OPINION: Cricket transformation starts at the bottom, not at the top

He did well to answer a tough question this week, but it seems a little unfair that Proteas coach Rob Walter has to defend the apparent failure of South African cricket’s transformation system.

Given full control of team selection, Walter picked only one black African player in the 15-man squad he announced for the T20 World Cup.

He defended the decision by pointing out that the system needed work, and he’s not wrong. National teams should always be selected on merit and Walter is right to take that approach.

But the pool of black players to choose from isn’t big enough, and this is a problem.

If more than 80% of our population is black African, then there’s a gap that exists which is limiting the progress of the majority of potential elite cricket players from townships and rural areas.

Development programme

Cricket South Africa has a very successful mini-cricket programme, and the nation has produced a list of world-class black players since readmission.

But we will never have our best team on the field until sufficient opportunities are provided for black players to transition through the ranks.

Kagiso Rabada being the lone black African in the squad shouldn’t trigger the need to push quotas, and there are six other players of colour in the team, so it’s not all doom and gloom.

We also have a very strong squad heading to the US and West Indies for the T20 World Cup, and while some selections will always be questioned, they should be competitive at the global spectacle.

But the demographics of the SA squad is a good barometer of what’s happening at lower levels of the game.

Expanding the pool

If the pool of players can be expanded, the national squad can only become stronger, giving Walter more options and ensuring the black African representation in the national team is something closer to matching the demographics of our country.

It’s a simple numbers game. If our pool of players is focussed on less than 20% of our population, we’re wasting talent by not finding or nurturing it, and it puts us on the back foot in terms of our potential strength.

If development structures and systems are working, black players don’t need to be pushed into the national team. It will happen naturally.

And it doesn’t start or end with Walter, who can only work with what he’s got. It starts and ends with the wider system, which is still falling short.