Mark Boucher failed to arrest a culture of mediocrity, was devoid of emotional intelligence, and leaves the Proteas in a shambolic state, writes RYAN VREDE.
A tenure that started with then CSA director of cricket Graeme Smith installing his friend as head coach, ended in Boucher’s team being knocked out of the T20 World Cup by a team ranked 14 places below them.
It was the second time in a year a Boucher-led team failed to progress from their World Cup group. This after having to win just one of the last two group matches.
Boucher’s apologists argue that he is a victim of a political system that undermines the team’s success. These people also argued that the same team’s successes must in large part be credited to Boucher. Simply put, when they fail, it’s transformation, but when they succeed, it’s a coaching masterstroke. Puzzling.
Boucher’s record tells a tale of a coach ill-equipped to get the best out of a gifted group of players. His 67% win record in ODI cricket is solid, but that dips to 55% and 54% in Test and T20I cricket respectively. The latter two are the primary measure of a head coach in the modern game.
Boucher’s Test record is padded by two wins each against weak Sri Lanka and Bangladesh sides, but he did beat World Test Championship (WTC) finalists, India, and drew against the reigning Test champions, New Zealand.
Notably, Boucher took the Proteas to the top of the WTC standings (they dropped to second after the England series defeat) and has given them a chance of contesting the WTC final.
His T20I record – 26 wins in 48 matches – is distorted by nine of those wins coming against minnows Ireland, the West Indies and Sri Lanka. The Windies couldn’t make it out of the qualifying phase of the World Cup, while Sri Lanka, who also had to qualify for the showpiece event, won just two of their five group matches.
If one were to appraise Boucher on the basis of his record alone, you’d find it hard to mount a cricket argument defending him. However, Boucher’s unsuitability extends beyond these numbers.
In three years he has failed to give his side any identity. They are neither ‘brave’, that haunting attribution from days gone by, nor are they tactically pragmatic. They seem to be somewhere in between. It is an ugly hybrid of instinct and natural talent that drives decision-making. These are two critical components of success. This, too, is a coaching issue.
Smith told the media that Boucher was brought in “because I feel he will bring the toughness to turn a young and inexperienced Proteas squad into a battle-ready outfit.”
It was expected that Boucher would instill some of his celebrated mongrel. Instead, they limped out of the World Cup after failing to summon any of that against the lowly Netherlands.
Furthermore, Boucher has been involved in a litany of incidents that reflect a deep lack of emotional intelligence.
In late 2020, the sporting world was largely united in showing their support for the Black Live Matter movement by kneeling prior to matches. The Boucher-lead Proteas, however, stumbled their way through that process, with the head coach declaring that, after consulting with Lungi Ngidi (who initiated talks around the BLM issue), they wouldn’t kneel before the white-ball series against England.
None of the Proteas players put up to the media seemed comfortable with the decision, including Kagiso Rabada, the most senior black African in the squad. He struggled through a basic line of questioning. Later that week Rassie van der Dussen, who has shown support for the BLM movement, was asked about the decision not to kneel. CSA’s media manager interjected before he could answer, asserting that no such questions would be allowed, as the team has ‘drawn a line under the issue’.
I argued that each player should be allowed to act on their convictions. Those with whom the movement resonates should kneel (or express their symbolic support in whatever way they chose to). Those with whom the movement’s message doesn’t resonate should be allowed to stay standing without anyone making a moral judgement on them.
Boucher, as the team’s head coach, should have led this process, but instead took a hard and tone-deaf stance. The issue resurfaced at the 2021 T20 World Cup, resulting in Quinton de Kock missing a match for refusing to kneel before apologising for his posture on the issue. It was, again, a failure of leadership.
In mid-2021 Paul Adams recounted being called a “brown s**t” in a team song in the early part of his career. He initially didn’t implicate Boucher, but later acknowledged that Boucher was part of the core of players who demeaned him in this way.
Adams simply wanted an apology. He made clear his intention for telling the story at the SJN hearings, saying: “I’m just highlighting that it should never happen and if we take this forward in the right way, we will have a lot more respect for each other,” he explained. “Maybe he [Boucher] should come and say sorry.”
Boucher litigate his stance and tried to expose Adams as a teller of the most damaging and reprehensible lies. While admitting that he was part of the group that sang the vile song, he also had his legal team send two affidavits to the transformation ombudsman of SJN, Dumisa Ntsebeza. In one affidavit, he apologised unreservedly for any offence and hurt he might have caused during his playing days, while in the other he vehemently rejected the allegations Adams leveled against him.
Ultimately CSA dropped charges against Boucher because it could not prove its case. The reality is CSA never had a case, even if Adams had testified. The type of offensive racially-charged behaviour Adams was subjected to can’t be proven in a court of law. It is felt, known and internalised deeply. Yet, Boucher’s supporters hailed the dropping of charges as a victory and vindication. It is not that.
Around the same time, Boucher’s relationship with then-assistant Enoch Nkwe crumbled, leading to the latter’s resignation. Reports at the time indicated that Nkwe felt undermined and underutilised, and had basically been relegated to an inconsequential role by Boucher. CSA also cited “concerns about the functioning and culture of the team environment.”
Team insiders tell me that “culture” is often sought from the bottom of an alcohol bottle. South African cricket at large has a problem with a culture of excessive drinking veiled as team building, and this extends into the national team. My understanding is that this behaviour was prevalent at the T20 World Cup.
Faf du Plessis further exposed Boucher as lacking the requisite emotional intelligence to match the importance of his role. Indeed, Du Plessis conceded that a dysfunctional relationship with Boucher ultimately ended his Test career. It appears that it was at the heart of his exclusion from the white-ball formats, too. This is despite Du Plessis being one of the world’s preeminent T20 players.
The combination of Boucher’s performance record and the clutch of off-field incidents exposed significant deficiencies in his skill set as an elite international head coach.
Boucher benefitted from friends in the media choosing to look the other way, but the picture became clear early on and kept getting grimmer as his tenure reached deeper.
He leaves a Test side suffering from chronic inconsistency, and an ODI side in danger of not qualifying for the next World Cup. Ultimately, though, his legacy will forever be that he lead a Proteas team who crashed out of the T20 World Cup at the hands of the Netherlands. It feels like a fitting au revoir.
