South Africa lose to Ireland – hold the back page!

It’s been 48 hours since the Proteas were, in captain Temba Bavuma’s words, “totally outplayed in every department” by Ireland and a few of my subscribers have suggested that my silence on the subject has been ‘deafening.’ What do I have to say on the subject?

Temba Bavuma

Most of my columns require many hours of rumination and some even require research. Others demand phone calls and interviews and, just occasionally, produce unique insight. But after 48 hours of mastication it appears perfectly obvious that there are no ‘secrets’ to South Africa’s demise. There are reasons, but no excuses. Most importantly, Cricket Ireland should be praised and celebrated, without compromise.

The use of emphasis in language has fascinated me for long before I even understood what it was and how it came to be formed. For example, how has it happened that “the team is not very good” has become universally interpreted as “they are really poor”? If a statement started with “they are good, but they are not very good,” with the emphasis on ‘very’, then there can be no doubt of the intended meaning.   

The current Proteas team is not very good. We should expect further upsets and disappointments such as the Ireland mishap in the years to come and we should appreciate and cherish the memories of the great years while we await the rebuilding of the team into another formidable force. 

The current Proteas team is a good team. But it is not a ‘very’ good team. It has two very good players in Kagiso Rabada and Quinton de Kock and two or three more with the potential to become very good, like Lungi Ngidi, Anrich Nortje and Tabraiz Shamsi. There are three or four with the potential to be very good sporadically, like Aiden Markram, Keshav Maharaj, Andile Phehlukwayo and Janneman Malan. 

Tabraiz Shamsi

There are others who are honest, hard-working and worthy professionals whose skills have been tested often enough for the inevitable conclusions to be reached. But the reasons for prevaricating on those decisions are numerous, and woe betide anyone who thinks they are all transformational or ‘target’ related. 

Having said that, it is a reality. With Phehlukwayo enduring a slump in form and confidence, playing both Dwaine Pretorius (had he been Covid-free) and Wiaan Mulder in the XI would have represented the first opportunity to bat as deep as number eight since 2014. Those with the intestinal fortitude to recall AB de Villiers attempts to transform himself into a sixth bowler during during the 2015 World Cup will remember how desperate the situation had become.

Anyway, South Africa lost to Ireland. The social-media mogul Shamsi said on Twitter that, although there was no excuse, it was hard to concentrate fully on the game while the civil unrest and chaotic carnage at home was in full flight. He may come across as flighty and flippant at times, but Shamsi is, in fact, one of the more complete and balanced members of the national squad. You will never hear a word of excuse, and indeed the majority of players are not consciously unaware of a dip in their physical intensity caused by subconscious distraction, but it is a reality. It happens all the time, and it has been recorded and measured. 

The SJN hearings in Johannesburg are as much of a distraction to the national squad as the searing Covid numbers and the anarchic looting. There is much to distress all of us, and to pretend that that men’s Proteas squad should somehow be immune to the distractions is naïve and silly in equal measure. 

And finally, Ireland deserved their win. Their own CEO, Warren Deutrom, bailed Cricket Ireland out of a financial cavern with a 100,000 Euro loan from his life savings in mid 2019. That may be mad, but some forms of madness yield results. He saw what Irish cricket was capable of, and so did many others. Sadly for the Proteas, they are the evidence.