Why cricket needs more love and less criticism

The common criticism of South Africa’s latest T20 cricket tournament, the SA20, is that all matches blend into one another.

We can test the thesis: do you remember, for example, this season’s match 14, Pretoria Capitals vs Sunrisers Eastern Cape? Probably not. As it happens, it was an early version of the final, though nobody knew it then.

You might remember snatches of matches, sure. You might even remember fragments of the play-offs or a good wicket haul or two. Great catches might stick in the mind like they lodged in the hand.

Maybe you remember Ryan Rickelton’s two centuries? Those two tons weren’t enough to initially get him chosen for the Proteas in the upcoming T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka.

But accusations of matches in the SA20 being easy to forget aren’t altogether fair. Take the final, played at Newlands just under two weeks ago. Remember, it was played between Sunrisers Eastern Cape, captained by Tristan Stubbs, another player left out of the original World T20 squad, and Pretoria Capitals, captained by Keshav Maharaj.

The Capitals batted first, scoring 158. Dewald Brevis scored 101 in 56 balls. He’s nicknamed “Baby AB”, and the cricket-loving public is finally starting to recognise his gifts. With eight fours and seven sixes, the innings cemented his credentials. We’ll see him play in a green shirt for many years to come.

Not to presume the outcome, the final appeared to be slipping beyond the Sunrisers’ grasp. With the fall of the fourth wicket on 48, skipper Stubbs joined Matthew Breetzke, another player left out of the South African squad for the World T20.

Their first item of business was to negotiate the spinners, Maharaj and Roston Chase, bowling in tandem after the powerplay. This they did. Next, they needed to up the ante. This they did, though they didn’t up the ante to where the ante needed to be.

As a matter of fact, Stubbs and Breetzke were so far behind the scoring rate that the hundred came up in 15.4 overs. This meant they needed to score 59 runs in 26 balls, around 15 runs to the over — no easy task.

But there was hope. Maharaj, the Capitals skipper, had good backup to his spinners in Lizaad Williams and Lungi Ngidi, but his fifth bowler, either Gideon Peters or Bryce Parsons (or a combination of the two), was a matter for concern.

Maharaj fatally miscalculated. Peters, the rookie, was entrusted with the 18^th over. It included a wide, four leg byes and a no-ball that resulted in a free hit that went for six. By the end of his nightmare over, Peters had conceded 21 runs. The poor guy might never recover.

Ngidi bowled the 19^th over, which went for 12, but the match had now tilted in the Sunrisers’ favour. Stubbs and Breetzke, both with Sunrisers fire in their eyes, knew that either Peters or Parsons would need to bowl the final over. No-one else could.

That Maharaj allowed his most inexperienced bowler to bowl at the death was inexcusable. Stubbs hit Parsons’s first two balls for sixes. The lost final had been found. And won. A shellshocked Stubbs said afterwards: “Don’t know what we did or how we did it, but we did it.”

Cricket South Africa (CSA), the SA20’s majority shareholder through Africa Cricket Development (Pty) Ltd, is both proud of and embarrassed by the tournament. It is proud because it shows the organisation — if only by implication — in a favourable light.

The SA20 is fun. And vibey. It attracts full houses. One of the matches at Centurion, between Paarl Royals and Joburg Super Kings in the tournament’s final week, was sold out, though the home team, Pretoria Capitals, weren’t even playing.

Selection is not a science, it’s an art. An art of fine discriminations

But here’s the thing. CSA’s control of the SA20 is notional. The important people in the SA20 hierarchy, tournament director Graeme Smith and COO Lynn Naude, aren’t CSA employees. Decisions in the SA20 tend to be made for cricket and commercial reasons alone. Politics, if it does make an appearance, tends to be of the small “p” variety. Remember last year’s kerfuffle when Kagiso Rabada tested positive for cocaine during the tournament?

“The SA20 is difficult for CSA,” says a high-profile cricket official. “It can’t put on a home Test this summer, and now you have this glamorous international event with a great website while CSA is struggling to relaunch its new app. And never mind that politics [in the SA20] takes a back seat. There’s the big contradiction that equity just doesn’t apply. Overseas coaches don’t give a damn.”

Nowhere was the equity debate more apparent than in the choice of South Africa’s squad for the T20 World Cup that begins soon in India and Sri Lanka. The squad, to take one iffy example, contained Tony de Zorzi. Whatever De Zorzi may be, he isn’t a shoo-in for a place in the Proteas T20 squad.

Not only was De Zorzi picked for the squad, but he was chosen while injured with a hamstring tear picked up in India in December. It was so bad that he didn’t even play in the SA20, where he’d been recruited to play for Durban’s Super Giants.

Not playing in the SA20 meant that there was no way to gauge his form. Or improve his T20 skills against some of the best bowlers in the world. Contrast the two T20 internationals De Zorzi (who was picked) has played with the 42 of Stubbs (who wasn’t).

We see what’s going on. One of the unintended consequences of the SA20 is that it runs at a different angle to cricket in this country.

It transpired that De Zorzi didn’t recover from his hamstring strain. In the tournament, Donovan Ferreira, also chosen for the World T20, fractured a clavicle. Two places opened, filled by Stubbs and Rickelton.

The Stubbs matter first. Despite his pugnacious 63 in 41 balls in the final, the jury is out on whether Stubbs is a T20 international cricketer. The world tends to remember a player’s last innings. And, hey, Stubbs’s last innings won the Sunrisers their third SA20 title in four years.

But the final aside, he didn’t have a good SA20. He wasn’t among the top 10 run scorers in the tournament, while his mate, Breetzke, was. Selection is not a science; it’s an art. An art of fine discriminations. It can go either way.

The pundits think Rickelton, who was the third-highest run-scorer in the tournament on 337, probably lost his place in the initial World T20 squad to Quinton de Kock. Playing with the joie de vivre that comes after a long layoff, De Kock had a fine SA20, scoring 390 runs to top the run-scoring charts.

It’s no disgrace to lose your place to De Kock, but Rickelton won’t see it that way.

Adam Bacher, who played 19 Tests for South Africa, says: “I’m not entirely sold on Quinnie retiring and then just walking back into the side. I think you’ve got to show some loyalty to Ryan.”

In a way, it doesn’t matter now, though coach Shukri Conrad and national selection convener Patrick Moroney have a slight selection headache ahead of South Africa’s opener against Canada in Ahmedabad on February 11. It’s not a bad one to have, certainly. With De Kock likely to open with skipper Aiden Markram, the question is where to put Rickelton.

There’s another question. How well can South Africa do over February and into March? Well, that depends. Should David Miller recover from his groin injury, it will be a huge boost. Should he not, the Rickelton dilemma will be solved in one swoop.

In other respects, South Africa has a well-grooved side but one by no means guaranteed to reach the semifinals. To do so they will need to finish in the top two of a group in which they will play against Canada, New Zealand, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates.

Here they will be joined by the top two in three other groups, making eight overall. These eight are further divided into two groups of four. The top two from each of the groups contest the semifinal, with the winners playing in the final in Ahmedabad on March 8. If Pakistan should reach the final, however, it will be played not in India but in Sri Lanka.

Such is the topsy-turvy world of international cricket. A strange place, where India always gets its way.