Cricket transformation more than a numbers game

Nine months ago, Muditambi Ravele, who sits on Cricket SA’s board and chairs the organisation’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, declared: “We need to move past the point where targets are needed.”

The organisation still can’t say when racial targets, either provincially or nationally, will end. Therein lies the problem, because its current management of transformation looks like a mere box-ticking exercise. 

The same problems CSA had in 2013 when targets for black African players were introduced, persist. Provincial teams continue to seek permission if they don’t meet the target and rarely do they exceed it.

In the last year, CSA has had to explain why only one black African player was picked for the T20 World Cup. Then came Rob Walter’s reply to a question about Ottneil Baartman’s absence from the T20 series with India being down to the need to play more black African players, followed by the lack of black African players in the SA20. And then last week’s drama with the Warriors, who didn’t field the stipulated number of black African players in a single One-Day Cup match. 

It’s indicative of a development programme that at the elite level is failing. 

Furthermore, teams who do fulfil the target aren’t doing so in the right spirit. The (Free State) Knights and (Northerns) Titans played a One-Day Cup fixture last week featuring six black African players per CSA’s mandate — but Aaron Phangiso is 41 years old, Malusi Siboto is 37, while Junior Dala is 35. 

Titans all-rounder Andile Phehlukwayo, who also featured in that fixture, has more than 100 international caps to his name, and shouldn’t be regarded as someone who needs an administrative mandate to play. 

At provincial level, transformation is measured differently to what is required for the Proteas. Provinces must have six black players in the starting team, three of whom must be black African. At national level, those numbers are measured over the course of a season, so 58% of all teams in a season must be made up of black players, and 33% must be black African. 

CSA’s executive responsible for domestic cricket, Eddie Khoza, confirmed the organisation had not reviewed that element of the policy since 2018, when it was rejected by the head coaches of domestic teams. 

The fact is that it hasn’t illustrated how CSA has failed to evolve the policy. Domestic cricket is not the same this year as it was in 2018 when there were six franchise teams, as opposed to the current 15 provincial teams. The SA20 was also not part of the schedule seven years ago.

That tournament has held up a mirror to CSA’s development programmes, which have been in place for more than two decades, and in which hundreds of millions of rand have been spent, and reflected how poorly CSA has managed transformation at the professional level. 

Only eight black African players started in the SA20 this year and just three — Kagiso Rabada, Kwena Maphaka and Lutho Sipamla — played in the majority of their teams’ nine matches.

Twelve years after targets were introduced, those are deeply concerning statistics. The reasons for it and how to resolve a problem CSA believed it could by instituting targets are complex. 

The foundation for development and transformation is facilities in communities for clubs and schools, where the majority of the population gets a first taste of organised sport.           

Sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie’s blathering on the topic and his blaming of only CSA, showed how out of touch he is. Like his predecessors, he must look within.

Youngsters need fields to play cricket, those fields fall under the auspices of municipalities and in the vast majority of poorer areas, those fields are not maintained. McKenzie should ask his colleague responsible for corporate governance and traditional affairs Velenkosini Hlabisa, why. 

The same goes for basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube, the minister responsible for what happens at schools, where numbers for cricket have depreciated because fewer teachers are involved in coaching, and facilities aren’t maintained. 

Cricket is an expensive undertaking; the cheapest bat costs R900, batting gloves start at R25, pads R500 and a bag on which to store all of that for travel, R700. Add clothes, boots and helmets, and, just to start playing is beyond the purses of the majority of South Africans . 

It is in that category that CSA plays its most important role, creating the means to make the sport affordable. But if there are no fields in which to play, then grassroots growth will stagnate.

Development at elite level needs more than just targets; it requires social equity at a level that is beyond CSA’s capacity to achieve. CSA’s methods need refining and modernising and not merely making the attaining of numbers the primary goal. 

CSA must, as Ravele said, move past the point where targets are needed, and the quicker it creates such a time frame, the better placed it will be to properly accelerate transformation.