Ken Borland

Ace South Africa spinner Tabraiz Shamsi does not believe the Proteas bowling attack are forgoing skill in T20 cricket and the improvement they have shown in their fixtures in the West Indies, winning the last two games for a 2-1 lead in the five-match series, certainly bears him out.

Shamsi, the No.1 ranked bowler in international T20 cricket, has spearheaded South Africa’s comeback after a mauling in the first match, and has taken four for 56 in his 12 overs in the series. He was man of the match in Tuesday night’s encounter as he took two for 13 in four phenomenal overs, as the Proteas just managed to defend 168 in Grenada.

Left-arm orthodox spinner George Linde was man of the match in the second T20 and South Africa’s pacemen have steadily improved as they have found a fuller length, with Anrich Nortje particularly impressive and Kagiso Rabada holding his nerve in the last game as he defended 15 in the final over.

“We’re still learning as a team because we don’t have much experience together as a unit. But the skills are not missing, I firmly believe our bowling unit is up there with the best. The same with our batting, they just need to get into their rhythm. I think the batting has been quite good in the last two games.

“The way we’ve bounced back with the ball though against the West Indies batsmen is very pleasing, they’re hitting sixes but we’ve seen a big improvement in how we are nailing the execution from our analysis. In that first game, I think the rain kept juicing the pitch up which allowed the ball to skid on nicely for the batsmen,” Shamsi said.

While Shamsi sticks to the Proteas’ hymn sheet with his chorale of “just trying to land the ball in the right areas”, there is no doubt the 31-year-old is reaping the benefits of detailed analysis of the individual West Indies batsmen and his feistiness that suggests he is a fast bowler trapped in a spinner’s body.

“I like to do a lot of homework, I’ve always spent a lot of time on analysis. I go back to the videos to see how they play me and I ask myself ‘did I bowl well then?’ I always just try to stay a step ahead with my game. But T20 cricket is a different beast, the West Indies are very strong team, they basically play T20 for a living, and I might go for 60 in the next game.

“We can’t take them lightly given the amount of experience they have, their four most capped players probably have more runs and wickets together than the whole of our team. But it’s all about preparation for us,” Shamsi said.

The scent of mourning hung around South African cricket on Tuesday with the news that their much-loved, and longest-serving manager, Goolam Rajah, had passed away, another victim of Covid-19.

The 74-year-old Rajah had been on a ventilator for the last couple of months in a Johannesburg hospital.

In many ways, Rajah was the glue as the Proteas made their way back into international cricket in 1991 and went through tumultuous times such as the 1999 World Cup semi-final tie, the fall of Hansie Cronje, and further World Cup disappointments in 2003, 2007 and 2011 (the year he retired); as well as the highs of becoming the No.1 side in Test cricket through numerous memorable wins on tour.

Apart from being the most meticulous man, his logistical and man-management skills were phenomenal, Rajah was the epitome of a gentleman. Softly-spoken, but with a warm smile, any time spent in his company would leave one feeling better for the experience.

A qualified pharmacist, Rajah was the perfect manager. Extremely organised, with a high sense of integrity, he was also a great servant of the game.

Former Proteas captain and coach Gary Kirsten summed up Rajah perfectly in his autobiography:

“Goolam was probably the most unsung hero I have ever encountered. I can categorically state that I never met a more selfless person in the entire decade we were together. Goolam’s approach to his job was to add as much value and make life as pleasant and as trouble-free as possible for the people around him. His own goals and ambitions were never apparent.

“The solitary target he set himself on tour was to allow his team to focus all their mental and physical energy on cricket. If they were worried or distracted by anything else, Goolam treated it as a personal failure on his part. He allowed no detail to escape his attention and he was a shrewd deal-maker too. He was generous to a fault and there were times I wished Goolam would just take half-an-hour for himself,” Kirsten said.

Garreth Ewing has enjoyed an excellent trophy-winning run at both provincial and club level, making him an obvious choice as national men’s coach and now he faces his greatest challenge as he takes the South African team to the Olympic Games.

Ewing first made his name as the coach of the dominant University of Johannesburg side and stints as coach of both the Southern Gauteng men’s and women’s teams brought success at that level too. Parallel to that, Ewing has been involved at national level since 2004, as a selector, video analyst, team manager, high-performance trainer and assistant coach. Some of his most notable work, however, has been with the SA U21 side, taking them to an IPT final for the first time and securing an outstanding 10^th-place finish in the 2016 Junior World Cup in India.

And now he is the head coach of the senior men’s side, preparing for the Olympic Games. And probably no-one could have more knowledge than Ewing of all the steps in the pipeline, and all the players who have made that journey, as South Africa look to shine in Tokyo.

The Olympics will be a formidable challenge though as they are grouped with world champions Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada in Pool B. But Ewing reckons some of his best work has been done under immense pressure.

“I’m very lucky to have learnt so much from all those different roles, it’s a huge advantage and I’ve coached a lot at provincial level, at every age-group and for both genders. When I first started, I was a bit hard-arsed and focused on results. But I’ve shifted more towards getting the process right, getting the players to perform at the right times, like in knockout games. I think I’m quite good at that, I think I’m calm under pressure and that would be my greatest strength. When there’s turmoil inside, it’s important how you communicate with the players.

“If you’re going to the Olympics, you expect it to be daunting, and all of our opponents, except for Canada, are ranked in the top six for good reason. Canada are in the top-10 and have earned that. But if we were in the other pool [Australia, Argentina, India, Spain, New Zealand & Japan] it would be exactly the same. The teams we are playing against have styles that we are familiar with though, so that may be an advantage,” Ewing says.

Although Ewing self-deprecatingly says he was always “the worst player in quite good teams”, he played Premier League hockey for many years for both Randburg and RAU. But he was never a sleeper when it came to the desire to coach; that yearning first began when he was at Randpark High School.

Which is where his nickname of “Springdog” originates.

“It goes all the way back to high school. We were playing at Springs Boys High and I managed to singlehandedly bugger up a whole game, which knocked us out of a tournament. It’s a helluva long drive on a bus from Springs back to Randburg and the team called me ‘Springsdog’ all the way back and it stuck.

“But I was very influenced by Garth Neilson [a leading figure in both education and coaching] and so I became a student coach to earn some pocket money. I started to take it a bit more seriously when I got to Varsity and was playing first team for RAU. And then I was very involved for a very long time at UJ – from 1999 to 2019. The set-up there was so good and we had extremely strong players, so my profile increased.

“I did enjoy playing but I liked coaching more and I can remember the turning point came when I was double-booked – I had league games as both a player and a coach at the same time, and the decision was pretty simple. I haven’t picked up a hockey stick in anger in a long time,” Ewing said.

Just a look at the prices of hockey sticks these days will give an idea of the challenges facing South Africa’s largely amateur set-up in taking on fully professional teams on the international stage. Without much official backing from either SA Hockey or Sascoc, they had to resort to crowdfunding to raise the R3.5 million required to prepare and go to Tokyo.

But a wonderful new relationship forged with the award-winning digital brand specialists Matchkit.co has proven very fruitful and Ewing believes it points to the way forward for South African hockey.

“Matchkit have been a really good partner. The money raised is a drop in the ocean compared to what we need to remain competitive going forward, but the short-term opportunities have been very favourable and it’s very encouraging. I don’t think we have put enough value in PR, and working with those professionals has been really refreshing,” Ewing says.

The lack of proper marketing of the national hockey teams bugs the keen cyclist and golfer because he worked in public relations before he became a full-time coach.

And it is not the national team that pays his salary either. Like many other hockey coaches, Ewing has had to go back to school to earn a living.

“Since I was around 30 I’ve really tried to do fulltime coaching as much as possible and I’m very privileged to work in a wonderful sports department at St John’s College. That gives me the flexibility to work at national level.

Before that I was fortunate to have two stints overseas. The first was as a player/coach in the UK at Holcombe. I wasn’t really ready then but I learnt from my mistakes. Then I took a post for a year at the University of North Carolina, before spending two years at North-Eastern University in Boston. They had very strong operations environments, big budgets and extremely hard-working athletes.”

The two things Ewing wishes South African hockey could have in the near future are for the national teams to spend more time together and for club hockey to become more professional.

“An element of centralisation would allow for more time together as a national team. Even three months spread out through the year would be a help, it would make such a difference from a high-performance point of view.

“I would also love to see our club leagues become more professional and serious. Our top clubs nationally should be a bit more aware of the big world out there that their top players will be facing. I love the social aspect of hockey, that’s a huge part of the game, but performance is not taken seriously enough.

“We don’t train enough, we get away with practice twice a week and we don’t do any conditioning work. I don’t want to lose the social side of hockey, but we also need to focus more on high-performance,” Ewing says.

Not that he believes his Proteas minnows are going to be squashed like bugs in Tokyo.

“There was really intense competition for places in the squad and I’m very optimistic that we have a good core of players. There are definitely enough young guys who can go to the next Olympics and probably the next one after that as well, plus a core of experienced players who have been consistent. It’s a pretty balanced squad.

“When I committed to high-performance coaching, I decided I wanted to go to the Olympics, so it’s a personal milestone for me. As a professional you always want to test yourself against the very best, so the Olympics and the World Cup are that.

“So it’s a big thing for me but it’s not about me. I’m very humbled to have the opportunity and I’m very aware of the significance and how important it is for the players. So I feel a lot of responsibility on my shoulders,” Ewing said.

Probably only the most ardent of South African rugby fans will know the name Dugald Macdonald, but he is Springbok number 470 having first slipped the famous Green and Gold jersey over his head in a third-floor room of the President Hotel in Sea Point, on 7 June 1974, while a typical Cape Town cold front splattered rain on to the balcony outside.

Macdonald would wear the jersey that had captured his imagination only once in a Test match, and that was actually a fortnight later when he played in the second Test against the British Lions at Loftus Versfeld. That’s because he was a reserve for the first Test at Newlands, and in those days the replacements sat in the stadium because the ‘bench’ was hardly ever used.

In a disastrous 3-0 series loss for the Springboks, he was destined to become one of the unfortunate one-Test wonders as the national selectors panicked and chose 36 different players for the four Tests, the final match in Johannesburg being drawn. According to veteran rugby writer John Bishop, who covered the entire tour, “Dugald should have been there from start to finish, he was one hell of a player. One of those guys who were simply forgotten about in the chaos of the 1974 tour, a powerful number eight with excellent ball skills. He should have been a Bok great”.

Macdonald has just released a book about the whole experience – the series being one of the most traumatic in South African rugby – called Ja-Nee. It is an engrossing look into the past, a study in how the mentality of Springbok rugby was built and how those attitudes still influence it today, but as with all great writing, it also brings applications and warnings for the future.

And it’s not just about rugby either. It provides a fascinating snapshot of White South African life in the 1970s. It is evocative, humorous and thought-provoking all at the same time.

The sun was shining brightly on that midwinter’s day in Pretoria, but Macdonald makes a decent argument for the Springboks not so much being panicky as arrogant. They were convinced that the Lions could not possibly be better than them and a few changes would sort out their scrum and allow them to dominate possession.

It’s a recurring story in our rugby: Back in 1992 when we returned from isolation and expected to still be better than Australia and New Zealand because “the Currie Cup is the strongest competition in the world” and instead lost both Tests comfortably. And then just last week the Bulls travelled from Pretoria to Italy, everyone back home confident that they would be returning from their jaunt with the Rainbow Cup, only to be played off the park by Benetton Treviso.

When South African rugby retreats into the laager mentality, we tend to become dangerously insular whenever we have been cut off from international trends.

Macdonald was not your typical Springbok of the 1970s, he was a city boy, schooled in Cape Town, he was an Oxford Blue and also played for Parma in Italy and Toulouse in France. Some might say paranoid 1970s South Africa was never likely to give him many more than one Test cap.

This broader world view has allowed him to identify an over-reliance on physicality as being a possible albatross around the necks of the current world champions, who have not played since outmuscling England in the World Cup final in Japan in November 2019. While the Springboks have been inactive, the rest of the world has been plotting.

“If we understood the roots of South African rugby then we’ll know why physicality has actually been responsible for many of our defeats. I fear we are winding up for another one because physicality is all the Lions are talking about. But if we don’t have technique and lucidity, physicality can only get you so far.

“Whenever we have just played inklim rugby it has been the beginning of the end, it’s been a problem down the years, and the same thing is growing again. Physicality is great at the right time and in the right place, but so much thought needs to go into it otherwise it’s helluva easy to get carried away. Fortunately we have really good leaders in the game now,” Macdonald told me.

*Ja-Nee is published by Flyleaf Publishing and is widely available in bookstores and online.