CSA made the Rob Walter announcement at the ideal moment. The first week of March marked the last time the men’s white-ball teams from South Africa played. Their next performance is scheduled for mid-July. By then, South Africa will have defeated Zimbabwe twice in Test matches in Bulawayo and are either the WTC champions or runners-up.
A suitable time to announce the resignation of your white-ball coach was Tuesday afternoon. To be safe, Walter would have been asleep in his home country of New Zealand when the news arrived.
According to a release from CSA, he resigned for personal reasons. It’s unclear from the words ascribed to Walter what those reasons might be, but it’s easy to see why it’s not ideal to leave your family for weeks at a time in order to travel more than 11,000 miles for a home series. When Walter accepted the position in March 2023 on a four-year contract, he would have been aware of that. However, he is free to reconsider.
What comes next? There are growing calls for the red-ball coach, Shukri Conrad, to be given more authority in all formats. The majority of them are descended from brown Capetonians. Conrad is a brown Capetonian as well. That appears to be a clear-cut case of identity politics in South Africa’s bleakly, openly, and simplistically colour-coded society.
But that’s not all there is to this. A team with few resources and few opportunities for play has advanced to the WTC final thanks to Conrad. Conrad will be the first coach to oversee a successful ICC trophy campaign since Gary Kirsten’s squad took home the Test trophy in August 2012, should South Africa defeat Australia at Lord’s in June. Conrad has a wealth of expertise, is a shrewd coach, and has a kind heart. Is he smart enough to not want to be Walter’s replacement?
Walter led South Africa to the semifinals of the 2023 ODI World Cup and this year’s Champions Trophy, as well as to the 2024 T20 World Cup final, the only time they have advanced that far in any men’s World Cup. However, he received criticism for his teams’ performance in bilateral matches, when they won 33 of 67 in all forms, or 49.25%, from those who did not agree with his repeated justifications for their poor performance.
Walter was unable to select his best team or field his best XI outside of ICC events because to the hectic franchise schedule of his first-choice players. The reality will remain the same for whoever succeeds him.
Conrad understands how that feels because in February 2024, he had to travel to New Zealand with a reduced squad because the majority of the players he would have chosen were required by contract to play in the SA20 that year. New Zealand triumphed handily in both games.
Apart from that instance, and in contrast to Walter’s case, Anrich Nortje is the only legitimate star Conrad has been unable to choose due to T20 obligations; he has chosen not to participate in the other formats.
Any coach is only as good as the players they have, which is a difficult balancing act in South Africa. Although that sounds good, it means that well-known people who may have been featured did not.
In his little over two-year stint, Walter draughted 13 T20I and 14 ODI players.
Despite bowling 67 fewer deliveries than Keshav Maharaj, Tabraiz Shamsi claimed 11 wickets at the T20 World Cup. Since the tournament, he has not participated in any of South Africa’s twelve Twenty20 Internationals. Only twice has Ottneil Baartman played in the T20 World Cup since he set the record with South Africa’s best economy rate of 4.94.
Walter told reporters at the time, “We want to give exposure to Lutho Sipamla and Nqaba Peter, which is why Baartman wasn’t selected for any of the four home T20Is against India in November.” It’s an act of balance. To assist the team change and become more representative, each member must do their share.
Peter and Sipamla are Black. According to CSA’s transformation equation, Shamsi and Baartman are considered second-class citizens since they are brown. Baartman, at least, made the squad for the India series. It wasn’t that far for Shamsi.
Some were taken aback by Walter’s remark, but we should applaud him for being straightforward on a topic that is much too frequently skirted. In April, he stated: “The system needs to step up so that the demographics and representation in our team look a little different in six months, twelve months, or two years later – and especially when we reach the 2027 World Cup at home.
“So outside of the World Cup we’ll continue to use our bilateral series to do exactly that, to grow our base of players and create international opportunities for players to pit their skills at a higher level, and just make sure we are delivering on a process that’s going to change what our team looks like as we move forward.”
In other words, CSA is responsible for ensuring that the national teams have a sufficient number of black and brown players. The coaches who select those teams are not responsible for it. CSA hasn’t fulfilled their end of the agreement sufficiently thus far.
They have decided that brown players are behind their black counterparts in the transformation line in an effort to rectify the inequities brought about by South Africa’s violently racist past. This is a partial reversal of the apartheid-era social hierarchy that placed white people at the top. The fact that XIs can have up to five white players makes it partial. As a result, teams frequently have more white players than brown or black ones.
Therefore, even though the Warriors were able to dress six players of colour in their starting lineup, Only two of the players, rather than the required minimum of three in domestic fixtures, were black, hence they were dealt with harshly during a match against the Dolphins at Kingsmead on February 16.
They lacked the necessary authorisation to depart from the quota, which CSA would prefer us refer to as a target. It is hard to understand how it is not a quota given that the Warriors were deducted five points for daring to win that game by 126 runs and fined USD 27,300, half of which was suspended for five years.
More than three of the Warriors’ six players of colour would have been black, and they would have been in no difficulty. They would have received recognition for exceeding expectations, in fact. Even though they would have had fewer brown players as a result. This is a severe indictment of the system because there is no minimum required amount of brown players.
Why should CSA consider this when deciding who could take Walter’s place? Because Robin Peterson, the Warriors coach, chose to select a brown player when he should have chosen a black player in order to comply with CSA’s regulations for cricketing reasons.
In the SA20 final at the Wanderers on February 8, Peterson led the Mumbai Indians Cape Town to a 76-run victory over Sunrisers Eastern Cape.
In a different situation, that would be a recommendation in support of someone who is vying for the South Africa job, which Peterson is undoubtedly. Perhaps not in these conditions.
India
