Why South Africa will never win the Cricket World Cup

Dear Cricket Lovers,
            Below is what I wrote in 2011 at the time of the previous Cricket World Cup. It is just as true today, if not more so. We'll never win this Cup when the selectors have a Government sponsored millstone of prejudice around their necks forcing them to selected players on colour first and ability second.

PHILANDER

            The Times reported today that fast bowler Vernon Philander, a coloured was selected for the Proteas semi -final World Cup match against New Zealand ahead of Kyle Abbott, a white who had been the team's most consistent bowler in the matches leading up to this game which South Africa lost.

            This was done, the paper claimed, because the selectors felt that they had to add to Hashim Amla, JP Duminy and Imran Tahir to ensure there were at least four players of colour in the team.

ABBOTT TAKES ANOTHER WICKET

            The really deplorable aspect was that Philander had missed a lot of the earlier games because of a hamstring injury and was not fully fit when he was picked for this, the Proteas' most important match. He managed to bowl eight overs for an expensive 52 runs without a wicket before his injury forced him to leave the field prematurely.
            Russell Domingo was the Proteas head coach, who is also coloured. His lack of confidence in his ability to produce a World Cup winning team was evident in the way he surrounded himself with almost a cricket team of specialist coaches and advisers. No other team at the tournament had as many.
           He said of Philander: "He is a hell of a good bowler and it's unfair to lay the blame on him or any other bowler."
            How right he was, the people to blame were those who picked Philander.

RUSSELL DOMINGO

            The whole world was very vocal about the apartheid policy of discrimination against Blacks practised by the previous Whites only South African Government. But now that the Black African National Congress is in power and is advocating it the other way round in sports team selection nobody is saying a word.
            The policy was given a serious bloody nose when South African born Grant Elliott hit a six to clinch the win for his adopted country. A cricket refugee he left South Africa because he feared that as a white the quota system would prevent him from becoming an international.
            He really got his own back when he was also the Man of the Match with an unbeaten 84 for the Black Caps.
            Not content with the way South African cricket has already been hamstrung by this iniquitous policy the Minister of Sport Fikile Mbalula is now threatening cricket and rugby (seen as essentially white sports) with all kinds punishments like "withdrawing national colours" if they don't meet transformation targets.

           Last year he blew his top and accused the mainly black national soccer team Bafana Bafana of being a "bunch of losers" when they were knocked out of the African Nations Cup at the group stage.

          Well Fikile my prediction is that you will have reason to say this a lot more often about our cricket and rugby players if you and your Government persists with this sports apartheid. And as nobody loves a loser we can expect sponsorship to drop and have these sports tumble down the world rankings, much like Bafana Bafana is in the habit of doing, until nobody really wants to watch them and all our stars are playing overseas.
           Regards,
           Jon

First Posted 21/01/2011

Dear International Cricket Council, 

          Have you ever tried playing cricket with one hand tied behind your back? Well that’s what the South African Proteas are expected to do.

          And what’s more they are supposed to go to Asia and win the World Cup with this rather debilitating handicap.

          Oh! by the way I’m not talking about the World Cup for paraplegics. This is for able bodied players. So you can appreciate that it is also giving the South Africans a major headache with so much riding on their performance back home.

          Their impediment that pretty well guarantees that they won’t be raising the winner’s trophy is so hush, hush that the South African media hardly ever mentions it.  But Stuart Hess made a passing reference to it in the Cape Times when he reported on our World Cup Squad.

          Out of the 15 players chosen he told us that there were six black players - one short of what is understood  to be the agreed figure. He didn’t say who the agreement was with or how the selectors, headed by Andrew Hudson decided who is black and who is white.

          My sources tell me that the selectors were all issued with unique spectacles. They enabled them to tell who had enough coffee in their milk to be put in this special category where colour is more important than ability.

          I’m not saying that there aren’t players of colour in the team that don’t deserve their place. But if you have a system like this nobody will ever know how many more talented Whites were left out so as to make up the Black numbers.

          In South Africa’s new branding process you are considered Black when it comes to choosing the National cricket team if you are slightly brown of Indian origin; Coloured of black and white decent or completely Black from one of the indigenous tribes like the Zulus. If you happen to be any other colour you probably won’t be considered never mind how good you are because there’s no category for you.

          Here’s the team and I’ll leave you to guess their colour in the Comments section of this blog. Greame Smith (capt.), Hashim Amla, Jacques Kallis, Johan Botha, AB de Villiers, JP Duminy, Faf du Plessis, Colin Ingram, Morne` Morkel, Wayne Parnell, Robbie Peterson, Dale Steyn, Imran Tahir, Lonwabo Tsotsobe and Morne` van Wyk.

          This colour coding applies essentially to the white dominated sports in South Africa. Nobody says a thing about mixing more colours in the virtually all Black National soccer team Bafana Bafana  which is ranked nowhere in the world. And who else would want to play for them anyway because they haven’t won anything of note for as long as even the most ardent fans can remember?

          Back to the cricket. The teams competing in this World Cup will be playing in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. How many of them are forced to included players who are not necessarily the best available just because they have the right coloured skin? Other than South Africa my bet is the answer is; None.

          So to even things up my proposal is that the Proteas should have 30 runs added to their score in every match to level the playing fields as it were.

          The countries where the games take place are a paradise for spin bowlers which is another factor counting against the South Africans. Brought up on hard, fast wickets more suited to quick bowling the Proteas haven’t got a spinner worth anything and most of their batsmen struggle again this kind of bowling.

          So even without having to play with one hand tied behind their back the team was probably onto a hiding to nothing. The only fair thing to do is to even the odds.

          I know this will invite some colourful headlines, but nothing in this life is ever just in Black and White.

          Yours truly

          Jon, an anthropologist of note.

P.S. Should a team chosen on apartheid lines be allowed in the World Cup just because South Africa now has a Black Government? In the old days the English team called off its tour to this country because the all White Government refused to accept a team that included Basil D’Oliviera, who was coloured.

#ProudlyBroughtByANC - THE BANANA REPUBLIC SPECIALISTS

Dear Blog Readers,

         Somebody has just sent me South Africa’s memorable achievements under the rule of the African National Congress; otherwise known as the Banana Republic Specialists.

         It’s fascinating reading, but not if you happen to live in this once thriving tip of Africa. Here’s the list with a few of my additions. It reads like a HAIRY TALE.  

1.    In 19 years of rule unemployment has shot up by 60%, one of the highest rates in the world.

2.    The country is now the rape capital of the world.

3.    Since the ANC came to power the country has achieved the dubious distinction of being 140^th for education brilliance on a World list of 144 countries.

4.    Officially the world leader for hijackings.

South Africa's new national Coat of Arms

5.    The Police Force has hundreds of convicted criminals in its ranks, some in high positions and others who had a record before they joined. Now the top brass doesn’t know how to get rid of them because of stringent labour laws that make it virtually impossible to fire anybody.

6.    In the Top Ten for most murders.

7.    In 19 years the rand/dollar exchange rate has dropped from R3.41 to R10.00 and sliding.

8.    The Defence Force has gone from being the iron fist of Africa to a laughing stock that couldn’t defend Disneyland from an invasion of fluffy toys.

It's hard work for President Zuma, running a country into the ground

9.    There are now 10 times more people in squatter camps and 1000% more illegal immigrants.

10. Government hospitals are so bad that the only one Nelson Mandela could possibly have been admitted to was the top military hospital, but its VIP units had been closed for two years for renovations so he was treated privately.

11. All kinds of other facilities such as roads and municipal services are deteriorating rapidly.

12. Electricity and water supplies are teetering on the edge of a national disaster.

President Zuma as Zapiro sees him

13. Education at Government schools has all but collapsed.

14. Unions are striking mines into oblivion and their inflated wage demands are driving other businesses to the wall.

15. 90% of once prosperous farms bought by the Government from Whites to satisfy the demand from Blacks for land have failed.

16. Bloomberg recently scored 74 nations for their “stress factor” and it’s hardly surprising that South Africa is second from the top.

Head of the Wild Life Conservation Society

17. No other country has more convicted criminals in Parliament.

18. On the sporting front corruption and in-fighting has caused chaos in the administration of soccer, cricket and athletics and probably others I don’t know about.

19. Bafana Bafana the national football team is ranked 60^th in the world and 10^th in Africa even though it has the best facilities on the continent and is the flagship of the country’s most popular sport.

20. There are so many depressing defects in the country that it’s impossible to mention all of them. 

The President with another leopard skin in his cap

Fortunately nobody needs to worry if they follow the lead of the ANC Government. All is well according to these blinkered leaders.

     President Jacob Zuma gigglers childishly on television when talking about the state of the nation. But only he sees the joke as the Rand drops.

    

 Up tight Mathale

 Then when the Limpopo Provincial Premier Cassel Mathale gets moved to a slightly less plum job as an R800 000 a year Member of Parliament, the ANC’s spin doctor Jackson Mthembu announces that the party thanks Mathale for a prosperous, thriving and stable Limpopo.

     No doubt the party would say the same about the country under Zuma.

     I’ve just given you the TRUTH about the country. Now what’s the TRUTH about the Province that became notorious for its inability to deliver text books to its schools?

   

  The opposition Democratic Alliance MP John Steenhuisen summed up the situation perfectly when he wrote: Mathale has presided over one of the most corrupt and moribund administrations in the country.

     Five of his provincial departments are under national administration, while others are under investigation for corruption. While the citizens suffer deprivation the political elite has prospered handsomely.

     The greatest irony is that Mathale’s sacking appears to have little to do with his spectacular inability to govern effectively, but rather his outspoken opposition to No 1. 

THE ONLY HOPE FOR SOUTH AFRICA NOW IS TO VOTE THE DA INTO POWER. IT HAS ALREADY SHOWN THAT IT CAN GOVERN EFFECTIVELY IN THE WESTERN CAPE AND CAPE TOWN, WHERE THE ANC WAS PREVIOUSLY MESSING THINGS UP.

     Regards,

     Jon, a citizen hoping for a miracle.