How to Save South African Domestic Cricket Competition
RUMOURS...
I have heard some rumours of late that CSA are considering asking the franchises to pay for the services of their Kolpak players, which in effect would ensure they do not play, as franchises don’t have that kind of money.
We could debate the rights and wrongs of the likes of Abbott, Rossouw, Vilas, Van Zyl, de Lange and more recently Morkel signing Kolpak deals but that is for another day. What cannot be denied is that the bridge between our domestic game and the international game is wider than it has ever been in my lifetime. Jon Jon Smuts, Behardien and Dane Paterson are all fantastic domestic players who often are near the top of runs scored or wickets taken most seasons, but are unable to perform to the same standard when playing for their country, is evidence of this.
CSA focus should be solely on our future players and I would do the following:
Make sure all our Kolpak players are allowed to play in our domestic game. These players are needed as they are the best players in our domestic competition and the stats back this up, Harmer 47 wkts, average 21.85; Colin Ackermann 660 runs, average 66; Van Zyl 540 runs, average 90; Vilas 734 runs, average 66.72. The youngsters coming through will need the experienced ones when times are tough. By playing with better players everyone’s game improves, while playing with people at the same level or lower leads to lack of progress. All Kolpak players have invaluable lessons for the young ones coming through and the ones I have mentioned have international experience, which is invaluable. How else would they learn what it takes to be an international? Can Harmer not pass on what he has learnt in County Cricket, seeing as his team won the competition last season? Would that be beneficial to a young off spinner? If our competition has international quality players our game improves, if not it does not…
Make the domestic competition into 8 teams as it was pre franchise days. It is without doubt the most important aspect of our competition that needs an overhaul. The Sunfoil 3 day competition is part amateur league and is very much out of date in 2018.
My main gripe with it is that there are far too many domestic and international quality players who are stuck in this competition because we only have six professional teams. Players like R.Richards, C.Savage, JN Malan (SA U19 player who averaged 95 this season) and many others, are playing a lot of their cricket down there and by extension are lost to the system. The standard is so low that, in my opinion, it’s not good to have players down in a semi amateur league while needing them to get form for the fully professional competition. The Sunfoil 3 day series is a competition which breeds mediocrity. The level of that competition does not improve players; if anything, it makes them worse. You cannot have good quality players playing any form of amateur cricket in this modern and competitive world where winning is the only goal.
We are losing too many players from the Sunfoil 3 day series and many of them are now playing professionally in England. The main reason for this is due to CSA’s enforced transformation targets which forces each franchise to pick 6 players of colour. We could, however, still keep those targets as long as we bring back Boland and Easterns (you can give them franchise names, of course). Bringing back eight teams would allow us to have a bigger pool of players to choose from, surely a good thing? Boland would be happy to have their own team I am sure, rather than a third of the Cape Cobras games. The support out there at their lovely ground would be welcome news to Boland and bring them bigger revenue. This idea has been bandied around for a while and should be implemented as soon as possible.
Lastly and probably most controversially, I would introduce one overseas player per team. An extension of my remarks about Kolpak players is that the standard of our game needs improvement and the only way to do that is bring in better players although I am not sanctioning for the likes of Dhoni, Maxwell, Pollard, etc. The very fact there is a lot of cricket all over the world means there are many players to choose from. While one can stream most games these days it means it is easier to find talent. Four years ago Darcy Short was a nobody with no domestic cricket to speak of and yet look at him now (first class debut only in 2016). Jofra Archer was in similar form a couple years ago. These are the types of players we should be picking up, young and talented but not being seen by the outside world. Billy Root (Joe’s brother) recently came over as Claremont Cricket Club’s overseas pro. Just on name that will have stimulated people’s interest surely?
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