Proteas interim coach, Malibongwe Maketa, says South Africa needs to play more professional matches at domestic level in order to produce players who are ready for international cricket. | ✍️ @imongamagcwabe 

South African cricket is in its second season since the restructuring of domestic cricket happened. The objective was to somehow strengthen the standard of cricket and save money at the same time. Interesting enough, the individuals responsible for the restructuring are no longer involved in South African cricket.

Read: Time to reset and plan for the future

This has significantly reduced the number of professional matches in South Africa. Two divisions (semi-pro & academy cricket) have been wiped out as a result. After the nature of Sunday’s defeat, it’s wise to re-evaluate things sooner rather than later. 

Only seven 4-Day matches will be played per team this season in Division One. Surely, that can not be enough for players to ready themselves for international cricket. 

“If you look at the SA U19s winning the division 2 (T20 Knockout), then we have to ask ourselves – where are we with our cricket? Are those youngsters that good or has our standard simply dropped?” Malibongwe Maketa posed a question.

The talent has never been in doubt but how that talent is nurtured and prepared for international cricket is questionable. It can not be right to only play seven matches in a season. How they came to that number remains a mystery.

“I think we’re in an exciting place in terms of the talent pool that we have. The question now is – can we find a lot of cricket to fast track all this talent?

“I think we need to play a little bit more cricket for our system to find it’s feet,” said Maketa.

“It’s something that I’ve spoken to Enoch about. Seven games and even 10 is way too little. I’ve suggested that guys play 14 games or 15 games a season in first-class cricket. We’re way below par when it comes to volume of cricket.

“COVID hasn’t helped either. We need to make sure that we remedy the situation very fast. For us it’s mainly about getting the players out there in the middle not in the nets because nets can become counterproductive in terms of achieving your goals as a player,” he added. 

Where is South African cricket? Where are we going? What’s the objective? 

“We’ve done the basic of creating opportunities. If you look across in all the teams, presently the teams are very young. There’s a lack of experience with some of the teams which is something that we’re going to have to make sure that we bite the bullet for the next two or three years while the young players are coming through,” said Maketa. 

One would think there would be more matches after the domestic restructuring because it makes sense that less teams would mean more matches played. But the opposite has happened and it will show at the highest level when a performing player in domestic cricket is called upon to replace a Proteas player. 

To an extent, when we toured England we got a taste of the repercussions of low volumes of cricket in domestic level. None of our performing domestic players could compete against England in the Test series. The gap was visibly big and it is a concern going forward for the game in the country.