The Day the World Cup came Second

The Day the World Cup came Second

    It was the day South Africa’s obsession with winning the World Cup was finally put to bed. Not by winning it, obviously, but by placing something else ahead of it on the priority list. July 13, 2022, was the day we had confirmation that the World Cup was no longer the pivot around which the national game has revolved since 1992.

    Cricket South Africa’s decision not to play the ODI series against Australia in January and to forfeit the points in the World Cup Super League may be regarded as apocryphal in decades and generations to come. It may just as easily be remembered as heroically courageous and visionary.

    The Proteas have won just four of their 13 games to date and are in 11th place in the 13-team competition from which the top eight qualify for the 2023 World Cup in India. Common statistical consent suggests that 12 wins from the scheduled 24 games for each team will be sufficient. By foregoing the points from three games, South Africa will have eight games remaining. They will have to win them all. Two against the Netherlands, three against England, at home, and three against India, away.

    There are more problems to come. First, the Netherlands will have to return to South Africa following the Covid-scare abandonment of the first ODI at the half-way stage in Centurion last year. Fitting that into the schedule will be a challenge. Even more of challenge will be squeezing England into the fixture list at the end of January, as scheduled. The England team’s winter schedule is absurdly busy but the precedent has been set for them to send an ODI team without their Test stars. So that should happen.

    If it does, and the Netherlands tour is revived, and Temba Bavuma’s ODI team manage to win all five games, they will then have to travel to India and beat their hosts 3-0. No wonder CSA CEO Pholetsi Moseki said the conversation with Bavuma and coach Mark Boucher about forfeiting the ODI series in Australia had been ‘traumatic.’

    But here’s the rub. Moseki has presided over a (metaphorical) decision in which 50 people may die horribly or 250 less horribly.

    CSA’s new, soon-to-be-launched T20 domestic league is backed by SuperSport and already has four, confirmed heavy-weight team-owners and sponsors. Three of them, potentially four, tie-in directly with the IPL. If the IPL does not expand to a second season, as has been widely speculated, then a ‘mini IPL’ in South Africa will do very nicely. There is a lot of money at stake. As grim as it may sound, South African professional cricket is at stake. And the new team owners will, naturally, expect SA’s best players to be present when the new tournament kicks off in January.

    CSA suggested four alternative, rescheduled dates to Cricket Australia for the ODIs but none, apparently, were remotely considered. Having already cancelled a Test tour to South Africa 18 months ago despite the most secure Covid cricketing environment in the world, the Australians were always unlikely to tick a minor adjustment to their precious home itinerary. And they didn’t. I wasn’t in the room, or within earshot of the conversation, but those who were tell me there was barely even a conversation.

    One reason for that might be that Cricket Australia is floundering to keep its own financial flagship, the Big Bash League, alive. With attendances steadily falling to all-time lows and TV broadcast deals stumbling, the availability of Australia’s own national stars will give the tournament a welcome boost. But the ‘good for the goose and gander’ philosophy did not appear to be a part of CA’s discussion strategy.

    So. Best Bavuma and his players brace themselves for the reality reality of having to reach the World Cup via a 10-team Qualifying Tournament to be held in Zimbabwe, in June, to determine the final two places in the 10-team tournament. Zimbabwe, Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands will definitely be there as well as well as perennially strong underdogs, Namibia.

    It is South African Cricket’s reality that it needs a successful, domestic T20 League, with independent investors, to survive. It is equally a reality that it has to jeopardise its chances of competing in the next World Cup in order to do so. It could work out fine, even gloriously with the Proteas beating Papua New Guinea to reach the World Cup and then winning it.

    Those are the dreams we need to be having. Not those of what might happen otherwise.