Victory in Karachi, shocks at home...

Trevor Chesterfield

Anyone who has been listening to the Po-faced gloom and doom from some radio and television studious around South Africa, defeat loomed large for Graeme Smith's side in the build up to the first Test against Pakistan.

Why even polls in a couple of newspapers predicted defeat and suggested the tour a waste of time. This was after the earlier dizzying and frenetic ICC Twenty/20 Championship and South Africa's exit for the tournament in Durban before what was termed a largely 'unpatriotic' Asian crowd.

As it is, certain factors surrounding the team added to the Po-faced views of the critics, doubting media and general public. Andrew Hall had gone into retirement, a 'disgruntled' Jacques Kallis had quit as vice-captain to concentrate on his batting, Morne Morkel was injured and sent home and Shaun Pollock was axed for the first time in his career.

An added backgrounder was how rumours 'back home' were that new Cricket South Africa Norman Arendse was unhappy with the whole team management system and its 'non-quota' and 'non-target' stance.

Yet, on the day Arendse told a board meeting in Johannesburg that he demanded more say in selection of Test squads and teams, South Africa achieved what for many what was said to be impossible. They beat Pakistan at the National Stadium in Karachi by 160 runs.

Only as big win this one was it was not met with universal approval in South Africa by the media that was on tour with the team. The way it was spread around, a South African cricket reporter of Asian extraction, Durban-based Iqbal Khan, Pakistan are not supposed to lose in Karachi. Are they? His largely ineffectual stereotype news agency style reports of the Test in the country's largest newspaper group reflected the mood of the nation.

Anyway, it was he knowingly suggested that Pakistan sources said South Africa had the wrong team: that Dale Steyn was not capable of taking five wickets in a five match series let alone an innings and, Paul Harris was not an effective bowler, the team management had their selections all wrong.

But when for Pakistan the coach, Geoff Lawson, instead of the captain turns up to the post-Test media conference to field a lot of prickly questions, there is the feeling that something is not quite right. Hansie Conje pulled this stunt after the defeat to Zimbabwe at Chelmsford in the 1999 World Cup and Bob Woolmer fronted up to the media while the captain sulked in the showers.

When spotted afterwards, Cronje decided to duck again and refused to acknowledge a greeting in Afrikaans by one of his former Free State players in England following the series. It gave many an unpleasant illustration of how to accept victory and defeat.

Shoaib Malik, in his first Test as captain, it was said 'had a flight to catch'. That's a new one. So is the comment that the win by South Africa is the first victory against a major subcontinent team in more than seven years suggests that Sri Lanka are not major.

Lawson though took umbrage at the suggestion that Malik was too embarrassed to face the media. 'Respect the Pakistan captain,' he fired back. It appears there was none as the implacable view was how the new captain was embarrassed to meet the media.

It was the old story of 'ifs' and 'buts'. You know the one, 'if we had held a couple of catches' and 'but for Steyn and Harris taking five wickets for the first time in an innings' and 'but for a couple of centuries by Kallis, we too would have been in a better position'.

Naturally when you have five days to prepare for a Test as this one, and the background sniping was doing what it could to sap certain psychological points, to shove the win, and its size as well, under the noses of the armchair critics, was no doubt a good feeling for Smith.

Other Saf styled reporters and wannabe analysts on tour, boasting about dinner arrangements on the network and sucking up to the more important TV types (for some, being the sycophant goes with laptop, borrowed copycat phrases 'passed off as his own' image), lose touch with what is actually going on. Asking them what is their point of all this showing off and they wonder why they are suddenly being told impolitely to naff off by others.

Meanwhile, back in the CSA boardroom, Arendse is pushing his case of what he wants and how he wants it. South Africa beating Pakistan by 160 runs is waved aside. It's not important enough for the Cape Town advocate. He wants his thoughts to be heard and wants to bend the ear of anyone willing to listen.

Part of this planning (or that of a committee of which he was a member) are proposals of how to (re)structure cricket in South Africa to the benefit of all in the game. This, it is said, will form part of wide ranging discussions that took place the day Smith, Steyn and Kallis helped beat Pakistan on a fallow field far, far removed from Johannesburg .

The CSA governance structures, the (annual) review of the franchise system, national team selection policies and transformation are all part of the discussions. Part of this planning has it that the sport, below national team level, be re-organised. A lot of this is updating housekeeping arrangements.

But when it came to the CSA showpiece, the team (now in Pakistan) there was a reemphasis of the prioritisation of the Proteas, although some still questioned this approach. But the side did not lack for anything. There are the same management structures as Australia and England, 'despite them being First World and us not,' Arendse added.

But there came a problem when a national player, Johan van der Wath, announced on the day South Africa exited the recent ICC Twenty20 that he had signed for the Indian Cricket League, represented an attitude felt in some quarters to be reason enough to re-think the emphasis on the national side.

He was then quoted in a Cape Town newspaper as saying, in view of the decision of Van der Wath that it was time 'to question that logic' of the team's priorities. That as they have not won anything and players, black and white, are eyeing the more lucrative Kolpak contracts in England, the issue needed a rethink.

'Money was spent in bringing players through the system, but now money is being spent to promote English cricket,' he grumbled without looking at the causes that has created this position.

Arendse said there was no clear answer to the question of when CSA should scrap targets/quotas. This was despite the SA Players Association's memorandum calling for the system to be revamped.

'The players are regarded as one of the main stakeholder groups. They are entitled to their opinion. That opinion will be put on the table, like any others, and we will discuss it,' Arendse is quoted as saying.

All this is most interesting, but it doesn't get around to supporting the views of the players and why the identity tag is still one of colour and not one of players. The third generation since unity in 1991 and almost fifteen years since is almost on CSA; the amateur wing has burgeoning talent, but the thrust is going in the wrong direction.

To produce talent that wins Tests, limited overs events and trophies and raises the sport's and players profile requires a common goal: not one that is forced artificially on the system. If CSA want to move ahead, they need to take a close look at England where they have a natural development system and based on merit.

CSA chief Arendse feels heat at the top!

Trevor Chesterfield

Amid the fancy public relations act that followed Norman Arendse and his shoehorning into the post as president of Cricket South Africa to replace Ray Mali, now acting president of the International Cricket Council, there were a lot of grimaces as well that greeted the news.

Among those who didn't give it a second thought at first were the players and those members of the players' body, the SA Cricketers Association. Yet within weeks of Arendse taking over the post from Mali after a musical chairs duet, a few strange things have happened.

The first was how the decision by about 38 players to sign a moratorium that they were not in favour of so-called empowerment strategies and the dreaded quota system, as favoured by Arendse and certain others in the Cricket South Africa hierarchy, was leaked to the media. This had the president of the player's body, Ashwell Prince quitting. Little to nothing was said by CSA types. They were about to launch their bunfight, the ICC T20 Championship and didn't want disconcerting ripples to cloud the issue.

Nothing was publicly said either by CSA because they don't really enjoy it when players with a conscience take them on as they feel the system is marginalising others within the players' structure.

Prince was the first non-white South African to take over the role of captain in Sri Lanka last year. He is a humble enough young man with principles, and frankly, the strong egalitarian voice in me says that to use the term 'black' captain is wrong. Prince is the first from the previously disadvantaged society, group or whatever you want to call it, to earn the post. It is felt that he deserved it; labelling him 'black' because of his colour is wrong.

Anyway, calling him 'black' and not a South African is a mistake made by far too many South African journalists, reporters and so-called analysts and plays to the old classification gallery that displays certain lack of understanding of a nation still attempting to find a genuine identity. It would have been thought that after seventeen years since the formation of what is the United Cricket Board how such an egalitarian vision is still not accepted by all.

You don't read of people saying the white South African captain, Graeme Smith. And what is going to happen when an Asian is in line to become captain of the team?

There are a large number of critics in Asia of South Africa pushing the affirmative action line. One Mumbai-based writer said argued in a short message service (SMS) text before the ICC Twenty/20 Championship that in his opinion 'Proteans (sic) are liars, have no morals and are characterless'. If that is the view of an ordinary Indian, what would the new CSA president think of such a comment if it was sent to him? It would be interesting to find out.

Maybe it was, and perhaps why Arendse has found himself in the news again, allegedly shooting off his mouth over a second story leaked to an Afrikaans Sunday newspaper, which demanded comment. Whether this is a deliberate attempt to embarrass Arendse and his reaction begs questions about the accuracy of the comments he made.

Unlike the silence over Prince's decision to quit as president of the national players body when his opposition to quotas was made, this new disclosure caught Arendse wiping some sweat off his brow as the heat is turned up on his the statements he has since made.

Now he claims that his words have been twisted out of shape as much as the action of Paul Adams, and that he is not 'genuinely blaming at all whites for South African cricket's woes'.

This is all very interesting as there is the impression that Arendse didn't like one bit how the players association at large rejected the quota system and said so.

It is his view that criticism of transformation in cricket too often came from racist journalists, referring specifically to certain newspapers which had claimed that white English-speakers were being marginalised in all levels of cricket, while less competent blacks were placed in management positions. There seems to be certain paranoia creeping into this opinion.

'I'm not such a fool to think all our woes are the fault of whites,' he complains and says how many black, coloured and Indian people also do not believe in affirmative action, alluding no doubt to the views written in a report issued by the national players who met in a conclave and argued against such policies. But using classification as an identity label adds to the problem.

He wanted Cricket South Africa to talk about 'issues of patriotism' because though resources were being focused on giving the national team as much as those national teams of First World countries received, some players still left the country for greener pastures. Yet he uses ethnic labels to identify them: not as South Africans as it says on their passport.

Arendse said transformation since 1994 not only meant the promotion of more black and coloured players, but meant providing opportunities for women, the blind, the disabled, the rural poor and Afrikaners to advance in a sport that was traditionally dominated by 'privileged English boys from top high schools'.

This, however, did not mean that there was no space for white English-speaking players in the national team or management. Cricket SA is flexible about its transformation targets and would not enforce it in situations where it was inappropriate or impossible.

'I don't think there can be one white player who can say he has been denied opportunities,' he said, which flies in the face of a recent question sidestepped about why two talented players were said to be of the 'wrong colour' when asked why they were no longer in the mix.

Arendse had been aware from Makhaya Ntini, Herschelle Gibbs, Prince and about thirty others, who recently signed a memorandum against affirmative action how they were 'sick and tired' of being called quota players whenever the team loses.

Since then Tshwane Mayor Gwen Ramokgopa, which is part of the national capital Pretoria, suggests how Asians living in South Africa are 'adopted Africans without much of a voice'. That is an unnecessary xenophobic comment to make by a civic leader who should know better. This follows a row in some South African newspapers that Asians who supported India when they played South Africa in the T20 tournament at Kingsmead in Durban were being 'unpatriotic'. This is an ongoing argument in countries such as England, Australia and to a far lesser degree, New Zealand.

Yet when an fifth generation South African of Indian ancestry complains of being referred to as an Indian and not a South African, it requires not sympathy but a need to understand the hurt and feelings with the writer of a letter in a Durban Sunday paper about his identity.

No doubt as an advocate Arendse may have the same smart answer he gave to Heath Streak in early 2004 on what he should do when the dispute between Zimbabwe players and that country's cricket board over not only Streak's sacking as captain and the resulting players' strike because selection policy interference by the board, notably the bully Ozias Bvute, Zimbabwe Cricket's chief executive.

Bvute confronted me Queen's Sports Club in Bulawayo in mid-November 2003 during the second Test of the game against Zimbabwe and said, 'You whites from South Africa are not really welcome here. We only play with whites (teams) because we are told (by the ICC) that we have to.' This was after talking to a mixed group of mainly cheerful ten and eleven year olds and wanting to know their favourite Zimbabwe player(s). The chorus of 'Heath Streak' seemed to attract Bvute's attention and drew an immediate rebuke.

Recently, Ray Mali, former CSA president and now the acting ICC president uttered the words 'fairness, justice and equality'. They were not about the Cricket South Africa's current state of mind either. A quietly spoken, retired school teacher the words were offered at the start of the battle between Darrel Hair and the ICC about denying him his right to work. Mali was replaced as CSA president by Arendse and perhaps the words he offered might be useful for Arendse to remember.