learning process and the key this weekend is to be patient and take control of those moments. Hopefully the new guys will use the opportunity to showcase their skills, we need to be adaptable and we will chop and change a few things,” Klaasen said.