Ken Borland

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.

The South African women’s cricket team’s hopes of playing internationally this year seem to be crumbling into dust with no real effort being made by the Ministry of Sport, Arts and Culture to pay anything more than lip-service to their stated intention of uplifting women’s sport.

On Tuesday Cricket South Africa were forced to turn down an invitation from world champions England to play five women’s ODIs and two T20 internationals next month due to government not being willing to relax their international travel restrictions.

That would be understandable if it weren’t for the fact that the England and Wales Cricket Board had offered a chartered flight with all necessary health protocols to fly the Proteas team over. Government have also already granted certain sportsmen permission to travel overseas and compete. Repatriation flights and some business travel have also been allowed.

“It is frustrating that another opportunity for our Momentum Proteas to play against top-quality opposition has again had to be cancelled, but as always the safety of our players and support staff is the prime consideration, ” CSA director of cricket, Graeme Smith, said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Clare Connor, the managing director of England women’s cricket, sounded even more frustrated.

“I am immensely disappointed. We have been committed from the outset to deliver the same bio-secure standards for both men’s and women’s international cricket, an investment that included exclusive hotel use for teams, chartered flights and medical provisions. An ECB team, with support from the county ground in Derby, has created a dedicated behind-closed-doors environment to host all of our women’s internationals,” Connor said.

While the Ministry did not respond to a query for comment, they have been users of punitive measures against sporting federations that were not in their good books before. When CSA appeared before the sports portfolio committee recently, they were castigated by Minister Nathi Mthethwa for their “all-White management”.

President Chris Nenzani and acting CEO Jacques Faul have since resigned, but it would be no surprise if the ministry, often ill-informed on events on the inside of sporting organisations, have now also jumped on the anti-Smith bandwagon and are trying to make his life more difficult.

Recently-retired Proteas hero JP Duminy was first chosen for South Africa in 2004 and he says the honour of first representing his national team was spoilt by the “eye-opening” divisions he saw in the squad back then.

“I acknowledge that when I made my first-class debut for Western Province in 2002, the main reason I was selected was not necessarily based on performance, I was 17 years old and seen as a talented youngster with potential. I wasn’t a victim in the cricket structures, I got opportunity based on the colour of my skin, that kickstarted my career and two-and-a-half years later I was representing South Africa.

“My family and I were ecstatic but my experience on that 2004 tour of Sri Lanka was quite an eye-opener, the team was so fragmented, all in different groupings. I needed to find my comfort zone because I was very fortunate in my upbringing that I never really experienced Apartheid, my family shielded me. So I came into the national team all excited and wanting to engage. But the tour did not go well and I was left out for a while.

“We had no idea what it meant to come together and represent something bigger than ourselves, we all just gravitated to our own cultural groups. Outside the game, we were certainly segregated. I wanted to explore new relationships, asking people ‘Can I go out to dinner with you?’ You need your team-mates to be successful and it was only in 2010 that we took cognisance of that,” Duminy told a recent Ahmed Kathrada Foundation webinar on racism in cricket.

Duminy’s graduation to top-class Proteas batsman came on the 2008/9 tour of Australia and although he admits to probably not fulfilling his true potential in Test cricket, he became one of South Africa’s best and most enduring white-ball cricketers. He was there in the thick of things when the Proteas changed their culture to become more inclusive and embrace diversity under the captaincy of Graeme Smith.

“We had a culture camp in which Ahmed Kathrada himself shared his experiences. Those were the kind of stories we needed to hear to understand where we came from. Even now, people have probably still not healed and we can’t move on until we acknowledge that people have been hurt. How Lungi Ngidi was treated speaks volumes for what still happens in this country.

“I played 326 games for my country so I had my opportunity. People obviously saw a lot of ability and you can ask ‘Did I fulfil my talent?’ Probably not in Test cricket, but the white-ball numbers are there. I have seen things happen, just not necessarily to me. But I have been on the field when others have been emotionally abused in how they were spoken to.

“An example was batting with Ashwell Prince in a provincial game and he received harsh words, including the K-word. But the type of character he is, it just fuelled him to show them what he can do. Why I did not speak up is an important reflection for me and it’s probably because I was in a fortunate position, I was benefiting. I need to take responsibility for that,” Duminy said.

The elegant left-hander now wants to nurture grassroots talent through his JP21 Foundation and he says transformation needs to move away from merely ticking boxes.

“Transformation has become a humungous topic but do we really understand what it means? A tick-box scenario means the game is not going to transform, that’s an external focus and it needs to be internal, hearts need to transform. Transformation represents opportunity, not just a name on a sheet of paper, which unfortunately has been the government approach.

“The foundation used to have a bursary scheme but I’ve come to realise that is not the way to go because it takes those kids out of their comfort zone. We need to plough back into their own communities, ensure they have better facilities and coaching. There is not enough focus on grassroots and we are trying to revive the game in local communities. There are millions spent on transformation and these funds need to be used properly,” Duminy said.