An Albatross for 100 days

Mark Boucher will continue as head coach of the South African men’s team for the next three and a half months with a charge of “gross misconduct” hanging over him, a charge laid against him by his employers. Imagine that.

Imagine, in fact, that he has already worked a month in such circumstances. Boucher is the self-proclaimed ‘tough nut’ of cricket and he’s always been shudderingly stubborn and determined, so he’ll be fine, don’t worry about that. Perhaps the people who should worry most are the ones Boucher perceives to have stuck the knives into his back.

He may be silent at the moment but that’s because he has no choice, legally. But when his disciplinary hearing is finally held from the 16th to 20th May with the international season having finally ended, he will not hold his tongue.

He will defend himself against charges of racial bias and prejudice in the most aggressive way possible - is there any other way with so much at stake, his reputation and future employment being just two items on his agenda.

If his legal team suggests that hypocrisy exists in the testimony of some of those who spoke at the Social Justice and Nation building (SJN) hearings then it will be exposed, not on a ‘revenge’ or tit-for-tat basis but to prove that his behaviour was not unique or even unusual. It will almost certainly be messy. Former and current players will be called as witnesses.

Not only was this situation predicted, it was avoidable. The SJN hearings were delayed once because the procedural structure was unsound and almost no practical thought had been given to the consequences of litigation - against individuals as well as CSA.

The decision to hold the SJN hearings in public and invite anybody to testify without testing evidence or cross-examination was made in the interests of transparency. But it is difficult to imagine a way in which CSA will be able to satisfy the country’s cricket followers that justice will be done at Boucher’s disciplinary hearing without public access to that, too. Justice needs to be seen being done. CSA were warned about the discomfort of the bed they were making for themselves. Now they will experience many sleepless nights in it.

Proteas Test captain, Dean Elgar, was asked on the eve of departure for New Zealand on Wednesday how he felt about having to answer questions about disciplinary hearings rather than cricket. If he’s this tetchy now, good luck to him, Temba Bavuma and the rest of the national players by mid-May:

“It’s been ok, but I feel it takes away from everything we have achieved as a group, and that’s bullshit. I know I have to talk about off-field issues but this is a press conference to talk about the Test team going to New Zealand. Let’s make another time to talk about disciplinary matters, on another platform,” Elgar said.

Interestingly, Elgar also said: “Irrespective of what our head coach is going through, we still support him through this process.” That may be the case with some, even a majority of the players, but there is unequivocal evidence to suggest it is not all of them. “We know the value he adds to our system and our group. We've had these tough times before and I'd like to think it's just another hurdle in our path that we have to get over.

"We've got over them before and, as players, we realise that cricket remains cricket. We need to stick together and that's something we've done in the past while letting the process follow its course,” Elgar said.

The good news - is that there is some good news. Senior Council Terry Motau, who will preside over the disciplinary hearing, is highly and universally respected and has an exemplary record in dealing with a bundle of contentious CSA matters in the past. He is no stranger to cricket and has, and will, consider both the ‘nuance’ and crassness of the game and it’s change room ‘culture’ along with the law. The fact that five days have been initially set aside for the hearing illustrates the extent of the work required and the depth of the dive.

Terry Motau

Elgar said he hoped the ongoing saga would ‘galvanise’ the team rather than drag it down. That would have seemed impossible had they not just beaten India under both Elgar and Bavuma’s leadership but that was when the albatross had only been around their collective neck for a couple of weeks. It is going to remain there, festering, for the next three and a half months. And Elgar and Bavuma are going to be asked about it. A lot.

Some analogies in recent times have been preposterous and extremely distasteful. Boucher is not accused of war-crimes! A police officer accused of accepting bribes, both 20 years ago and again within the last year, and being asked to carry on doing his job for three and a half months until the facts can be investigated, that’s the equivalent of what we’re looking at here.

CSA argued for a swift conclusion and ‘expediency’ in front of Motau but Boucher’s council persuaded him that the players deserved to conclude the international season without being disrupted by high profile calls to testify at his hearing with the inevitable media attention that will create. Motau agreed with the player rather than the corporation, a decision in which ‘cricket people’ may find some solace in this deeply unpleasant situation.