Ken Borland

Tabraiz Shamsi put the disappointments of the 2016/17 season behind him and was one of the star players for the Multiply Titans as they won two of the three domestic trophies on offer this season, so much so that he was named the Players’ Player of the Year at the franchise’s awards evening.

The left-arm wrist-spinner’s phenomenal form in limited-overs cricket – he was the leading wicket-taker in both the Momentum One-Day Cup (26 @ 14.84, economy 4.50) and Ram Slam T20 Challenge (16 wickets, economy 7.00) – was obviously the major reason he won the prestigious award, but he also made a valuable contribution in the triumphant Sunfoil Series campaign, taking 13 wickets in three matches.

His Momentum One-Day Cup display included one of the greatest wicket-taking runs in South African day/night cricket history as he took 20 wickets in six games.

“It was a very, very successful season and to be the top wicket-taker in two competitions was really amazing for me. Last season there were quite a few disappointments, so it was important I had a good mindset this season because I was a bit disheartened. The best way to do that is to keep performing. To play just the one Test in 2016 was one of the disappointments, although Keshav Maharaj has done an exceptional job since then,” Shamsi said.

At the age of 28, Shamsi is still developing his game and is still a few years away from the age a spinner is usually considered to be hitting his peak.

“I feel in a good space and I’m still very young for a spinner and I still have a lot to learn. But I feel comfortable now at international level. Even against India, who are great players of spin bowling, I felt relatively comfortable. So it was a massive boost doing well against them in unfavourable conditions for a spinner,” Shamsi said.

Shamsi played two of the ODIs and all three of the T20 internationals against India and, added to his experience of playing in both the Caribbean Premier League and the Indian Premier League, it means he is settling in nicely at international level.

“I went to the Caribbean Premier League as an uncapped player and it changed my life to get noticed there and then be signed up for the IPL. There’s a very negative perception of these T20 tournaments in general, which is a bit unfair. They brought me recognition and playing against world-class opposition in those leagues means I felt a lot calmer when I played for South Africa.

“I’ve been selected more for white-ball cricket for South Africa and I’ve bowled to all those international batsmen before. If I’ve made mistakes then I’ve learnt from them and if I can dominate them in the T20 league then I will be able to take that edge into international cricket. I’m a big believer in having the mental edge,” Shamsi said.

Part of the Titans’ success this season has been deploying both Shamsi and leg-spinner Shaun von Berg in matches, and Shamsi believes they dovetail well.

“We’re very spoilt to have Shaun, who is a great spinner, too and it’s quite exciting for a team to have two quality wrist-spinners. Generally I’m more attacking and he does the holding role more, but I also only went for 3.3 runs-per-over in the Sunfoil Series, so we complement each other, I feel comfortable doing both jobs.

“I still dream of playing more Test cricket and there is a sub-continent tour coming up, so I haven’t given up on that. I didn’t play a lot of four-day cricket last season, so this year was about finding my groove again. I’m confident I have a lot to offer with the red ball as well,” Shamsi said.

Having risen from a low ebb, Shamsi will continue to bring the sort of positive attitude to his game that usually brings results.

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Mark Charlton has been promoted to high performance manager for the Titans, having won four trophies in the last three years with the Northerns team, and he says the rapid progress of players who have spent time in the amateur provincial competitions shows how important the second tier of domestic cricket is for the pipeline.

The Grahamstown product was understandably delighted with the recent news that Cricket South Africa CEO Haroon Lorgat had said they were aiming to uplift the semi-professional level rather than create a seventh franchise.

“If you look at the senior provincial teams and what they do in the South African landscape, it’s a brilliant job. Guys like Aiden Markram and Heinrich Klaasen spent four seasons with me at Northerns and then after one franchise season they’re on the verge of the national squad. A guy like Lungi Ngidi spent one-and-a-half seasons with me, one-and-a-half with the Titans and then made the national team. Tabraiz Shamsi is another guy who played a lot of semi-pro cricket, there are a lot of guys like that.

“The profile of that level needs to be lifted, the Africa Cup has been brilliant in that respect, we need to raise the level of their exposure. So it’s great news if CSA back that, because the second tier produces some really hard, tough cricket. We [Northerns] tested ourselves against Leicestershire recently, with just nine of our regular players and we beat them, plus we’ve beaten the whole Ireland team before. So the standard is pretty good and we do our job when it comes to producing players,” Charlton told The Citizen.

Charlton subscribes to the belief that good people make better sportsmen, and says a key part of Northerns’ success was ensuring the players were as honourable off the field as they were excellent on it.

“We tried five years ago to put the building blocks in place with a code of behaviour and ethics that was about how we were seen and how we saw ourselves. It was our core policy, about how we operate. The basis of the team was very young and inexperienced back then, but I felt they could be champions and they’ve showed it.

“Since that start five years ago, we’ve produced eight Titans players. My job was to look at young talent and take them to the next level. In terms of selection, I tried to stay as consistent as possible, to give guys opportunities to perform. We’re very lucky with players from the local universities and schools, there’s always a lot of quality coming through. Cobus Pienaar, Shershan Naidoo, Markram, Klaasen and captain Thomas Kaber have all been brilliant and I’ve just tried to keep players together and moving in the same direction,” Charlton said.

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A top-class season resulted in a handful of trophies for Quinton de Kock at the Cricket South Africa Awards over the weekend, and the wicketkeeper/batsman said he is approaching his game with a new maturity that befits his evolution into one of the senior players.

“I think I’ve slowly grown up and I’m being more mature about the game now, being more clever in the way I do things and prepare. I’m going to keep trying to learn and hopefully become even better. I don’t know as much as guys like AB and Hash, they are true geniuses and they teach me.

“I’m really focusing on my batting because in the next couple of years we’re going to have to start replacing some senior batsmen and I will have a more senior role. Sometimes you just need to do things yourself and I think I’m a fairly fast learner. Sometimes it’s all about trying to read what the bowler is trying to do or reading the situation,” De Kock said after he was named the overall Cricketer of the Year.

“To get all these individual accolades is nice, it feels good, but being able to just change the momentum or do something to keep the momentum for your team is the ultimate.”

The ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year is now off to England to try and help the Proteas to Champions Trophy glory. Although South Africa go into the tournament as the number one ranked side, suggesting they have the inside lane to success, De Kock downplayed expectations.

“We have a lot of backing at every ICC tournament, it seems whenever we go into a big tournament we’re always the favourites, but we don’t want to say too much about that. We don’t want to be the favourites, we just want to go and do our best, take it game-by-game,” De Kock said.

In addition to the main award, De Kock was also named Test Cricketer of the Year and ODI Cricketer of the Year, was honoured by his peers by being named SA Players’ Player of the Year and by the fans as the SA Fans Player of the Year.

De Kock scored 761 Test runs last season at an average of 54.35 and 805 ODI runs at an average of 50.31 and a strike-rate of 115.

The thrilling Kagiso Rabada stole the show at the CSA Awards this week by claiming most of the trophies for himself with the same ruthlessness he displays in targeting the batsman’s wicket, but the most memorable performance by a fast bowler, for me, came the night before at the 25 Years of Unity celebration when Vincent Barnes spoke movingly about the challenges he had to face as a cricketer whose career was ruined by Apartheid.

Barnes is currently the high performance manager for Cricket South Africa, having previously served for many years as the national team’s bowling coach. But he was also arguably the greatest cricketer in the non-racial ranks during the decade before 1991’s formation of the United Cricket Board and the return to international cricket.

The pitches were notoriously poor on their side of the divide – the Apartheid government certainly wasn’t bothered with providing facilities for the majority back then – but Barnes’ figures stand head and shoulders above everyone else in his generation: 323 wickets at an average of just 11.95!

The injustices of Apartheid meant Barnes had to work doubly hard just to play cricket and the passion he has for the game overcame the fact that there was no higher outlet for his talents. But the 56-year-old has seldom spoken of those frustrations – unlike some of the privileged set who were denied international cricket due to isolation – and instead focused on passing on his knowledge to the new, unified generation of South African cricketers.

The greats of White cricket were also acknowledged at the celebration, but it was Barnes’ story of overcoming the odds which was the most poignant for me.

As good as the awards dinner was the next evening, the shadow of sports minister Fikile Mbalula’s enormous ego and Donald Trump-like “leadership” did hang over it a bit for me. I am sad that Cricket South Africa’s response to the increase in pressure from the sports minister for a faster transformation pace, purely intended to put the spotlight on himself in this election year, has been to kowtow to a man who is all bluster and no positive action.

First we had HD Ackerman shamefully removed from the hosting duties because he is taking up a job in Australia (Derek Alberts did a fine job standing in), and then the announcement that quotas will be formally introduced at national level. At least that ends the dishonest sham that resulted in disasters like last year’s World Cup semifinal.

As if to really drive home the point that CSA have worked harder on transformation than any other code, Rabada then takes home half-a-dozen awards.

What was miserable Mbalula’s response? – a tweet that read “Congratulatons! Kagiso Rabada, I sincerely believe you not gonna disappear after being used like all others who came bfo”.