Non-whites in SA cricket

[Marius]

This post isn't about top-level cricket, this is about grassroots cricket. There seems to be a bit of a worry that the increase of non-whites in SA cricket is harming the standard, and resulting in the death of cricket in SA. I am captaining a team which is playing in the sixth league of the East Rand cricket league near Johannesburg. The team is mainly schoolboys, with one or two guys who have finished school recently. The best batsman in the side is a 19-year old Indian guy, and the best bowler is a 16-year old black kid. I only took the team over in Feb, and so far under my captaincy we've played three and won two. The game we lost, we were murdered, all out for 46, losing by nine wickets. The team that beat us was from the black township of Wattville, and made up entirely of blacks. These guys don't even have nets or a homeground, yet they beat a team from the suburbs with pretty good facilities pretty easily. The two teams we beat were both almost exclusively white. I for one am not worried about the future of cricket in SA. Cricket is well on its way to becoming a truly national sport, and when it is, South Africa will be unstoppable in world cricket.

 

[vic_orthdox]

for a second there i thought you had contradicted yourself, but now i see what your saying. i guess people just have a problem with the idea (i'm not going to say whether it is still happening or not, i haven't been following it closely enough) that at the highest level, blacks are getting an armchair ride into test cricket at the expense of better players. but over the long term, hopefully it can lead to greater participation through a larger number of role models for the young black kids, and therefore greater depth in SA cricket. but i think calling yourself "unstoppable"...bit overenthusiastic?

 

[mavric41]

for a second there i thought you had contradicted yourself, but now i see what your saying. i guess people just have a problem with the idea (i'm not going to say whether it is still happening or not, i haven't been following it closely enough) that at the highest level, blacks are getting an armchair ride into test cricket at the expense of better players. but over the long term, hopefully it can lead to greater participation through a larger number of role models for the young black kids, and therefore greater depth in SA cricket. but i think calling yourself "unstoppable"...bit overenthusiastic?

Let him dream. He might well end up being right.

 

[chris.hinton]

is the East rand league a good league?

 

[Marius]

Not really

 

[Richard]

but i think calling yourself "unstoppable"...bit overenthusiastic?

Not neccesarily.
About time someone other than West Indies and Australia dominated the World game.

 

[garage flower]

for a second there i thought you had contradicted yourself

I thought so too, but an interesting post in the end. Clearly there's been a massive increase in the potential talent pool since the apartheid era ended. I don't see any particular reason why South Africa can't become a dominant force in the next decade.

 

[Langeveldt]

There of course is the ingrained notion that whites play cricket and rugby, blacks play football..

The day that a cricketer can take to the test arena to prove himself as a South African and not a black cricketer will be a great one.

 

[chris.hinton]

it will not happen

 

[Langeveldt]

it will not happen

And the fact that someone like you is telling me that makes me even more hopeful

 

[username1234]

This post isn't about top-level cricket, this is about grassroots cricket. There seems to be a bit of a worry that the increase of non-whites in SA cricket is harming the standard, and resulting in the death of cricket in SA. I am captaining a team which is playing in the sixth league of the East Rand cricket league near Johannesburg. The team is mainly schoolboys, with one or two guys who have finished school recently. The best batsman in the side is a 19-year old Indian guy, and the best bowler is a 16-year old black kid. I only took the team over in Feb, and so far under my captaincy we've played three and won two. The game we lost, we were murdered, all out for 46, losing by nine wickets. The team that beat us was from the black township of Wattville, and made up entirely of blacks. These guys don't even have nets or a homeground, yet they beat a team from the suburbs with pretty good facilities pretty easily. The two teams we beat were both almost exclusively white. I for one am not worried about the future of cricket in SA. Cricket is well on its way to becoming a truly national sport, and when it is, South Africa will be unstoppable in world cricket

you guys would prolly of had more of a chance of being unstoppable if all the white's stayed in south africa and there was no affirmative action then just imagine how good your team would of come.

Not really

well there's your answer maybe all the good white players play in the top grade.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Hi jot!

SA returned to world cricket (IIRC) in 1992. I have to be honest & say the 16 year-old me made the lazily racist assumption that in ten years you would be unstoppable.

I'd grown up with Allan Lamb & Robin Smith as the mainstays of our middle order & a seemingly never ending conveyor-belt of magnificent fast bowlers destroying us for the Windies. My juvenile assumption was that SA would be able to tap into a similar source of world-class quicks from your majority population.

This hasn't come to pass. After reading Peter Oborne's wonderful biography of Basil D'Oliveira I can say there is no shortage of interest in cricket from the non-white population in SA, so the reasons for their non-emergence are puzzling.

 

[Richard]

Because the idea that black-cultured guys mostly play football ahead of cricket is still far more true, even if not quite as much as it used to be.
There might be a plentiful interest, but the way I understand it it's still a very small compared to the white-cultured.
For instance, only 11% of Nguni and Sotho speakers (ie most black South Africans) apparently showed an interest in WC2003.
Which is a real shame.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Because the idea that black-cultured guys mostly play football ahead of cricket is still far more true, even if not quite as much as it used to be.
There might be a plentiful interest, but the way I understand it it's still a very small compared to the white-cultured.
For instance, only 11% of Nguni and Sotho speakers (ie most black South Africans) apparently showed an interest in WC2003.
Which is a real shame.

I can't speak with first-hand certainty, but Oborne paints a convincing picture of a thriving non-white cricket scene in the 50s & 60s.

This may be peculiar to Cape Town, of course. However, given that non-whites outnumber whites in SA by over 4 to 1, interest by 11% should still equate to 3 or 4 players in a team.

 

[Richard]

Really? I didn't realise it was quite that much, I knew there were more black-skinned guys but I didn't realise they were 4 out of 5.
The 11% figure is still very disappointng.
It wouldn't be like Peter Obourne to paint a wannabe picture, mind - he can be a bit of a dreamer, and he does seem to be something close to obsessed with the idea of a unified Africa.

 

[John the Bookie]

Whenever a black players fail, the quota system takes the blame. Whenever a white players fail it is just poor selection. This seems very unfair on the black players and there are added pressure on black players when making their debut that wouldn't occur if they were white.

I still believe that white players are getting a fairer deal in South Africa. Dale Steyn only got into the team because he was white. I have nothing against Steyn and by all accounts he is a talented young bowler who could possibly be the future of South African cricket but he also raw and he is not yet test class. If an inexperience black player of equal ability was selected with so few first class matches, the selection board would have been crucified and being accused of being racist against white people and there would probably be a lot of accusation about quota system harming SA cricket.

 

[Richard]

I know what you mean and I can certainly see exactly what you suggested happening had Steyn been black.
But to select Tsolekile when there were 2 or 3 better candidates (including the current incumbant) was just plain madness.
It also gets the waters muddied when people include players like Zander de Bruyn in the "quota beneficiaries"; and to an extent Alfonso Thomas.
If those 2 had got more opportunities I'm pretty sure they'd be ensconsed in the side by now.
Interestingly, all SA's last 5 ODI debutants have been white; Duminy and Van Wyk got an especially raw deal and Rudolph has been mistreated recently (though more to do with the typical mixing-up of Tests and ODIs I feel than anything to do with the quotas).
Some players to play internationals who are palpably not up-to-standard in the recent past: Ontong, Peterson, Kent, Tsolekile, Amla, Steyn, Pretorious. There's also been Zondeki whose selection was dubious but who actually looks a more than useful bowler on the little I've seen of him.
But can you see the problem? There was absolutely no good reason except the typical "variation" rubbish why Ontong and Peterson should get picked; Amla unquestionably earned his go, as did Pretorious; and Tsolekile and Steyn, well... stupid selections, Steyn mostly because of the "must have pace" thing doing the rounds at selection tables for the last 2 years or so... as for Kent, I've absolutely no idea why he was picked. Maybe they got him mixed-up with Kemp like I did at first.
Charl Willoughby's case doesn't help, either - by the fact that he's non-white and is a fantastic bowler at domestic level and has bowled a heap of garbage - inexplicably - at the Test and ODI level.
But either way - there are a lot of muddied waters, and you're quite right - perhaps they do somewhat exaggerate what is merely a small problem akin to the many others at selection tables.

 

[John the Bookie]

I'm just saying instead of blaming the problems on quota system, blame it on poor selection. There are plenty of poor selection of both black and white players through the last couple years and to blame the current problem on just the selection of black players is just unfair.

 

[Richard]

There are plenty of cases of execrable selection wherever you go, indeed.

 

[username1234]

Whenever a black players fail, the quota system takes the blame. Whenever a white players fail it is just poor selection. This seems very unfair on the black players and there are added pressure on black players when making their debut that wouldn't occur if they were white.

I still believe that white players are getting a fairer deal in South Africa. Dale Steyn only got into the team because he was white. I have nothing against Steyn and by all accounts he is a talented young bowler who could possibly be the future of South African cricket but he also raw and he is not yet test class. If an inexperience black player of equal ability was selected with so few first class matches, the selection board would have been crucified and being accused of being racist against white people and there would probably be a lot of accusation about quota system harming SA cricket

it's funny you say that because most black players who make the squad seem to struggle just look at that guy who replaced mark boucher i couldn't believe it when boucher was dropped.