Ken Borland

Far from being an environment that alienates anyone, the Proteas camp now has a player-driven culture and everyone has bought into the new captaincy ideas of Dean Elgar, coach Mark Boucher said when asked whether the team looked so happy just because they won the Test series against the West Indies or whether there have been off-field changes that have made a difference.

Boucher said the triumph was the result of “a lot of hard work” off the field and some hard chats the team had sitting around the fire in Pretoria on their pre-tour camp.

“When we sat around the fire in Pretoria, the new captain [Elgar] asked some questions about where we are and where we want to go and there were some tough conversations about the necessity of performing for the Proteas badge again. It’s been quite a tough couple of months for certain guys. But the players are now driving the value system they put on the table in our Skukuza culture camp last year, which is why they’re so happy.

“The team have played really well. We have not won away from home for a long time and the belief taken away from that is important. We asked them to play for each other and we’ve seen that, it was really a team effort and we played the big moments very well.

“The best place to learn is in foreign conditions and we learned a lot of lessons in Pakistan. Different conditions are what develops players. The skills have been executed fairly well and I look forward to seeing how we go when we’re put under pressure because then we can judge whether we are really on track,” Boucher said.

The former captain, Quinton de Kock, was the player of the series for his 237 runs at an average of 118, and far from being angry at his demotion, the wicketkeeper/batsman responded with a flurry of runs and was a breath of fresh air in the changeroom as well.

“Quinny’s been through a tough time of late, not scoring the same amount of runs as he’s used to, but he made such an impact on the whole series. While the other batsmen did well to bat time and force the bowlers to come back for third and fourth spells, Quinny has that x-factor that means he can just take the game away from the opposition.

“I’m very happy that he’s in a very good space and he’s been fantastic off the field, funny and lighthearted. And the way he’s kept wicket has been so good too, he’s been very neat and taken some great catches,” Boucher said.

Travelling to the inner city of Johannesburg to play at Ellis Park has never been easy for any visiting team, whether international or domestic, and Bulls coach Jake White was certainly not shocked when his team were upset 34-33 by the Lions in their Rainbow Cup match there at the weekend.

While the Lions were winless and at the bottom of the log, they had been extremely competitive and could easily have won a couple of games already before they hosted the Bulls. It was a potential banana peel and White was wary, with good cause as the Lions rode a superb scrummaging display and the Bulls’ own mistakes to inflict the first loss on the Currie Cup champions since March 26.

“The Lions are always difficult to play against and they had a really good scrum today. It’s not something we can’t fix and we’re learning as coaches as well, what resources we have. But you don’t know how they are going to react under pressure unless they are put in those situations. When you’re winning, you take the good; now we have to take this knock on the chin and learn from it.

“Playing under pressure is the only way you learn how to handle it and we were able to see certain players under pressure today. A lot of our youngsters were under that pressure for the first time and some of the decision-making was a bit wrong. Full credit to the Lions, but it’s not as if we need to reassess everything, this is an opportunity for the team to grow,” White said.

The Bulls actually played well to take a 33-20 lead but then fell asleep and made a host of costly errors.

“We were leading 33-20 with 15 minutes left but then shot ourselves in the foot by things like dropping kick-offs and not finding touch, and then there were the scrums as well. If you can’t get your set-piece right then every penalty just puts you under more pressure. I have to stress how small the margins are in this competition and you can’t afford to drop your guard.

“Although the Lions played really well, we probably lost the game because at 33-20 we did enough to win it. We scored five tries so our attack was not too bad and Nollis Marais has worked really hard on our breakdown work, which has become a point of difference for us. You don’t have to say much about Johan Grobbelaar, Duane Vermeulen and Marco van Staden, but a lot of other guys are also making the right decisions at the rucks,” White said.

While Australia’s panicking cricketers at the Indian Premier League are perhaps paying their penance for refusing to tour South Africa earlier this year, Cricket South Africa and their players in the league have adopted a more measured approach with it being left up to the individual whether they want to come home or not.

India are facing a massive outbreak of Covid-19, with the largest number of daily infections recorded anywhere in the world since the start of the pandemic, and on Monday it was confirmed that the virus has breached the IPL’s biobubble. Monday’s match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Bangalore Royal Challengers was postponed due to two Kolkata players testing positive.

There have also been unconfirmed reports of positive tests in the Chennai Super Kings camp and amongst the groundstaff at Delhi’s Arun Jaitley Stadium, one of six venues the T20 competition is using.

A handful of Australian cricketers have already pulled out of the IPL, but with their government now instituting a travel ban, threatening a five-year prison sentence for anyone entering the country who has been to India recently, their remaining players have been agitating for a chartered flight to be organised to fly them home.

There has also been speculation that the England and Wales Cricket Board will order their players in India to come home.

But CSA will neither organise a chartered flight nor tell the South African players what to do, chief medical officer Dr Shuaib Manjra told The Citizen on Monday.

“We communicated with the players last week and told them that CSA will support them whichever way they want to handle this, the decision is their’s whether to stay and play, or whether to come home. This event is outside of their CSA contracts, which is why it’s up to them. We will offer them advice, but we are not going to spend millions on a chartered flight,” Manjra said.

While South Africans might be saying ‘ooh la la’ at seeing karma in action for the Australian and English cricketers, the health and safety of the 10 South Africans at the IPL is obviously of prime importance.

Five of those players – Kagiso Rabada, Quinton de Kock, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi and Anrich Nortje – have CSA national contracts.

With the coronavirus ripping through India at a rate of more than 3000 deaths a day, the pandemic now hitting the IPL amidships could cost the BCCI hundreds of millions of dollars if the tournament has to be called off. India’s hosting of the T20 World Cup at the end of October must also now be in doubt.

It is not known whether Cricket South Africa’s Members Council mourned their earlier delaying tactics and scheming, but on Tuesday, as their deadline to accept the governance changes proposed by the Interim Board passed, they requested another extension from Sports Minister Nathi Mtethwa.

Mthethwa had given the Members Council until 5pm on Tuesday to show cause why he should not take action against CSA following their failure at the weekend to accept a majority independent board and an independent chairperson. From an interview the sports minister gave to a radio station on Tuesday night, it seems the Members Council did respond on Tuesday evening.

It is believed Mthethwa will decide on appropriate action overnight.

But having dragged out negotiations for so long, and then finally tried to negotiate at the last hour, it would be understandable if the Minister were to give them short shrift.

A Members Council statement issued earlier on Tuesday is likely to form the basis of their last-ditch appeal to Mthethwa. In the statement, they said they did not have enough time to study and react to the final draft of the Memorandum of Incorporation. They said the Interim Board only gave them the draft less than a day before the Special General Meeting.

The Members Council were not happy that the issue of Sascoc not allowing the CSA constitution to be amended without their approval has not yet been resolved and that the MoI makes provision for just four non-independent directors and not the five that had allegedly been agreed upon earlier. Some provincial presidents are also not willing to accept an independent chairperson of the board and the Interim Board also being the nominations committee for the independent directors.

But Gauteng and North-West issued a statement on Tuesday distancing themselves from the rest of the Members Council and supporting a majority independent board and an independent chairperson. Their stance is believed to be supported by at least three other provinces and Northerns also look likely to accept the amendments to the constitution.