 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. A big day for Indian cricket on two counts. India had a whitewash of South Africa in the test series, three-nil whitewash which is very rare in itself and against a side like South Africa which has always given tough competition for India be it at home or away. And beyond that the BCCI is on the cusp of a new era. And with me in the studio is Nirenth Olsi who has been in India for a month now covering the South Africa series as well as meeting a lot of Indian officials and Indian players for his stories. So Nirenth, let's get into the South Africa bit now to start with. So it's been a series of pain for South Africa cricket. The side has been exposed quite barely and only one match went into the final day innings defeat and the batsman have been struggling against Indian quickballers and South Africa quickballers. I mean traditionally we associate South Africa with fastballing but they have not been able to establish themselves here. So what do you think is happening right now in South Africa cricket? Yeah I mean who would have thought you'd see the day where a South African batsman was concussed by an Indian quickballer as happened to Dean Elgar yesterday. Look I mean I think before we get into like really breaking down the team and what's going on around the team as well. I think we have to acknowledge this is a really really good Indian cricket team and South Africa are a team in evolution. You know we've lost some really good players recently. Hashim Amla, Dale Stain, A.B. DeVilliers etc. So we're in the process of rebuilding but for me it's not so much the team's fault but the people responsible for maintaining standards in the team and the people responsible for administrating cricket which is cricket South Africa. I think that's where you're seeing the problems which are being reflected in our national team and that's very much around development of the sport and who it's reaching. We don't have a catchman pool as large as India obviously but we still haven't democratized the sport in South Africa. I think 25 years after the end of the path to a point where we can have you know we're getting a talent pool which is not just our elite school systems and that's a big problem in South Africa. So you got into the mentioning of the elite system so I remember reading one of your pieces on Hashim Amla where you mentioned that his career took a turn when he when he shifted schools. So can you just explain for the Indian viewers how does the South Africa system work as far as cricket is concerned? What is the structure like domestic structure? I think the domestic structure is quite similar to India where you have provinces instead of states and we play a domestic four-day game much like the Ranjan Trophy etc. but at a much lower level the kids are really groomed at schools so we have some it's very much like Sri Lanka where you have these very established old schools initially started by the English like St. Students, Derban High School etc which have traditionally been the production line for South African cricket and there have been a few other schools I suppose just outside there but that's still kind of the upper middle class upper class kind of like schools which have produced cricketers. So what happened? I mean essentially we need to go back to 1990 sad to say you know there was there was a radical sports council in South Africa which administrated non-racial sport in South Africa prior to 1990 which was a South African council on sport and they at the time of the negotiation when South Africa wanted to be re-admitted into sports you remember we came we played the World Cup we toured India you know they were very they were very I think non-negotiable was that before we get re-admitted into sport let the sports associations and the sports ministry come together let's lay out a plan that's going to democratize all codes all sports to ensure that because of apartheid you know we had this very unequal playing field in terms of resources facilities coaching etc let's ensure that we have we normalize sport so that even the poorest kid in a in a in an urban township or ghetto or living in a rural outlier 200 kilometers from from from Johannesburg will still get the same kind of exposure to the sport so we'll be able to compete as well as the kids going to these elite schools that never happened and now we see what now what we're seeing is is the chickens come home to roost essentially yeah yeah so uh so that that is it is it across sport that such a phenomenon is happening or cricket because cricket we are very evidently during the World Cup that was actually very unfortunate and sad to watch South Africa slump like that yeah we always associate South Africa losing in the semifinal jokes apart it was actually very very sad to see such a side go down like that and so across sport if you look at it yeah such systemic problems are there across the organized sport where you're going to need a lot of facilities certainly football I think is still it's still there's still not enough development going into football but because we have a large talent pool we still kind of producing football is some of them playing in Europe you know at in English clubs or Belgium etc so the second tier kind of like European clubs a lot of footballers don't want to take the step up from South African league because they play so well and they don't want to go you know and and experience kind of alien conditions alien food all of that so which also kind of limits how we perform I think you know we reach a particular level so football less so but certainly there are structural problems across the board from swimming through athletics um to uh yeah to field hockey as well it doesn't get enough support from from the association and the and the Olympic organizations that it should be so yeah I mean we're in a moment of crisis I think across sport rugby rugby we seem to be doing a little bit better but again it's it's kind of the elite system that's producing these guys right so yeah yeah and I mean we're still we're losing players from rugby to go to Europe and stuff but I think the rules are a little bit easier in terms of calling them for international because international representation and the and the levels seem to have kind of like I think the European club level is kind of caught up with our provincial level so so so there's not that kind of the that that suggestion that if you're playing club rugby in France you're not the same level to play for the spring box which was there previously yeah and then there are performances in I mean we know that you have produced some great swimmers yeah there is castes I mean yeah athletics decent team comes out of uh South Africa so so this individual sport how do they work yeah because I mean when it comes to our athletes they they win gold medals or bronzes at the Olympics in spite of the athletics association not because of the athletics association that's very much their own work and then they what we do have is a decent university athletics program so a lot of them get placed in at South African universities for the swimmers most of them kind of you know if you're a teenager you're doing really well you get a scholarship and you you end up in the US which is where which is your finishing school so you're not really you're not really finished off in in South Africa again because of the structural issues that we have yeah and so getting back to cricket off yeah why why do we have to favorite sport country tribes on cricket what can I do so uh systemic problems yeah so always South Africa cricket the administration what are they doing about it uh at present to improve the teams performance and generally across if there are structural and administrative deficiencies happening so is it I mean is it corrupt it is like every other trick yeah look I mean there there have been major issues around I mean if you look at our we've launched our T20 league the Mzanzi Super League right and the T20 format is a format that has worked in every country that it's been introduced to it's been a money spinner South Africa when we launched it we had to delay it because we couldn't get sponsors to sponsor it you know I mean so there's a there's a reputational issue that's happening with cricket South Africa and I think the people who are running the game have for a long time kind of like just assume that this golden goose will continue to lay the eggs this goose will lay and and that's and that hasn't happened and now you're seeing sponsorship being retracted you you know we after after the Nicholson Commission of Inquiry into the IPL that was held in South Africa you know he made strong recommendations around professionalizing how the game was being run well instead what we've seen is like is the power go back to these the equivalent of the Indian state associations would be our provincial associations and where you've got these little kind of like if you get a voting block of very small inconsequential cricket associations right you can become president you can run the you can run the country you can run the country's cricket association and then you've got to look out for these little parochial interests rather than thinking more broadly about the game which is what's happening now and it's reaching a point now where you know the cricket South Africa posted multi-million ran losses in the last in the last year so now on top of not making a very successful Amazon super league they're thinking of diluting the talent pool that we have in our top tier by creating more provinces and more or more franchises and then more more teams to compete so what we're going to have is kind of an even more diluted kind of top domestic tier before your international level so it doesn't bode very well for South African cricket so you may I just going back to what you said so I I heard you talk about how the political game works in the cricket South Africa and it's interesting that it's almost similar in to the BCCA well I mean this this is what I thought when I when I saw kind of Ganguly go from a rank outside on Friday last week to kind of like the hot insider by Sunday I was like so there's obviously some machinations behind the scenes where where I suppose the cricket bosses kind of power dynamics yeah yeah there was I think a compromise formula yeah and obviously lobbying might have been there also and this is also again like you mentioned the reforms that was attempted in South Africa cricket South Africa few years back this is implementation of a reform Lothar reforms that is that is supposed to happen in India but then you are being here when the election processes happened so you you can see how the power place worked sure and but the stark difference being is that India is rich India makes continuous making profit and talking about money there is a there is a worry that now with sort of Ganguly as the BCCA president there might be some stance which would harm other cricketing nations in some way as far as money money sharing is concerned revenue sharing is concerned with regards to ICC yeah have you had any kind of a any discussion well back home well back no I haven't really back home but I mean I saw his comments on Monday I think it was where he was saying look you know we need to go back in as the BCCI and be strong about the money that we're gonna that we're gonna demand because of our powerhouse in global cricket at the moment which is very concerning for smaller unions like us firstly because obviously we're gonna have less money well whether to misappropriate and not like spend and whatever but there'll be even less money coming to development of the sport in the country right secondly what it also means that you know we we're gonna see because we've seen that already I think when the BCCI the Australian cricket board and and England form that little block of their own we saw and this was the time in South Africa was the number one test ranked team in the world we we stopped playing test cricket we there was a period where England we're just playing all the time India were playing all the time Australia were playing all the time but we weren't and you know where previously we'd have five test series against England we may have a four or five test series against India etc now we're playing maximum three test series so it on top of kind of this you know this this evolutionary period that we're going through what we're gonna have is less test cricket for a team that needs more test cricket if anything else you know so it's it's a warrior as a smaller international union I think when Ganguly says we want a bigger slice of the pie again so it will be interesting how this power game plays out because at the ICCI level there is a move to actually disband this big three yeah idea of cricket and revenue sharing and also hogging all the matches that are available so but but at the smaller at the board level already games are being played to push towards it so cricket South Africa if if at all an occasion comes which stands would they would they take because they can't obviously antagonize the big three well see this is this again it comes back to a poor administration because if you remember I can't remember how long ago it was it was maybe eight years ago so I think when this when this block formed the South African cricket you know Sri Lanka and a few other of the smaller unions had had tried to woo South Africans say look you know let's let's form our own block and kind of like let's let's stand strong on this stuff and what happened was cricket South Africa betrayed them and then double-backed and and kind of like essentially gave they go they go ahead to this to to to that make up at that time to essentially acquiesce to the demands of the big three at that point so so it can be so this cricket South Africa can be quite super in as well when it comes to kind of like you know not really having the the the heavy balls to actually do what's required to stand up ethically and morally against you know the worst parts of cricket at the moment and that stands actually translates to issues with with retaining talent because another issue that South Africa cricket has been facing is is losing of good players callback rule and they go abroad and play and money is a big factor because they need to take care of their careers and things like that so how how are these things working because you you talk about very few talent coming up from the elite school system or the talents they just not it's not just it's just not being burnished I think to a level and what and what what I'm suggesting is that you know we can have a bigger pool of talent we can have a bigger pool of talent that indigenizes the game a little bit more because what we're producing from the elite schools are very kind of narrow conception of like how to play cricket whereas if you you know which you know I'm kind of working a piece thinking about like the Sri Lankan Maverick and and South African orthodoxy I'm just suggesting that somebody like Murlithurin would never never come out of South Africans but same applies to India anyway because because of the we have a problem of plenty in a way and but but institutionalized training centers academies they just don't allow individual but yeah we have started experiencing the benefits of allowing a cricketer to bloom maverick players to come out boomerah being classy he was beautiful man he's beautiful how lucky do you feel that he was not pleased I would have loved to watch him like take out our tail then we would have gone up for even less probably right but he's a great cricket and I'd love to watch him play I mean he really impressed when he when he made his debut in South Africa I think yeah and so before we wind up any last words on how South Africa cricket I mean should look sure it's a very debilitating loss yeah I know it completely is and I think you know one shouldn't get too concerned because it is a moment of rebuilding but I think the other issue and I think South Africans do that a lot and I hope it's not a message that's kind of come to India as well you know there's it's especially the white unreconstructed parts of South Africa very quick to blame transformation as a problem why we are doing poorly at the moment or if ever we do poorly you know and it's usually the black players who are who are picked on more than any others you know this is the best squad that we could have brought perhaps we could have done something I think in terms of maybe not retaining some players for as long as we have especially like the number three number four positions you know perhaps we should have blooded some other players earlier because you know the flip side of saying okay we've lost a whole lot of great players is that Dale Staten hasn't been playing a lot of test cricket of the past two years AB de Villiers only came back because he's because he's bat sponsor and says he come back and play against India so he hasn't been around as well so you know there's been a period of three three years where where if we're smart about continuity then cricket South Africa should have sat down with the coaching team and and said let's plan and they didn't do that and that's what we're seeing now but your original question was oh yeah oh yeah so what I was going to say is that you know people are quick to blame transformation as an issue and that has been pointed out by former cricketers yeah yeah yeah which is I mean I mean I think that that's that's that's that's a spurious argument we have the we have the best team we have the best squad that we could muster here maybe we could have brought in a Yanaman Milan or something like that and give an Aidan Markham arrest because he's been looking quite tired before he punched something and broke his hand but you know and it's not transformation that's impacting on the quality of the South African team it's the fact that the game has been so poorly administered for so long and that we haven't done proper development for so long you know I mean you guys have economy of scale so you know you've got a lot of money coming in you've got a lot of players interested in playing it we need to cultivate that and what we do have in South Africa is an emerging middle class which has really taken to cricket and test cricket especially you know they watch it they they come to the grounds especially in Johannesburg they really encourage the kids to play the game the thing is cricket South Africa hasn't gone out and kind of like you know embraced them and brought them into the cricketing fold it still remained very narrow and parochial in how it approaches the sport on an administrative level on a sporting development level on a marketing level on how it appeals to people outside of this narrow fan base that it's always had so it's now that the discussion is formed about it's it's actually intriguing to see that beyond the rhetoric that it's a developmental stage it's a transitional phase some other stars have retired and so we need youngsters and they need time and all that there is a systemic problem that is happening in South Africa and it was great to have you here to point that out too so that so that we also understand that being complacent even if you're a rich board doesn't help with the billion players doesn't help if you don't plan well and South Africa is a classic example for that thanks Niren for your time and I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in India and work on your story the larger picture that you're on cricket that you're working on thanks very much cool