CRICKET: Luke Alfred
SEEKING someone to head the Plascon Cricket Academy, the United Cricket Board could hardly have chosen better than Clive Rice.
Given that Rice’s 24 years at the top were bolstered by a mean streak second to none, it seemed logical to ask him if the belligerence which characterised his career wasn’t perhaps innate rather than something which could be taught at the institution which he’s about to head.
“Four hundred and eighty first class games is what I played,” he told me. “I think it took me 150 games or more just to find out something about my own game, as to how I was now going to play effectively on that basis. And now you see the young players coming out here with 30 first class games, and they’re trying to compete against international players that are fairly experienced, you know, they’re a bit at sea …”
The academy’s inaugural season begins in April, although the names of those selected were made public last week. The intensive five-month course will be held at Rand Afrikaans University, a location chosen because Rice plans to tap into the in-house facilities and academic expertise offered by the university.
The first intake features 27 players from all the major cricketing provinces except the Orange Free State. Inevitably, the selection has prompted controversy, with notable absentees including Nicky Boje and Ross Veenstra.
Another point of contention concerns older players, such as Aubrey Martyn and Pieter Strydom, rubbing shoulders with recent school-leavers, such as Mark Benfield and Zander de Bruin. I asked Rice if in the future only players under a certain age would be selected. “I think that what you’re going to find is that there is going to be a range like that over the years, because, as I see it, when I was selected for South Africa aged 20, the reason was that people like Trevor Goddard had retired, aged 32 or 33 or whatever he was, and he had only just learnt to play the game.
“Now the players go on to age 40 playing the game at top level, with the result that youngsters of 20 are struggling to make it because they haven’t got the experience.”
Rice acknowledges that although he is leading the academy, he won’t, for example, be able to impart the tricks of the trade known only to the closed community of left-arm spinners. He has no problems with the idea of calling Alan Kourie to speak to Claude Henderson say, but stresses that he wants knowledge to be spread around: “I don’t want Alan Kourie to only speak to Claude Henderson, so that the secret of bowling left-arm spin stays with Henderson!
“What’s got to happen is that at the same time as Henderson is hearing what Alan Kourie has got to say, so’s the opening batsman. So the opening batsman here, someone like (Jacques) Kallis, he’s got to then hear what Henderson’s trying to do.”
Along with passing on experience and improving technique, Rice plans to focus on the neglected aspects of the sport such as teaching the players how to approach the media, how to speak in public and how to deal with marketing and promotional aspects of the game.
No matter how complete the package offered by the academy, however, surely a cynic would have a point in suggesting that there is nothing the academy can do that an arduous under-24 tour to Pakistan couldn’t achieve. Rice disagrees: “You can take the guys away for as long as you like on tour but they’re only going to play 10 or 15 games. It took me 150 first class games at least before I knew what I was trying to do. If you can just hurry up that experience, and get them playing like fairly mature players because they know what they’re looking to do, that’s exactly what this academy has got to achieve.”
With an intake of more-or-less 25 players on an annual basis, Rice realises that a crisis of expectations is inevitable. He doesn’t think that any more than “five or six will come through” but believes that if he can improve standards and increase competition for places in provincial sides he will have done his job.
Catt selected despite pay row
RUGBY: Jon Swift
THE significance of England selecting Mike Catt at fullback to replace the injured Paul Hull in the opening Five Nations match against Ireland next weekend is of more than just passing significance to the game of rugby.
The former Eastern Province backline player has openly admitted being paid to play his rugby at provincial level in this country before going back to win his first England cap.
He was hauled over the coals for the newspaper interview which was at the eye of the storm and summoned to appear before Dennis Easby, then IRB’s amateur status committee.
Catt’s confessions caused some apoplexy in the true blue ranks of rugby administrators and a three-member commission was hastily convened to examine the breaking of the player omerta which has shrouded boot money, under the lap payments and inflated expenses.
At the heart of the issue is one salient fact: the players are the ones who put bums in stadium seats, not the administrators. As such, they deserve all the rewards that an all-too-brief career at international level could generate if payment was commensurate with gate takings. That England have taken the step of selecting Catt before any judgment has been passed on his admissions — and de facto his amateur status — speaks volumes for the paradigm shift in the thinking of the old stagers.
It is no secret that the amateurs in a professional world – – and more especially, in a sport which is professional in all but name — is an absurdity as far removed from the age we live in as Victorian chamber music is from heavy metal.
That Catt was supposedly paid R1 000 a game for EP is not beyond the bounds of reason. This was the sum paid by a province based not unadjacent to Ellis Park for selection to the South African team to face Willie John McBride’s Lions. And that was all of 20 years ago before inflation became a driving issue. And, one could argue, before the universal acceptance of paying people what they are truly worth.