All change yet again

Murray Goodwin switches his attention from Sussex to the Warriors as another domestic season swings into action in South Africa © Getty Images

If cricket involved goalposts the standard South African version would come fitted with wheels and a moped engine. All the easier to move those goalposts, you see, which we do so often and so readily down here on the southern tip of this restless continent that sometimes we drive ourselves clear round the bend.

Take the season that has just started here. The franchise that used to be called the Eagles - ostensibly Free State - is now the Diamond Eagles. That's because a long-standing bunfight between geographical neighbours Free State and Griqualand West for sole ownership of what Cricket South Africa (what used to be the United Cricket Board) calls the central franchise has finally been resolved.

This argument went all the way to the courts and then back to the committee room, and there were sighs of relief all over the platteland when Griquas and Free State decided, finally, to play nice and share.

Or were there? "Next question," a Griquas official replied gruffly when asked if he was satisfied with the new dispensation. "Ridiculous," was the reaction of a newly minted Diamond Eagle from the Free State side of the fence when he caught sight of the team's new all-blue one-day strip.

Perhaps we should make plain that in South Africa, Free State rhymes with orange. All of Griquas' sports teams, meanwhile, wear a hue they call "peacock blue".

Why Diamond? Griquas are based in Kimberley ...Where are the all-in-blue Diamond Eagles' headquarters? In Bloemfontein, of course.

Change has also come to the Warriors, the franchise that lumps together Border and Eastern Province. The franchise has moved its headquarters westward down the coast from East London to Port Elizabeth, but the team will still play matches in both cities.

The Warriors have also signed a new sponsor, and in the process they have gone from being one of the most impoverished franchises (with a record to match) to one of the most flush. How many other domestic teams travel with a physiotherapist, a biokineticist and a video analyst?

All that extra cash has made an impact on the Warriors playing staff, which will feature the considerable talents of HD Ackerman, Zander de Bruyn, Mornantau Hayward and Murray Goodwin this season.

In Durban, the Dolphins have welcomed Graham Ford back as coach. His rise as a respected coach began at Kingsmead.

The former Test batsman Adam Bacher, a quintessential Johannesburger who had become a fixture at the Highveld Lions (a combination of North West and Gauteng, or Western Transvaal and Transvaal if you are old enough to enjoy what Cliff Richard calls music) shocked a fair chunk of the nation during the off-season when he announced a move to Cape Town to play for the Cobras (Boland and Western Province).

Of course, there had been no franchises in South African cricket when those goalposts lurched dramatically in the summer of 2004-05. Before that season provinces formed the top flight.

Readers who have dutifully followed this convoluting tale might give up when we tell them that the provinces still exist and play as single entities. But now they do so as amateurs in their own three-day competition, which carries first-class status, and a one-day competition.

The provinces with names that may be recognised in other countries have been joined this season by associate teams representing regions called Kei, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, South Western Districts and KwaZulu-Natal Inland. Namibia have also fielded a team.

What does all this tinkering achieve?

"South African cricket is very strong at the franchise level, where strength-versus-strength is certainly working," said Niels Momberg, who has fulfilled several administrative functions at CSA and is now the national manager for schools cricket.

"It will take another two or three years until we are able to see whether players produced in the amateur provinces and going on to play for the franchises.

"But remember that Dale Steyn and [Titans medium pacer] Ethy Mbhalati both come from Phalaborwa [in Limpopo], and that they were spotted there while playing in programmes we had organised."

Momberg added that Jonathan Trott, Paul Harris and Kruger van Wyk had also sprung from the obscurity of South African amateur cricket. Trott and Harris currently ply their trade in England, while van Wyk is off to New Zealand this season.

Is the system working? Perhaps too well.