There is no lack of spinners in SA cricket, certainly not at administrative level anyway. Cricket SA announced a net profit of R238m for the last financial year and that should be applauded. The four, random T20 Internationals against India, negotiated over four years ago, accounted for a lot of it — along with revenue from television rights and ICC events.
It was more than three times less than the profit declared last financial year but a profit is a profit — and that is a lot better than the losses shown in the two years before that. The long and painstaking business of attracting sponsors back to the game includes the process of making the numbers look good.
The SA20, for example, isn’t just contributing directly to Cricket SA’s revenue stream but is said to be generating many hundreds of millions of rand to GDP and supporting no less than 8,199 jobs, which is very specific.
Nonetheless, a profit was shown and that is important for the future. The deficit in the next financial year will make eyes water. SA’s men play just five T20 Internationals against the West Indies in the entire summer ahead. No Test matches, no one-day internationals. It is the bleakest home summer since the end of isolation in 1991.
— The downside to promotion and relegation is the safety-first approach to contracting and selecting it breeds among the majority of franchises.
The men’s Proteas team still accounts for about 90% of the game’s revenue. It used to be over 97% but the excellent and rapidly improving women Proteas are contributing more each year, though just a little further down the pyramid of SA cricket the reality of the financial situation is clearer.
Tricky negotiations remain ongoing about the structure of domestic cricket for the 2026-27 season. Does the promotion/relegation system between two divisions actually serve any practical purpose? It is a fine theory, adding relevance and jeopardy to matches, in theory. But it has also pushed Free State Cricket to the point of insolvency.
The downside to promotion and relegation is the safety-first approach to contracting and selecting it breeds among the majority of franchises. Rather than take a chance on a promising youngster, older “established” players are retained on the basis that coaches “know what they’ll get”, which is just about good enough to stay in Division One.
Rather than potentially raising the playing ceiling by taking a chance on talented but unproven younger players, older players with no international prospects are being retained to guard against the possibility of spending a season or two in Division Two. And with very good reason.
Next season the second tier will become semi-professional. The numbers are still being finalised but the seven provincial teams will only be permitted to contract six or seven players. The remainder of the squad will be unpaid amateurs. It is a shuddering compromise. The game simply cannot afford to sustain 15 provincial teams but it cannot bring itself to make the decision it needs to. Infrastructural costs need to be cut, instead it will be players.
The thought of half a squad being professional and half amateur boggles the mind. Are the amateurs expected to ask for “time off” from their real jobs to train and play matches while their paid teammates go about their duties without the worry of unpaid bills? And who decides which players are paid? It’s a recipe for disaster.
Talking of money... In other news, Quinton de Kock’s unretirement from ODI cricket and return to the international fold is confirmation that life as a freelancer may be well paid but can also be desperately lonely and unfulfilling. He walked away from ODI cricket after the 2023 World Cup and T20 cricket after last year’s World Cup final in Barbados. There was barely a glance backwards.
But life in the Caribbean Premier League, Major League Cricket in the US and the IPL wasn’t what he thought it might be. He missed the thrill of contests which “mattered”, he missed his teammates and he missed being appreciated. So, he called coach Shukri Conrad and made himself available again, unconditionally.
Conrad says there is “plenty of water yet to flow under the bridge” but included him in the squads to play ODI and T20 series in Pakistan in October. It might become a salutary lesson for others tempted to become self-employed.
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