Loan-back Players, please?

The Bewildering Future

    No cricketing country on earth runs the game perfectly or should pretend to have answers and solutions to the questions and intangibles of the players and supporters. There are endless tangles and divided opinions.

    The organisation of the game off the field suitably reflects ideas on it. A nod to New Zealand, however, which appears to have come closer than any other nation in modern times to have managed, if not mastered, the art of compromise.

    Amongst all the world’s battles for cricketing relevance and traction, England’s current hullaballoo around Sir Andrew Strauss’ High Performance Review might rank amongst the greatest acts of misguided, self-indulgent navel gazing the sport has ever seen. Strauss and the people who tasked him with redesigning the English game cannot, or will not, see or appreciate the value of what they have.

    Neither, it seems, does South Africa which continues to produce cricketers of such outstanding ability and potential that it simply doesn’t know what to do with them. South Africa has been a net-exporter of international cricketers for half a century and will continue to be so as long as its elite schools, with their elite facilities, continue to play the game. Spreading those opportunities will increase the output still further.  

    England, the chief importer of SA talent, has a declining production line. And yet, by obsessing about winning the Ashes by focussing on the elite part of the game at the tip of the pyramid, they would marginalise at least half of their 18 counties to the point of irrelevance. The wider the base of a pyramid, the higher the peak can be. An engineering degree is not essential to understand the principle.

    By concentrating on the destination you ignore the journey at your peril. If England’s best cricketers are best served playing less cricket then – let them play less. Why does that mean every player should play less? How does it benefit 20-year-olds learning about their games and honing their techniques? Should they spend more time in the nets where such things are so much harder to learn?

    The Strauss Review’s suggestion that having just six teams in Division One would guarantee a ‘best vs best’ scenario is playing a fool’s game with the principle of sporting competition – that the underdog never wins. What happens when Northamptonshire, or Derbyshire under the skilled guidance of Mickey Arthur, fight their way up from one of the two ‘Conferences’ below the first division? And they haven’t got a single England player in their ranks?

    Perhaps Strauss envisages placing the best cricketers into the top six teams. Which is Franchising them. And anyway, that suggests that the identity of the ‘best’ cricketers is always known. It is not.   

    In South Africa, the national under-19 team is competing in Division Two of the CSA T20 domestic tournament. They dominated the first round of matches winning all three of their games emphatically, two with bonus points. Perhaps it is just an exceptional year, like the one in 2004 which saw AB de Villiers and Dale Steyn emerge at a similar time to Hashim Amla and a few other world beaters. Or perhaps they have been incentivised by the SA20 and the reality, on their doorstep, of becoming immensely wealthy (by SA standards) in the next year or three.

    Opening batter, Meeka-eel Prince, top scored last weekend with 143 runs at a strike rate of 140. He is an eye-catcher. And where will the next Keshav Maharaj come from? Look no further than left arm spinner Liam Alder who claimed seven wickets while conceding runs at just 5.25 per over.

    Everybody who knows cricket appreciates the value, and rarity, of a left arm fast bowler. Just look at the impact Marco Jansen has had on international cricket. You thought Jansen was young at 22-years-old? Try 16-year-old Kwena Maphaka who returned the best figures of the weekend, 4-0-18-4. Back of the hand slower ball bouncer? No problem. Remember the name.

    How about an opening bowler good enough not just to bat at number three or four but who strikes at over 200? Look no further than Matthew Boast who did exactly that for the Under-19s finishing with six wickets at an economy rate of 6.0 runs per over and scored 108 runs at a strike rate of 212 including an over of 30 against the unfortunate off-spinner Blake Schraader whom he struck for three fours and three sixes.

    One of the reasons IPL Franchises bought the six teams in the SA20 was this extraordinary nursery of talent in South Africa, a nursery which shows no signs of drying up. Nobody can suggest with any logic or reason that they are not interested in winning the SA20, but 95% of their revenue comes from the ‘real’ IPL, not the mini SA version. The Rajasthan (and Paarl) Royals CEO, Jake McCrumm, recently admitted they expect to lose money with their SA team “for many years.” It’s a price they’re happy to pay, because it’s a small price in their global scheme of things.   

    England needs to embrace and cherish its system, not break it apart. South Africa needs to embrace its strengths and not allow them to be broken apart. Not completely, anyway. It would be good to think we could loan back some of the best players from IPL Franchises to play for their country. Once in a while.