TEAM SPORTS: WHY DOES LITTLE NEW ZEALAND HAVE SUCH A WINNING FORMULA WHILE MUCH BIGGER SOUTH AFRICA LOOSES

Dear Sports Lovers,

Kane Williamson

          New Zealand is a tiny country with a population of a mere 5-million, yet it shows up South Africa’s 58-million badly when it comes to producing team sport winners.

          After reaching the final of the Cricket World Cup for the second successive time earlier this month its Silver Ferns have just won the Netball World Cup for the sixth time having been runners up on 8 previous occasions.

South Africa came fourth. It had some consolation when wing defender Karla Pretorius was named Player of the Tournament. The team’s best performance was second way back in 1995.

In cricket South Africa has never even reached the final of the World Cup in this sport. At this year’s event its Proteas faded so badly that they were lucky not to come last. Meanwhile the Black Caps added to their sterling performance when their captain Kane Williamson, who scored more than 30% of his team’s runs with 578, was named Man of the Tournament.

Another Kiwi batsman Martin Crowe got this accolade in 1992. The best that South Africa could do was when Lance Klusener picked up the trophy in 1999 for his top notch all round 281 runs and 17 wickets.

Lance Klusener

         In rugby South Africa was getting the best of the All Blacks at the World Cup up to 2007 with a win in that year as well as in 1995 when they narrowly beat New Zealand at Ellis Park. At that stage the All Blacks had only won once in 1987 when the tournament started. The Springboks were excluded from that because of apartheid.

More recently the Springboks haven’t featured at all at the centre of the podium with New Zealand taking the title in 2011 and 2015. In 2015 the All Blacks became the first team to defend their title and the first team to win it twice. The Springboks snatched a miserable third place.

It’s hardly surprising then, that the All Blacks are odds on favourites to win again later this year.

In 2011 the Boks, the defending champions, were eliminated in the quarter finals by Australia, another country with a very much smaller population than ours at 24 million. Their rugby not only has to compete for players with the country’s most popular sport Australian Rules football (Footy) as well as Rugby League and soccer.

South Africa’s men have had some good results in sevens rugby but again our team has been very much overshadowed by the All Blacks. The All Blacks kicked off the World Rugby Sevens Series in 1999 by leading the series for six successive years. So far they have accumulated 12 wins to South Africa’s three. 

New Zealand has won the women’s version, which began in 2012, five times out of seven, with Australia taking the title on the other two occasions. South Africa doesn’t seem to feature in this at all.

Evidently with its small population New Zealand can’t be expected to win everything so thankfully it has given soccer a miss.

In South Africa football is the most popular sport, but after the national team Bafana Bafana won the African Cup of Nations at home 23 years ago it has had one poor showing after another.

Karla Pretorius the World's
best netball player

It set what is possibly the worst record in this sport when it became the first host nation in FIFA World Cup history to exit in the group stage. It was when the tournament was held in South Africa in 2010. This was the first time it had been staged on the African continent.

Things got so bad that in 2014 the then Minister of Sport Fikile Mbalula described the team as a “bunch of losers” after it could not even make it to the group stage in the African Cup.

So it seems that South African coaches in many of our sports should be sent to New Zealand to learn how to produce winners. But we first have to get rid of our ridiculous quota system that is hampering our rugby and cricket sides in particular, and forcing white stars to continue their careers elsewhere in the world. There can’t be another country that insists on picking players based more on their colour than their ability.

This takes the cake

      This is being done in South Africa by government decree to ensure that blacks, disadvantaged under the previous whites only apartheid government, get places in the teams. The tragedy is that when they get picked they can’t be sure if it is because they are good enough or because they happen to be the right colour.

It’s hard to think of a better way of hobbling a nation’s sports performances.

Regards,

Jon, an avid sports watcher who, like our previous Minister of Sport, is getting sick of rooting for losers.

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.

SOUTH AFRICA'S BRAINLESS CRICKET

 Dear Cricket fans,

AB DE VILLIERS

         Facing their first serious hurdle at the Cricket World Cup, the Proteas as they some how got called after previously being the Springboks, had to make 308 to beat India. It was a formidable task but not impossible.

         They had almost a cricket team of expert coaches and consultants to advise them so you would have expected, at the very least, that they would have done nothing stupid.

         That’s where you would have been wrong, terribly wrong.

         They batted as if most of them had not got a brain between them.

         Opener Quinton de Kock started with a wild swing at a ball that could easily have had him caught behind the wicket. After a few innocuous shots he sent a soft one into the hands of the opposition and was gone for seven.

         Mr Reliable Hashim Amla, one of the best batsmen in the world in all formats, skied a short ball onto the leg side where he was caught on the boundary for 22. Somebody of his experience should have seen that trap a mile off.

         Faf du Plessis, in at three, who has been out of form lately, played sensibly with wickets falling around him. At 55 off 71 balls he had a brain storm, ran down the pitch and gave the Indians an easy catch.

         Captain AB de Villiers, the top ranked One Day International batsman in the world in 2014, also showed his lack of sensible thought. After a couple of narrow run out escapes he evident believed his speed made him invincible. One risky run too many and he was out for 30 when his team so badly needed a big innings from him.

         JP Duminy, who made a century in the previous match admittedly against lowly Zimbabwe, played possibly the most brainless shot of all. With his score at only six he decided on the most risky shot in cricket – a reverse sweep. As a left hander he was playing the shot as if he was right handed.

         The result was the last of the Proteas' recognised batsmen was back in the pavilion.

         David Miller, one of the top six, who had come in just before Duminy, followed his captain’s bad example and was run out for 22.

         That was effectively the end of the Proteas scoring because the last five players, you couldn’t call them batsmen as the commentators do, made a total of only 28 runs.

         How the South Africa selectors expect to win a world cup with so many players who can’t bat I don’t know. They badly need at least one good all rounder who can bat and bowl reasonably well.

         As it was in this game they relied on Wayne Parnell to fulfil this role. His bowling was hammered for 85 runs at almost 10 an over, nearly twice as many as the next worst bowler. His solitary wicket didn’t alter the fact that his figures were shocking.

         He made 17 not out off 28 balls when the game was already lost. But if he is the best all rounder the Proteas have got it will take a miracle for them to win the Cup.

         To cap this match of brainless play the Proteas were fined 10% of their match fee with captain De Villiers being penalised 20% for badly overrunning the three and a half hours allowed for a side fielding to complete their overs.  

         The Proteas' 130 thrashing was by far their worst performance at a World Cup and the first time they have ever been beaten by more than 100 runs.

         So what was the point of all those advisers? Where were they when the Proteas batsmen lost their minds?

Where were they when the Proteas, named after a hardy wild flower, faded so badly?

         Apart from the Head Coach Russell Domingo they had fielding coach Adrian Birrell; specialist bowling coach Allan Donald; specialist spin bowling coach Claude Henderson as well as former South African batsman Gary Kirsten who was the coach of the World Cup winning Indian team four years ago. He was there as the batting consultant.

THE A TEAM FEATURED IN THE TIMES

         You would think they had enough experts to keep any team on a winning high. But no they had to add retired Australian batting star Mike Hussey as the finishing consultant, whatever that is.

         My suggestion is that this think tank team should play in the next match with some of the best of the Proteas to make up the numbers and we’ll see if they are any good on the field because in the Indian game they were as useless off it as the Proteas were on it.

         Watch out for the West Indies on Friday Proteas. You might have beaten them easily shortly before the World Cup started, but if Chris Gayle and some of their other hard hitting batsmen get going there will be no room for any more mindless cricket.

         Your avid cricket fan

         Jon, who would very much like to see De Villier’s prediction that “We’ll win the World Cup” turned into fact. But on the showing during the India match it will be very much against the run of play unless there is a superhuman improvement.