CRICKET
Peter Robinson
One man has emerged as the gravest threat imaginable to South Africa’s avowed ambition of becoming the best cricket team in the world. It isn’t Steve Waugh and it isn’t Shane Warne. Nor even is it, as many South Africans might suppose, umpire Darrell Hair.
No, the worm in the apple is a lot closer to home and it comes in the shape of Rushdi Magiet, the convener of the national selection panel and a man who has elevated the business of cocking things up almost to an art form.
No announcement of a South African team or squad these days passes without one blunder or another and it has now reached the point where Magiet is apparently incapable of performing his most basic functions: writing the correct list of names down on a piece of paper, for instance.
His tenure as convener, since he took over from Peter Pollock after the 1999 World Cup, makes for a catalogue of ineptitude. The first team chosen under his leadership, for a quadrangular tournament in Kenya in 1999, did not contain top batsman Daryll Cullinan. Cullinan first heard of his omission on the radio.
A year later Neil McKenzie went to Nairobi with the South African side for the International Cricket Council Knockout 2000 tournament, did not get a game and, without a South African selector going anywhere near Kenya, was dropped at the end of it. It was left to coach Graham Ford, who had not been consulted by Magiet, to explain to McKenzie exactly why he had been left out.
To move on to this summer, the first squad of the season chosen was to go to Zimbabwe with Shaun Pollock named as captain. Magiet was asked whether Pollock was to be captain for the season, as is usually the case. He blinked in confusion and then declared that, well, the selectors hadn’t had any problems with Pollock. It was hardly a ringing endorsement.
The last time Magiet personally announced a South African squad was for the final two one-dayers in Zimbabwe, for which a 14-man party was announced. Would all 14 players get a game, particularly if South Africa had wrapped up the series before the last match, he was asked? Um, well, that was a matter for the team selection committee on tour. Well, would he like to see all 14 players used? Again he ducked the question.
Since then two further South African squads have been named, one at the dinner to launch the Mutual and Federal SA Cricket Annual and the last at Benoni by the United Cricket Board’s communications director, Bronwyn Wilkinson. On neither occasion was Magiet available to explain the selections.
Sunday’s announcement quickly turned to farce when the first squad announced by Wilkinson which simply added Nicky Boje to the 12 who had done duty for the first two one-day internationals was later amended to one which contained Boje, Boeta Dippenaar and Charl Langeveldt, but which omitted Claude Henderson.
Wilkinson had to frantically phone around in an attempt to stop the original squad going out around the world a task made impossible by the speed of modern communication before the corrrected team list was issued and this, mysteriously, expanded a 13-man squad to 14 within the space of a few hours. To add to the confusion, earlier in the day Magiet had said that it was now policy to choose 12-man squads to avoid carrying spare players around the country.
It later transpired that either Magiet had either written the wrong team down or handed over the wrong piece of paper. Or possibly both. Whatever the case, the wrong team was sent out and the credibility of the South African selectors, which is already a matter of debate, was simply undermined again.
It also seems that the squad eventually named was not the one agreed upon in the selection meeting. Why it was amended is not clear.
Less than two weeks ago Mfuneko Ngam was picked in the South African A team to play India and then hurriedly withdrawn. This followed an exchange of opinions between Magiet and Craig Smith, the South African team physiotherapist and part of the medical team overseeing Ngam’s rehabilitation after a shoulder operation. Apparently Magiet had not bothered to consult the medical staff about Ngam’s progress before his selection.
There are difficulties facing South African selectors that, say, their counterparts in England or Australia don’t have to worry about. The easiest way to explain South African selection policy is in these terms: the idea is to pick the best available team and then, in a guarded whisper as long as it’s not all-white.
In fact, this provision has become almost an irrelevance. Those “players of colour” currently in the South African side are quite clearly there on merit. You can argue about the correct approach to Herschelle Gibbs’s periodic indiscretions, but you cannot argue that he is one of the great talents of the modern game. Ntini, too, chiselled himself an important place in the South African attack last summer. He’s there because he deserves to be, even if occasionally there will be debate over who to leave out to fit in an extra spinner.
But these arguments will be about cricketing considerations, as they should be, and a coherent selection convener should be able to explain the pros and cons and give clear indications of where the national team is supposed to be heading.
At the moment, however, Magiet is not at all coherent. There is no provision, I understand, in the UCB constitution for him to be sacked it is an honorary position in which case he should resign or be prevailed upon to resign. And this should happen long before teams to play against Australia later this year are considered.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa