If you do your talking out in the middle, with bat and ball, there will always be a future for white South African cricketers – it doesn’t matter what age, writes MARK KEOHANE for Independent Newspapers.
Simon Harmer’s recall to the Proteas for the tour of New Zealand was a personal highlight of my week. Harmer is a fine bowler and has been consistently good when playing as a Kolpak player in England and has been as good since returning to South Africa in the past year.
Harmer’s form and wicket-taking ability demanded that the selectors had to look up and stay focused. They couldn’t look away.
Harmer is 32 years old and he is white and there were many who felt that he would never again play for South Africa again because of his Kolpak history. But excellence will always be rewarded and Harmer has been excellent since joining the Titans.
Harmer’s selection gives hope to any veteran white first-class player who may feel the odds are stacked against them because of transformation.
Produce and the reward will be there.
When players left South Africa citing political interference and an anti-white sentiment to national selection, it coincided with the glorious international careers of Jacques Kallis, AB de Villiers, Mark Boucher, Shaun Pollock, Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn, who all prospered under Graeme Smith’s captaincy.
All the mentioned players are white and all were brilliant international cricketers.
They were too good to ever be left out because of the colour of their skin. They dominated the domestic and international scene for more than a decade.
Brilliance doesn’t have a colour-coding and if a white player in South Africa is that good, that player will find his or her way to the national team.
Equally players of colour, who in the past 10 years, more than at any time of South African cricket’s history, have flourished through being given an opportunity.
The overriding social media sentiment from the anti-transformation brigade is that a young white cricketer will have to defy the odds to play for the Proteas and an ageing white player has no chance of national selection.
I say that is nonsense because whenever a white player has scored the runs and taken the wickets in a way that commands dominance out in the middle, that player’s effort and form has got rewarded through a national call-up.
Harmer’s reintroduction to international cricket is a lesson to every cricketer that if you keep on producing, the rewards will match the consistency of those performances.
South Africa, as a sporting nation, is unique. Apartheid ensured that there was always an emphasis on colour in national team selection, with it being exclusive to white players, and life post-apartheid will always be packaged with attention to the detail of transformation among South Africa’s national teams, regardless of sporting code.
Where there was once no opportunity for players of colour to showcase their skills globally, there is now no discrimination in selection based on colour. It is all about performance.
Equally, no white player’s national claims are dismissed because said player is white.
If a player isn’t making it, then it is because the runs and wickets are not there and the reality of the performance doesn’t balance the potential of performance.
Harmer returned to South Africa very much down the Proteas’ pecking order because of the quality of spin bowlers in the national set-up, and the only way for him to improve this ranking was to take plenty of wickets whenever he played.
He has done just this when playing for Essex from 2017 and his bowling contributed to the club winning two Championship titles in three years, with the first victory the club’s first in 25 years. Harmer took 72 wickets at 19.19, which included 8-36 against Warwickshire and 14-128 in the same match. He would repeat the feat of 14 wickets in a match, which included a career-best 9-95 against Middlesex.
Harmer took 57 Championship wickets in 2018 and in 2019 he took 83 wickets at 18.28.
Back in South Africa, the script has been as consistent. Harmer’s 27 wickets at 21.40 this season is second only to another former Kolpak player, Duanne Olivier, who was also recalled to the Proteas squad to play India.
Harmer turns 33 in February, but the only consideration for his selection was what numbers he was returning each time he bowled.
His is a great selection on so many fronts.
The other big cricketing story of the week was the batting of Dewald Brevis for the Proteas at the U19 World Cup.
Brevis, who has been dubbed ‘Baby AB’ (de Villiers), owned the crease in scoring 65 against India, 104 against Uganda, 96 against Ireland and 97 against England in the quarter-final defeat.
Brevis, like his hero and mentor De Villiers, was schooled at the renowned Affies in Pretoria, and already there are so many similarities between a young Brevis and a young De Villiers.
Veteran cricket writer Rob Houwing tweeted “that the parallels in style with ABDV are quite, quite extraordinary! I even noticed it with the way Brevis tucks his bat beneath his arm and his busy walking style as he comes back over the boundary rope after a searing innings …”
WATCH: Dewald Brevis, AB de Villiers comparison
Brevis’ shot selection, the variety of shots and the ease with which he finds the boundary and works the spaces, has been primary to every batting discussion at the U19 World Cup. He has scored 362 runs at an average of 90.50, which included 33 fours and 11 sixes. His leg breaks also earned him six wickets at an average of 19.
Brevis is just 18, but like the veteran Harmer, his age is secondary, and so is the colour of his skin because both players are too good not to play for the Proteas. For Harmer, it will happen in February after a six-year international absence and for Brevis, it will be a case of when he transitions to the senior team and not if he will transition.
