Casual prejudice and hypocrisy

It may have taken a few decades but the lesson has been worth learning: don’t waste emotional or physical energy on problems or scenarios over which you have no control. If you can’t affect the outcome, concentrate on something positive you may be able to influence.

Last week Cricket South Africa’s Operations Team attempted to move on from Cricket Australia’s decision not to honour its obligation to visit the country for a three-Test series in March. They tried to focus on something positive, like the conclusion to the Momentum One-Day Cup and the successful staging of the Under-19 Franchise Week in Stellenbosch.

But they have not been able to forget Cricket Australia’s decision so quickly because they are surrounded by the consequences of it on a daily basis. As further details emerge of the discussions and ‘negotiations’ which took place between CSA and CA, it is becoming increasingly obvious that cricketing relations between the countries will take years to heal and the remaining scars will last even longer.

If Cricket Australia’s last-minute cancellation of the tour was merely spineless and callow, it might have been excusable. But there was a background of cynicism based on what looked and sounded like casual prejudice. It transpired that there may also have been plenty of hypocrisy, selfishness and dishonesty to complete the recipe.

It matters not whether CA acting chief executive, Nick Hockley, was left with no alternative than to apportion responsibility for the cancellation on ‘medical advice.’ He said it. He did not specify from where this advice came.

On at least half a dozen occasions the would-be tourists changed their requirements, moved the goalposts and insisted on different rules. On each occasion, the would-be hosts acquiesced and agreed.

The staff at the Irene Country Club, just four kilometres from Centurion Park, venue for two of the three Tests, would have to isolate for three weeks before Australia arrived, never mind the two weeks accepted globally – including in Australia – as a reasonable minimum.

When the Australian delegation suggested that sharing the vast expanse of the Irene Country Club with their hosts was unacceptable, the hosts once again bowed down. Never mind the success of the Sri Lanka tour, the Proteas would stay elsewhere, creating a separate BSE at another venue at huge cost.

It was never-ending. The Australians preferred not to use a commercial airport, somewhere like, OR Tambo International. Let’s see you jump through that hoop. Lengthy communication with various government ministries and departments led to clearance for a charter plane to land at Lanseria.

Then CA told their hosts that they would be arriving on a Qantas Dreamliner, too large to land at Lanseria. CSA went back to the relevant government ministries to ask permission for the aeroplane to use a private terminal at OR Tambo. It was granted.

Irene Country Club breakfast area – photograph courtesy of Mickey Arthur, Head Coach - Sri Lanka national cricket team

To appease direct concerns about the virus, South Africa’s Minister of Health, Dr Zweli Mkhize, provided guarantees that the country’s best medical facilities would be made available. Let that sink in. The Minister of Health guaranteed preferential treatment to a visiting cricket team during a global pandemic.

Then Cricket Australia ‘requested’ that an Australian developed track-and-trace system was purchased and used during the tour. Even though they would be ‘bubbling’ by themselves. The purchase was agreed.

When the time finally arrived for excuses and demands to run out, Hockley expressed his ‘regret’ that it was “too dangerous” for the Australian team to travel to South Africa. He said, in his sporting wisdom, that South Africa was gripped by a second wave of the ‘variant’ virus which was on the rise– a day after President Cyril Ramaphosa decreased the level of lockdown measures and announced that Covid figures were on the decline.

Barely 24-hours after the cancellation of the tour was announced, it became clear that 19 Australian players were anxiously awaiting clearance from CA to play in the IPL.

Hockley, having already said that the tour to SA had ‘nothing to do with finances’ despite presiding over cancelled tours to the country by Zimbabwe and Afghanistan and expenditure of millions of dollars on ensuring the Indian tour went ahead, then said the IPL was also ‘different’.

The Indian Premier League, said Hockley in response to a question about why Australians could play in the IPL but not tour South Africa, “…had a proven bio-security method in place.”

Proven in the UAE, not in India. The implication was emphatically clear. South Africa did not have a ‘proven’ BSE system, presumably because England refused to play three ODIs (but did not return home early) after two hotel staff tested positive. Forget the fact that Sri Lanka toured Covid-free, that there was a Pakistan Women’s tour taking place as he spoke or that CSA had staged the multi-team Momentum One-Day Cup without a hiccup.

Doctors’ sick-notes. Just as parents who want to take their children out of school for a day to maximise a long week-end can acquire them, so can national cricket boards. It became embarrassingly obvious that Australia’s players had no intention of touring South Africa but, far worse, they had no stomach for telling the truth.

In the absence of the truth, Cricket South Africa has not just incurred millions of rands in costs, but lost even more millions in income. Of course, there are also the thousands of casual staff and workers who now face a bleak winter.

It is hard to know whether the decision to stay at home or the cynical dishonesty with which it was made, and announced, is the more despicable.

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