“It’s not easy, to be honest. There’s a lot of dynamics that you need to manage. The biggest thing for me is trying to keep cricket the main focus.
“I hate to bring this up but it’s been a challenging time for the team, for the players and for particular members of the management. There has been a lot of scrutiny surrounding the team and the organisation so to manage the conversations that happen within the change room and to ensure that our energies are 100% geared towards performing out there, for me that’s been the biggest challenge.”
That was Temba Bavuma speaking about captaining the Proteas ODI team in the climate of doubt, suspicion and allegation swirling around the conduct of head coach Mark Boucher who has been formally charged with gross misconduct by his employers, Cricket SA.
Bavuma said he hoped the impressive and unexpected 3-0 series win against India was a reflection on his captaincy but that it was “early days” in his leadership career and that he was not “getting ahead of myself”.
“It’s been a big responsibility but it’s also been a privilege, as well. But it’s not easy leading a SA national team,” Bavuma said.
Another prominent leader in the world of business who, until recently, was closely associated with the national team was aghast at the situation in which Boucher, having been accused in a seven-page charge of behaving in a “racist” or “subliminally racist” manner, continues to coach the team.
“What kind of corporation behaves like that? It’s the equivalent of an accountant being charged with embezzlement but ‘it’s OK, you can carry on working for us while we investigate’. Or a lawyer sleeping with a client, or attempting to bribe a juror. It is completely dysfunctional. If they are charging him with serious breaches of his contract, they need to suspend him,” the businessman said.
Not only is Boucher still in charge but he was put up for the post-match interview after his team’s thrilling four-run win at Newlands on Sunday. Naturally the media were told he would not be taking questions on his current employment situation.
The closest he came was: “It is a happy changeroom, at least according to me. They are very happy at the moment but their feet are on the ground and they are growing not just as cricketers but as human beings, too, and that’s very important.”
Cricketers have to live and cope with insecurity on an almost daily basis. The game is fickle at the best of times and rarely are more than half a dozen members of a team confident of their place in the next match, even if the public perception is different. Cricketers, more than most sports people, are destined to fail as individuals more often than not which is why they crave reassurance and why coaches place so much emphasis on the team’s results rather than player performances.
There is no doubt Boucher is not everybody’s favourite in the changeroom — coaches aren’t competing in popularity contests. But even those who might enjoy a change at the top will have been shocked by the way in which the Cricket SA executive have conducted the affair so far. If they are prepared to chop up the coach in public, how safe are the players?
It matters not to the players how the charge sheet reached the public domain. It simply matters that throughout their playing careers disciplinary hearings for Code of Conduct breaches have always been private affairs with only the result being made public. Nights of heavy drinking, late arrivals for training, swearing at management and even fist-fights are not uncommon among cricket teams, especially on tour. They are almost always handled “in-house”.
If life has been uncomfortable and “a challenge” for Bavuma in recent times, it may be about to become even less comfortable. The nature of the charges against Boucher are life-changing. If found guilty it will be many years before he could be employed again as a coach, anywhere in the world. If ever. No wonder he said last week that he looked forward to defending himself.
Bavuma will no doubt be among the witnesses called to testify leaving him in a brutally awkward position and facing a choice between condemning the coach or failing to back his employers. Boucher’s fate may well lie in something as simple as the players’ interpretation of his handling of the BLM matter.
Bavuma and the other black players were deeply and understandably disappointed that most of the white players chose not to take a knee. But “proving” that Boucher’s decision to allow free-choice was racist might be awkward.
Perhaps, the game, the players, the sponsors and, most importantly, the supporters, might all have been better off if Cricket SA had simply told the coach that they had lost confidence in him, that he was no longer required and offered to settle.
Unfortunately, it is the players who have now lost confidence in Cricket SA. If it had ever been restored.
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