'We waited for the system to produce players, rather than actively producing them'
Haroon Lorgat, Cricket South Africa’s chief executive, is looking to aggressively support black Africans’ participation in the game
Tim Wigmore17-Dec-2015In 24 years since readmission, only seven of the 87 Test players selected for South Africa have been black Africans. Ensuring the international cricket team becomes more representative of South Africa has been a priority for Haroon Lorgat since his appointment as Cricket South Africa chief executive in July 2013.”We can do better and that’s what we’ve attempted to do over the last year or two. We’ve become a little bit more aggressive in terms of pushing for the unlocking of talent across the country,” Lorgat says.From the ongoing season until at least 2017-18, quotas mandate that franchises must each pick six non-white players, including three black Africans. “The logic is simple: if we’ve got them playing in the domestic system, we hope they’ll be good enough to migrate into the national team. This approach is a lot more sustainable and should have been done over the past years.”CSA also aims to select four non-white players in the national team. This attracted much scrutiny after the selection of Vernon Philander over Kyle Abbott for the World Cup semi-final this year. Three independent directors later found that nothing untoward had happened.”If you look at our teams that played in the last 12 months, there were occasions when there were fewer than four coloured players. There’s no such thing as a target of four in the national team,” Lorgat says. “The only guideline is, if there’s a genuinely fifty-fifty call and it’s either A or B and A happens to be a black player, you select A.”Historically the use of quotas and targets has irked many white cricketers, contributing to players, including Kevin Pietersen, leaving South Africa. Yet some non-white players are also frustrated.Last month a group of black African cricketers calling themselves Black Cricketers in Unity sent CSA a letter saying they were “sick and tired” of being included in squads but not the final teams, stating, “If we are not ready for international cricket, stop picking us.” In response, Lorgat only says: “Their criticism is currently being addressed, so it would be premature for me to present or speculate an opinion on the allegation.”
“In South Africa we don’t believe we’ve got the level of lighting for a day-night Test match. We’d obviously have to look at the available resources, because it’s not cheap to upgrade lights”
It is “socio-economic circumstances” that explain the under-representation of black Africans, Lorgat says. “It’s an impediment for us that is very difficult to deal with. You might have a lot of talent in that community but they are also challenged by the need to do some basic things, like putting food on the table, walking miles to educate themselves, walking miles to go and practise and play the game of cricket.”Had we managed to avoid the dropout rate of black players through the system, we might have as many as six or seven available for selecting in the national team. But these players dropped for one reason or another through their development phases.”Like rugby union, CSA is working with the government on developing the game among the black African community. In August, a tripartite agreement was signed between CSA, Sport and Recreation South Africa, and the National Department of Basic Education. “They are going to help us get into schools because we simply do not have the resources to do all of that. We’ve got a huge amount of programmes that are currently underway, and we’ve seen some of that success coming through the domestic system.”As evidence of South Africa moving to ensure its cricket team becomes more representative of the nation, Lorgat also cites the KFC Mini Cricket programme, which takes the sport to over 100,000 children each year, and a scholarship scheme introduced two years ago, designed to ensure the best young players from among the ranks of the disadvantaged only have to juggle cricket and school, and do not have to work as well.CSA is working with the government on developing “focus schools” – state schools that have sports facilities that go some way to rivalling those found in private schools, ten of whom have produced over a third of international cricketers since 1991.What is certain is that the emergence of inspirational black African cricketers, however welcome, will not automatically make South Africa’s cricket more representative of the country. The case of Makhaya Ntini, who took 390 Test wickets between 1998 and 2009, proved as much.”We didn’t capitalise on that. It might have made us complacent and made us think that the system will produce,” Lorgat says. “We didn’t do enough in the time we enjoyed Makhaya, in terms of actually providing opportunities for talented black players, ensuring that they don’t drop out through their careers and developing their talent. We waited for the system to produce, rather than for us to actively produce.””Had we managed to avoid the dropout rate of black players through the system, we might have as many as six or seven available for selecting in the national team”•Getty ImagesRemedying that is not Lorgat’s only priority. Since his time as ICC chief executive, from 2008 to 2012, Lorgat has believed that Test matches could be better marketed.”If you look at the amount of money we spend promoting T20 cricket, we do very little or nothing for Test match cricket. We also need better context. We’ve talked long and many times about setting context for Test cricket. Instead of straight bilateral series, there should be meaning to those matches. That’s the reason why we thought of a Test championship, so every bilateral match would be part of a journey.”While the execution of such an idea is beyond Lorgat’s remit, he is focused upon ways of improving crowds for Test matches in South Africa. “We need changes in stadium infrastructure. I think expecting people to sit five days in the same bucket seats is a big ask today. Even things like Wi-Fi need to be sorted out. Test match cricket needs to become a destination where people get together. There’s a good bit that we need to do and we’re working on in South Africa. I’m keen to see what the turnout might be for the England Tests.”Lorgat has long supported day-night Test cricket, and hopes that South Africa’s first experience of it will be in Brisbane next year. But a day-night Test at home is considerably further off.”In South Africa we don’t believe we’ve got the level of lighting for a day-night Test match. In one-day cricket with a white ball you need the lux level at about 1200, which would suffice for a day-night Test with a white ball, but you need almost double that for a day-night Test with a pink ball.”To make day-night Tests at home a possibility, South Africa need to upgrade the quality of their lights. “We’d obviously have to look at the available resources that we’ve got and whether we would get a return on it, because it’s not cheap to upgrade lights. We’ll have to look at it but we haven’t started that exercise yet.”
“If you look at the amount of money we spend promoting T20 cricket, we do very little or nothing for Test match cricket”
CSA is also discussing how “to raise the profile” of the Ram Slam in future years. The scrapping of the T20 Champions League this year did not help. “We were disappointed as it removed an attractive incentive for our franchise teams to qualify and also a source of funding.”
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Whatever the ICC’s reaction to the Woolf Report, it served a useful purpose for CSA. “The irony of the Woolf Report is that was a very large reference point for the Nicholson Review,” Lorgat reflects. He is referring to the report commissioned by the sports minister after R4.7 million (approx US$611,000) was paid to 40 members of CSA staff in unauthorised bonuses after the 2009 IPL, which was staged in South Africa. The upshot of that report was a huge restructuring in the board, which was streamlined from 24 members to 12, including five independent directors. This came into effect in February 2013, shortly before Lorgat took charge.”We’ve had a huge mindset change in terms of accountability. In the whole re-engineering exercise we’ve done a lot of tracking, scorecards, goal-setting, measurements, so we’ve got very clever in the way that we set plans and monitor them and hold people accountable.”His words are endorsed by Tony Irish, the chief executive of the South African Cricketers’ Association, who says that Lorgat “deserves a lot of credit in having cleaned up a lot of the administrative inefficiency that used to exist across the 12 provinces and stadia and six franchises in domestic cricket. The new cricket operating model he has put in place is pretty efficient.”Even in his role as CSA chief executive, Lorgat retains ambitions for cricket’s development as a world game. One significant landmark could come in Durban in July 2022, when cricket is likely to return to the Commonwealth Games.”We didn’t do enough in the time we enjoyed Makhaya, in terms of actually providing opportunities for talented black players”•AFP”I’ve had some engagement with the 2022 Commonwealth people. They have applied for cricket to be part of it and we will support it,” he says. “I’m glad that England, in particular, have changed their stance to support cricket in multisport games, because that unlocks a lot of resources in individual countries.”It is Lorgat’s vision that South Africa will “become a little bit more active in helping the development of the game across the continent”. This year saw the launch of the Africa T20 Cup, which included Kenya, Namibia and a Zimbabwean representative side, and CSA is currently in talks with the ICC to move the Africa Development Office into CSA’s offices. Such work is crucial to cricket’s potential growth: by 2100, Africa’s population will quadruple to 4.4 billion.Throw in the apparent decline of the national team this year, which Lorgat euphemistically concedes is in a “transition phase”, and South Africa’s chief executive is a busy man. What he, and South African cricket, can achieve might depend considerably on whether the ICC can be restructured on more equitable lines.”If you have such a disproportionate allocation of resources over time it’s inevitable that because the rich get richer they will have more resources to be better. It will be a serious challenge.”