Added depth for Proteas creates crucial buffer for busy summer

At Irene Cricket Club on Thursday an SA Emerging team beat a Universities Invitational XI by five wickets.

The outfield was brown and looked as devoid of grass as did the pitch. Cricket in winter is not for the faint-hearted.

In Pietermaritzburg, it was slightly greener, where an Emerging SA women’s team beat its Bangladeshi counterparts by eight wickets in a T20 match.

The women’s match had 193,000 views on YouTube and the men’s 93,000. Neither of which is anything special, but both matches are important for South African cricket.

Nkwe’s priority

Those fixtures represent the partial fulfilment of a national development programme, one tier below the Proteas, which Enoch Nkwe made a priority when he became Cricket SA’s (CSA) director of cricket four years ago.

Nkwe wanted to bridge the gap between the domestic game and the international level, thereby widening the player base and increasing competition for Proteas spots. “The SA A programme has been impactful,” he said.

“It has given us exactly what we’ve been looking for in terms of domestic cricket and international cricket and created healthy competition. We now have a situation where our depth is a lot stronger.”

The SA A programme has been impactful. It has given us exactly what we’ve been looking for in terms of domestic cricket and international cricket and created healthy competition. We now have a situation where our depth is a lot stronger — Enoch Nkwe, CSA director

There’ve been tours to India and England, while South Africa has hosted New Zealand and the West Indies teams.

South Africa will never have the depth India can call upon, but in the past 12 months it has been able to field different teams in different formats, giving some of its bigger stars crucial opportunities to take a break. In March the Proteas sent a squad to New Zealand which, besides Keshav Maharaj, contained none of their frontline players and was still able to win a five-match T20 series.

A similar kind of group will be announced this week for the triangular series with Zimbabwe and Namibia later in August.

Ahead of a busy summer, featuring eight Tests and having a bigger pool of players at his disposal will be crucial for Proteas head coach Shukri Conrad. He has already stated that he will rest the bulk of the Test squad for the ODIs and T20s against Bangladesh in November.

Next tier of players

Conrad is only able to do that because he’s comfortable with the next tier of players, which include Jordan and Ruben Hermann, Marques Ackerman, Tiaan van Vuuren, Nqobani Mokoena and Conor Esterhuizen, who have had their development accelerated by playing for SA A on tours to India and England.

“The more we expose these players, the better their understanding of what’s required will become, and that better prepares them for selection in any format,” said Nkwe.

The SA A programme has not been without problems. Last season provincial unions including the Lions, Titans, KZN Dolphins and Western Province, who’d already lost players to the Proteas, had their playing resources depreciated even more with call-ups to the SA A team for a tour to India in November 2025.

Those unions felt they’d been unfairly punished for supplying the most personnel for the national and A teams and were not being fairly compensated, while also putting their status in Division 1 in jeopardy.

That led Nkwe and CSA to create contracts for 20 players outside the nationally contracted group, called Players of National Interest (Ponis). “We are now able to comfortably say that this is the next group, whom we believe have been the most consistent, domestically, and have then gotten SA A opportunities. Some have played at Proteas level too,” said Nkwe.

Strain on finances

It adds an extra strain on CSA’s finances while unions remain wary about the financial hit they will have to take if a player who isn’t on a Poni contract is called up for either the Proteas or SA A this summer.

An England Lions tour, which will take place parallel to the senior team’s trip in December, will again test relations between the national mother body and its biggest provincial affiliates.

An expanded domestic programme, which will see more first-class matches for teams in Division 1 and an increase in provincial T20 fixtures, is another challenge for Nkwe. “The calendar is so congested. It would be ideal to have a full-time SA A programme, but that would create chaos,” he said.

Nevertheless, Nkwe is forging ahead. Matches in the winter months, as is currently happening with the Emerging men’s and women’s teams, alleviate some of the strain, and have given important playing time for youngsters like Richard Seletswane, Mitchell van Buuren, Keagan Lion-Cachet and even Dayyaan Galiem, who earned a T20 International cap in 2024

The women’s programme isn’t as far along in its development as the men’s. “There is so much talent; it’s not just the Emerging women’s team but also the under-19 side that went to Pakistan. Some of them are going to be transitioning (to international level) really quickly. We need a solid SA women’s programme. We are working on that,” said Nkwe.