The sound of leather on willow; the sound of summer. The Test cricket season seemed to have arrived a little too early this year. A random late October morning, preceded by Test matches at Kingsmead in Durban and St George’s Park in Gqeberha, saw the Proteas at Newlands for what became the deciding match of the Test series against Australia.
Both Kingsmead and Gqeberha delivered stop-start Test matches, thanks to rain or bad light stopping play. Crowds at Kingsmead were so poor that it should seriously be reconsidered as a Test match venue, if anyone at Cricket South Africa is paying proper attention.
Newlands on Day 1 drew a crowd of more than 11,000. As the shadows grew long late on Friday afternoon, no one could fault captain Temba Bavuma’s view that, “I don’t think there’s a better crowd or venue that you can play Test cricket at than here at Newlands.”
The joys of Test match cricket are in its ebbs and flows (who might have predicted a 176-run victory for the Proteas on Day 5, for instance?), its intelligence, its eccentricities and its near silence: the odd clap, the odd comment, the rustle of wind and soft chatter around the ground. The rumble between overs. Nothing is quite like Test match cricket; nothing beats it. It is the ultimate test of concentration, skill, resilience and nerve. It’s a game, beautifully languid at times, with each session telling its own story.
Yet, as if to remind us that we are living in a world where silence is counter-cultural and holding a thought either in silence or to oneself is near sacrilege, blaring music between overs during a Test match has now become the norm at Newlands.
T20 irony
The purists baulk, and yet it is the short-form T20 game that is drawing the crowds with its hype, colour and noise. Loud music pervades any T20 match, a truncated form of the game that ensures cricket’s coffers do not run empty. (Its plus side is, of course, its family-friendly aspect and the way it introduces a new and younger audience to the basics of a complicated game.) Ironically, therefore, this short form of the game is necessary for cricket’s survival as a whole. As with everything driven by a bottom line, something has got to give.
Sadly, the attention (deficit) economy and the bottom line are killing off Test match cricket, as Barney Ronay, writing brilliantly in the Guardian (UK), recently described: “The hard game, the actual game that still produces the short-form TV offshoot, is being sacrificed mercilessly. And the thing that is replacing it is not just demonstrably inferior, but self-dooming in its basic inanity … where the bottom line is the only line, where everything must be reduced to stupidity and profitable chaff.”
And so, if ever there was a sporting response to inanity, it was this Test match series. And if ever Test match cricket deserved an audience, it was for our captain Temba Bavuma’s match-winning innings of 179 in Gqeberha, and then at Newlands, where the Proteas, playing under the strapline “Unbreakable”, kept us all absorbed until late on Day 5.
Never give up. Never say die.
Marco Jansen, world’s best
This gritty little team has now also produced the world’s best Test match bowler and Test all-rounder (according to the latest ICC men’s rankings) in Marco Jansen, or “Planke”. Has a nickname ever been more apt?
In his post-match interview, he said drily, “…(I’m) just ‘a laaitie from Klerksdorp’ whose father said, ‘moenie laat jou kop te groot raak nie.” One could not help really rooting for Jansen, who was once mocked by a sporting journalist during his first match at Lord’s for his ‘working-class roots’. Prejudice and classism rear their heads everywhere.
Daniel Gallan, also writing in the Guardian UK, said of Jansen, “Jansen belongs to a great South African tradition. The country’s finest sides have often been built around players who can do more than one job. Mike Procter, Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener and Jacques Kallis, who scored 13,289 Test runs and took 292 wickets, came to embody the quintessential South African cricketer. That heritage continues in Jansen and Wiaan Mulder, whose wobble-seam bowling comes with the capacity to make 367 not out. But what makes someone an all-rounder? A recent essay by the analyst Jarrod Kimber argues that “a true all-rounder is not just their numbers, it is the effect they have on the entire team”.’
Bavuma’s grit
As the team did a lap of honour for the Newlands faithful on Saturday afternoon, one could not help but think back to 5 January 2016, when Temba Bavuma, then aged 25, scored a brave and exciting 102 not out off only 148 balls.
As Bavuma raised his bat to the applause of his teammates, the South Africans in the crowd knew precisely what that emotionally laden moment really meant. Our past is never lost on us, never far away, and we all knew why former Proteas fast bowler Makhaya Ntini had his fists in the air in elation.
Bavuma became the first black African to score a century for South Africa. He is the first black African player to captain a Test match team, and he has done so with grace in the face of shameful racist taunts. In 2016, it was former England captain and South African Kevin Pietersen who said of Bavuma, “I don’t know who that kid is who bats six, (Bavuma), I don’t know why he’s batting in that line-up…”
Bavuma, from Langa township, honed his skill there and later in Gauteng under the mentorship of Geoffrey Toyana. He went on to play for the Lions and became vice-captain in the 2013-2014 season. By 2016, he had been struggling to cement his place in the Proteas side, but that century showed us Bavuma’s deep well of grit and determination, and what he would go on to do when our backs were against the wall.
As is often the case in South Africa, sport provided us with a reminder that talent, if nurtured, is universal and not the preserve of a particular race.
Administrative breakdowns
While watching the sheer joy of this sweet Test series victory, one also could not help but also think of the self-inflicted wounds of cricket’s administration.
Cricket South Africa (CSA) has had its fair share of what ails most of South Africa’s institutions: dysfunction, corruption, maladministration and self-interest. When the then minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa, intervened in cricket at the end of October 2020 and appointed an interim board, he did so as a last resort. His intervention represented the final opportunity for CSA to fix governance issues or risk complete decline.
The crisis had been brewing since the Members’ Council failed to course-correct and implement Judge Chris Nicholson’s 2012 recommendations for a governance clean-up after the “Majola bonus scandal”. Then came Thabang Moroe’s tenure, first as acting CSA CEO in late 2017 and then as permanent CEO, which was nothing short of disastrous.
Corruption
The corruption and maladministration of this period have been well documented in the Fundudzi Report, which covered 48 months from 2016 to December 2019 and investigated “various governance issues and allegations relating to possible failure of controls and insufficient executive oversight within CSA”.
While this was happening, cricket withered on the vine. Sponsors became agitated and threatened to withdraw, given the chaotic state of administration. Internationally, South Africa’s status was eroded both on and off the field.
Eventually, the interim board managed to put a new governance model in place. Improving the administration remains a work in progress, and the new governance model — like democracy — is imperfect. The board, as currently constituted, is short of deep cricketing knowledge and faces serious financial challenges. The Members’ Council, mostly in thrall to its own narrow interests, cannot always be counted on to do what is in the best interests of the game.
We are still paying the price for past wrongs. Rebuilding trust between administrators, the board and players remains a challenge for the long haul. Bavuma himself has been clear-eyed in his assessment of the administration of the game and has been an astute champion of his players’ needs.
Development
It is therefore easy to see how we lost our place at the top table of the ICC, how we took our eye off the ball — in this environment, there was little space for the development of the game, especially at club level. But it is not the role of CSA alone to develop a future pipeline of young players, particularly black players.
Schools have a role to play, but they can only do so if properly resourced by the government. That requires money and partnerships. It also requires a focus on the importance of a holistic education, thus building a healthy society in which talent is recognised and nurtured.
So, successive ministries of Sport, Arts and Culture cannot escape accountability for failing to see the importance of equipping schools for sport. (The incumbent minister, a dangerously clownish and unserious man, lacks the insight to do anything but sloganeer, unfortunately. Sport really does deserve better, as do the arts).
Radio silence
One could add that listening to ball-by-ball commentary on the radio is not only a part of the ritual of Test match cricket, but another way of taking cricket to a broader audience across our country.
But in another sign of dysfunction, there was no radio commentary provided by the SABC for this Test series.
Given that the majority of South Africans gather news via this medium, it is a travesty for the public broadcaster to fail so abysmally in fulfilling its mandate.
Proper leadership
This series has highlighted many more positives, however, and also what South Africans can do when we work as a team with proper leadership.
In coach Shukri Conrad and Bavuma, we have just that.
When Conrad was appointed, there were those who questioned his cricketing pedigree. Many are unaware that Conrad’s father was a legendary cricketer in his own right and that Conrad has been steeped in cricket since before he was born. His father, Dickie Conrad, was one of the finest players of that great generation of cricketers. So, for Conrad to hold the mace aloft at Lord’s in 2025 and to defeat Australia in a Test match series on home soil in 2026, were full-circle moments.
Race and cricket
Much of this Western Cape cricketing history is detailed in The Blue Book: A history of Western Province Cricket (1890-2011) (Jacana) by Andre Odendaal et al, published in 2012, as well as Cricket and Conquest: The History of South African Cricket Retold: 1795-1914 (HSRC Press), first published in 2016. Odendaal has written several other authoritative books on race and cricket, including Pitch Battles: Sport, Racism and Resistance (2021), with Peter Hain.
The Blue Book was the first real attempt to consolidate the statistical history of Western Province cricket and the Cape Cobras franchise over more than 120 years. The book was a serious attempt to move away from the “official” statistics of Western Province cricket that encompassed only the records of white players.
In fact, as the book points out, there was a rich tradition of cricket in coloured, Cape Malay and black African communities in the Western Cape. Some part of that history was written a few years ago by Mo Allie in More Than a Game, but many stories remain untold, many heroes still unsung.
As the book notes, “the cricketers who played on the wrong side of the colour line in the old days inhabited deep cricket cultures”. It therefore immediately puts paid to the notion that cricket is “the white man’s game”.
Difficult tapestry of overlooked heroes
The book traverses the colonial years, the Basil D’Oliveira saga, the “stop the tour” boycotts and, of course, the rebel tour eras and the subsequent years of unity. All have their place in the difficult tapestry that is Western Province and, indeed, South African cricket. Importantly, though, as the book points out, those who played then were not merely “passive victims of an oppressive system”; they were “characters who, through cricket, said yes to life itself”.
In 1959, the WP Cricket Board (representing “coloured” players) was formed and competed inter-provincially, with the board players dominating the winnings for four seasons between 1963 and 1970. And it was during those years, too, that some board players found their way into the English leagues: Cecil Abrahams, Coetie Neethling, the Abed brothers, Rushdie Magiet, my own father, Des February, and Dickie Conrad. Some remained abroad; most returned, while others, like Owen Williams, emigrated to Australia.
Langa and Gugulethu
The Blue Book tells us that in Langa and Gugulethu, cricket had been played for decades — William Magitshima, Cannon Ziba, Ashton Dunjwa and Ben Malamba were but a few names that made their mark in the late 1960s. This is part of Bavuma’s rich history, which has also been retold by his uncle, Tengo Sokanyile, in his book, iQakamba eKapa (Cricket in Cape Town).
This is a necessary retelling, not only for those of us who love cricket, its eccentricities and statistics, but also for anyone interested enough in understanding our country’s past in a way that is constructive and, paradoxically, despite its pain, affirming.
In so many ways, the partnership that Bavuma and Conrad are building together pays homage to the players who could never represent their country, and it provides a firm foundation for taking the game to millions more in our diverse country.
This will take clear-eyed strategic administration of the game, proper government support and a commitment to excellence.
Because somewhere in a township or a suburb, a child has watched Bavuma raise his bat, lanky Jansen celebrate wildly, KG Rabada breathing fire in the first two overs on Day 5, the Mulder and Rickleton centuries and imagined themselves doing the same. DM
Judith February is a lawyer and was a member of the Interim Board of CSA between October 2020 and June 2021. The then minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa, appointed the board. She serves on the SA Cricketers’ Association Management Board of Directors. The views expressed are her own.
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