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Quota system in South African cricket: Boon or bane?

The quota system in South African cricket has been a topic of debate for long.

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© Getty Images
Had Grant Elliott not moved to New Zealand, he might have walked out of the 2015 World Cup semi-final, hand in hand with Dale Steyn and a huge smile © Getty Images

The quota system in South African cricket has been a topic of debate for long. Different people have different opinion on it; while some find it a boon, some others consider it as a bane for country’s cricket system. A recent decision taken by Cricket South Africa (CSA) in this regard has once again flared up the issue. The cricket body’s Board of Directors has approved in principle the decision to introduce quota-based targets for all the national teams. READ: Cricket South Africa to introduce racial quota in national teams

This suggests that a quota system would be introduced for the South African national team, with the board yet to determine the exact amount of players of colour required. The current domestic system, which was implemented in domestic cricket last season, asks all franchise teams to field a minimum of six players of colour in their starting XIs, including three black Africans.

“In the past we had never set targets in our national teams but with changing circumstances we feel it is essential to move with the times,” commented CSA President and Chairperson of the board, Chris Nenzani. “The precise targets will depend on work to be undertaken by relevant committees to determine what is realistic and sustainable. This will be announced in due course,” he added. “We will aim to achieve our targets over the course of the year and not on a match-by-match basis.”

If this really happens, it will be disappointing and racist to say the least. There was a time when South Africa were banned from international cricket due to apartheid, which favoured white over non-whites. Since their readmission in 1992, they have tried to balance the situation by integrating the players of colour in the side, thus giving birth to the unfair quota system. Though the system encourages black players to break through the glass ceiling, it comes across as racist and has more disadvantages than advantages. It has now reached to a reverse apartheid-like state, where blacks are getting a better treatment than white players.

A perfect example of this was South Africa’s selection of Justin Ontong over the worthier Jacques Rudolph in 2001-02 at Sydney. United Cricket Board President Percy Sonn was himself present in Sydney for the Test. Graeme Pollock later came out in public mentioning that Sonn was responsible for the inclusion of Ontong over Rudolph.

“Graeme Pollock has got two choices. Either he complies with the decision and keeps his unhappiness to himself, or he will face the voracity of the UCB structures,” was Sonn’s response.

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The policy results in losing out on talented players, who feel being let down by the system and seek other avenues. Many talented cricketers have fallen prey to this quota system in the past and have gone on to represent other countries successfully. Kevin Pietersen, Grant Elliott and more recently Roelof van der Merwe are few casualties of this system. So frustrated was a 20-year old Pietersen in his early days in South African cricket that he left the country forever and moved to England.

“I was dropped because the quota system was brought into South African cricket to positively discriminate in favour of ‘players of colour’ and to fast-track the racial integration of cricket in the country. To me, every single person in this world needs to be treated exactly the same and that should have included me, as a promising 20-year-old cricketer. If you do well you should play on merit. That goes for any person of any colour. It was heartbreaking,” Pietersen had written in his autobiography Crossing The Boundary.

There have been other instances too, of racial discrimination. In arguably the most important game of South Africa’s cricketing history, the World Cup 2015 semi-final against New Zealand, administrators asked team management to include the coloured Vernon Philander at the expense of an in-form Kyle Abbott. The result was for all to see.

Similarly, for 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean, Roger Telemachus and Loots Bosman were picked over Albie Morkel and Dale Steyn (seriously). The team got knocked out in humiliating manner in the semi-final.

A year later medium-pacer Charl Langeveldt was controversially picked ahead of Andre Nel for a tour to India. According to ESPNCricinfo, Nel was named for selection but was eventually replaced by Langeveldt for his colour rather than his performance. Following the controversy, Langeveldt pulled out of the tour and signed as a Kolpak player in England.

The quota system has done more damage to the cricket fabric in South Africa than good. By picking players for their skin tone and not their performance, the board has encouraged a culture where good-yet-neglected players feel unwanted, while the ones who are being picked know they are just to make up the numbers. That way, it does not do any good to their confidence. This in turn encourages politics within the team and affects the performance and morale of the players.

While it can be agreed that the blacks have suffered in the rainbow nation for ages and it is only now that they are getting sufficient opportunity and exposure, providing them opportunities at the cost of losing out on potential talent cannot be justified.

CSA must understand that players today have more awareness about these issues and greater opportunities elsewhere in the age of franchise cricket. If they do not budge on their decision, South African cricket will keep suffering with talent leakage.

They would certainly not want an encore of 2015 World Cup semi-final, where irony struck them, and struck them hard. They must remember that it was South African-born Elliott, the man who left country of his birth fearing lack of opportunities due to quota system, who had dealt the knock-out punch by hitting the winning six.

(A self-confessed cricket freak, Chinmay Jawalekar is a senior writer with CricLife and CricketCountry. When not writing or following cricket, he loves to read, eat and sleep. He can be followed here @CricfreakTweets)

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