To the long list of people who would urge Norman Arendse rather to spend his considerable energies on saving the Bengal Tiger from a fate worse than the aphrodisiacs industry, add a frustrated woman.
”I’m so unpopular with my wife right now,” Arendse said this week in a brief aside from South African cricket’s affairs of state. ”We’re moving house and this doesn’t help.”
As he said that, the unmistakable righteousness of a woman being kept waiting penetrated the fuzzy buzz of our cellphone conversation like an expertly aimed stiletto heel.
If she is pissed off enough she might tell Arendse to stop caring so much. After all, some people are already doing so. ”My friends are saying to me, ‘No man, you’re not getting involved in selection again, are you?’.”
In answer: yes, he is. Which is part of what Arendse was elected to do as president of Cricket South Africa (CSA). The holder of that office is required to approve the national squad before it is announced. There are good reasons for this, not least the deeply racist history of sport in this country and its lingering legacy.
This did not happen on Monday, when a squad vetoed several times by Arendse as the tour party for Bangladesh was released to the media.
That squad, which is now in Bangladesh, includes four black players among its 14 members. CSA’s transformation policy sets a target of six blacks in a squad of 14.
The number is not cast in stone. But if there is any difficulty in finding six black players who are worthy of a place in the national squad, cricket in this country should shut shop.
At this point the questions are swirling like tow trucks around a rush-hour fender-bender. For a start, what were the selectors thinking when they handed this squad to Arendse? What part of the fact that four is not six do they not understand?
Then there is the folly of leaving the final approval of the squad to one person. This means the careful deliberations of a committee of, it is to be hoped, clear-thinking selectors can be undermined by the whims of an individual.
How about the bizarre scenario that an unapproved squad is representing the country? For this, apparently, we have CSA chief executive Gerald Majola to thank.
Some people have praised Majola for the ”balls” he showed in ”moving the process forward”. To others his actions are little removed from the machinations that constitute a normal day in the corridors of ZimbabÂÂwean cricket power, where administrators ignore their own rules and follow unofficial agendas.
We also should ask what Arendse based his objections on. In short he wanted Herschelle Gibbs and Monde Zondeki in the squad in the places of Neil McKenzie and André Nel.
Gibbs recently emerged from a period of poor form with a stunning century in the last one-day international against the West Indies. Was there no interest in seeing if he could sort himself out in the Test arena, too? Particularly as South Africa barely has a range of quality top-order batsmen to choose from.
Zondeki took 54 wickets in 10 matches in the SuperSport Series. What does he need to do to get a look-in? Take twice as many?
Injury removed Zondeki from the equation, which prompted Arendse to plump for Charl Langeveldt — a proven performer at international level. That also wasn’t good enough for the selectors, whose mood was articulated by coach Mickey Arthur.
Arthur spoke of ”taking on” Arendse over the squad and he reminded the president that he was ”not a selector”.
Arendse’s response was to send the squad he wanted and his reasons for wanting it to CSA. Neither the squad nor Arendse’s argument saw the light of day.
”I am not satisfied that CSA transformation policy relating to the selection of the squad has been complied with,” Arendse wrote in the media release that never was. ”Accordingly, I’m exercising my presidential veto by rejecting the squad presented to me. For example, in his explanation the convener [Joubert Strydom] gave no satisfactory reasons why the target … could not, or has not, been reached.”
Comments like those — and Arthur’s aggressive stance — serve to highlight the sad truth that South African cricket is unified in name only. If the selectors and the president — entities who should be snugly allied in leading South African cricket towards a better, brighter future — are poles apart, what hope is there for the rest of the game to reach an understanding of itself?
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the selectors saw in the choosing of a squad for a low-key tour to Bangladesh an opportunity to strike back at Arendse, who is among the most vociferous proponents of transformation.
The selectors have won this round, but there are plenty more to come.