Choice Of Only One Non-White Raises Eyebrows (26 November 1998)

26 November 1998

Choice Of Only One Non-White Raises Eyebrows

The Barbados Nation

JOHANNESBURG - The racial composition of the South African team again became an issue yesterday on the eve of the historic first Test against the West Indies with the head of the National Sports Council questioning why no more "players of colour" had been selected.

Paul Adams, the 21-year-old coloured, or mixed-race, left-arm spinner is the only non-white in South Africa's 12 announced on Sunday.

"We are really concerned about that and we will probably take the matter up with Dr. (Ali) Bacher (chief executive of the United Cricket Board of South Africa) after the Test match," Mvuso Mbebe, chief executive of the council that is the national controlling body for all sport in South Africa, said in a newspaper interview.

Noting Bacher's comments last March that Test and provincial teams in South Africa should in future make it policy to include non-white cricketers, Mbebe said: "We expected to see a drastic transformation but now we are back to where we started.

"The announcement from Dr. Bacher suggested everything was going to be fine but, all of a sudden, it isn't."

Makhaya Ntini, the 21-year-old fast bowler who last season became the first black player to represent South Africa in Test cricket and went on to play two Tests in the series in England in the summer, was not included in the squad following an unimpressive season to date for his province, Border.

"We need to find out what the problem is," Mbebe said. "Maybe it is a selection problem or maybe the provinces aren't giving the players a fair chance to come through."

In their two matches on tour, the West Indies have played against one non-white in each team.

Finley Brooker, a 25-year-old of mixed race, scored 111 for Griqualand West, and 18-year-old black fast bowler Victor Mptisang took four wickets for Orange Free State.

Writing in the Red Stripe Caribbean Cricket Quarterly's preview of the series, Bacher said his board's aim was to have all South African teams "comprised of players from all sections of the community."

"But this does not mean we will compromise our standards," he added.

"Anyone chosen will be selected on merit and no one will ever again be chosen for or omitted from a South African team because of the colour of his skin."

Precluded from selection under apartheid, non-whites were only brought into the mainstream of South African cricket with the formation of the United Cricket Board in 1991.

Since their return to Test cricket after 22 years of isolation, South Africa have picked only four non-white players in their Test team, Adams, Ntini, veteran left-arm spinner Omar Henry and batsman Herschelle Gibbs although Bacher and his board have been engaged in an intensive programme to promote the game in black areas.

Cricket and rugby, whose national team now touring Britain is all-white, were generally perceived as the white man's games by the majority black population which took to football (soccer) with a passion.

On Saturday, while a crowd of 20 000 at the cricket Test at the Wanderers Stadium here will be 95 per cent white, a similar 30 000 or so at the FNB Stadium for the national Rothmans Cup football final between Kaizer Chiefs and Sundowns will be black.

A sample, if not necessarily representative, of bitter non-white attitudes to cricket and how the role of the West Indies in the current series is seen, could be gleaned from a column in a Durban newspaper by Ashwin Desai, an Indian, a member of the KwaZulu-Natal Cricket Board and a lecturer in political science at Natal University.

"When Curtly Ambrose limbers up in the opening Test match, he must carry in his fist a ball congealed with the blood of millions of fellow Blacks made the victim of white racism," Desai wrote.

"I hope the West Indies team picks up the cudgels one more time to smash apart the enduring bastion of race and class privilege that is cricket."

It is shaping up to be, indeed, more than just another cricket match.

Source :: The Barbados Nation (https://www.nationnews.com/)