Sunday, September 27, 2020

What Makes An IPL Champion?

The IPL is the official cricket league in India. It is contested annually and is one of the most unpredictable tournaments in the world of sport. Since its inception in 2008, there have been twelve seasons. And this year’s thrilling games are set to begin on September 19, 2020, with the finals scheduled to take place on November 10, 2020.

But what-makes-an-ipl-champion? And who will you be betting on this season? To understand this, let’s look at past trends to foretell how this year’s competition might end.

Does the most expensive squad always win?

The staggering amount of money involved in the Indian league has made the tournament synonymous with spending. However, based on past experience, the team with the most expensive squad never wins the championship.

Does this mean that we can rule out five-time defending champions, Mumbai Indians? They have the most expensive squad in the 2020 league. And what about the Delhi Captain’s who are at the bottom of the spending list?

Who to spend on

In all 12 previous seasons, only once was the highest-paid player not from India. Applying in the 2020 tournament means forgoing teams like the Kolkota Knight Riders, Rajasthan Royals, and the Sunrisers Hyderabad.

Following this trend, we can eliminate the above as they have overseas players on their teams on their biggest contracts. The KKR have Sunil Narine from the West Indies, the Rajasthan Royals have England star, Ben Stokes, while the Sunrisers Hyderabad boasts of skipper David Warner, who is the opening batsman for Australia.

Should you consider internationals?

Does the number of international players in the squad help determine the next IPL champion? Well, a theme has developed over the past 12 tournaments that teams with at least 15 players capped at the international level are most likely to emerge as the champions.

This exempts the Kings XI Punjab and the Rajasthan Royals from the running, who each have 13 internationals. Not forgetting the KKR who only have 9. The odds seem to work against the Royals and the Knight Riders. They also lost support in the most expensive player category.

Does age matter: Youth vs Experience

IPL franchises strive to strike a balance between experience and naivety. Statistics reveal that no team with an average age of more than 30 has emerged winners. And only one team has won with an average age of 25, the Rajasthan Royals in 2008.

This means we can rule out defending champions, Chennai, as they have the oldest squad led by 39-year-old India legend MS Dhoni. Ultimately, dropping the Delhi Capitals out of the running, with an average age of just below 25.

So, Who Do You Place Your Bet On?

Taking all factors into account, who would you say is most likely to win the 2020 IPL title of champion? Amazingly, only one team satisfies all the criteria, The Royal Challengers Bangalore.

The RCB ranks fourth in the IPL’s most expensive squads. However, they are aggressive in nature, epitomized by their highest-paid player, India’s captain Virat Kohli.

Kohli will lead big-hitter AB de Viliers, wily Yuzvendra Chahal, wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel, and Bowler Umesh Yadav. They might just bring home the long-anticipated title in 2020.



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Check Out 20 Amazing Cricket Facts That’ll Blow Your Mind

Up-to-Date Cricket Facts for Betters and Fans Alike

 Sports fans spend a multitude of time and money watching, speculating, and gambling on their favorite sports teams. It’s a known fact that many details about a particular game go unnoticed or unlearned for many fans. The game of cricket is no different. The fact that it’s played solely in certain parts of the world, including Pakistan and India, makes it harder to follow for new fans in different parts of the world. However, most games are shown on satellite and cable television nowadays. This means betting will experience an influx of punters and gamblers than it has in the past.  

This is why a solid foundation on the game’s facts is important. That being said, let’s take a look at some amazing cricket facts to add to your appreciation of the game.

1. Captains and Test Matches 

Several players have taken on test matches during their positions as captains. However, Grammy Smith, a South Africa cricket player has participated in 100 test matches, while holding the position of captain.  

2. Most Wickets in Shortest Runs 

For seventeen years, Chimdan Vaas a Sri Lankan player has held the record for taking the greatest number of wickets, while giving the shortest runs. His record stands at eight wickets for a mere nineteen runs.  

3. England’s Greatest Victory  

Under the name England, their greatest fete lies in innings during 1930, where they scored 579 runs. This was also achieved in Test cricket. 

4. Consecutive Wickets Taken 

In the 2007 world cup, a Sri Lankan bowler named Lasith Malinga took four wickets in succession and set a world record that stands to this day.  

5. England’s First Win  

Cricket was incepted in England, but the land of the Queen didn’t realize its first World Cup win until 2019. That’s a fact worth noting for anyone who likes sports debates.  

6. The Number Eleven coincidence 

On the eleventh of November 2011, (11, 11, 11), South Africa desperately sought 111 runs at precisely 11 a.m., to realize a win. Well, there’s something you don’t read or experience every day.  

7. First World Cup  

As long as you plan to bet on a certain cricket team, or at the very least watch one of their games, know that the first Cricket World Cup took place in England. This was in 1972. 

8. Women Cricket  

The first game of women cricket took place in 1745. However, the first test match between England and Australia for ladies wasn’t played until 1934, between England and Australia. 

9. God of Cricket 

Popularly known as the God of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar’s full name is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. This god as it were, holds the record for scoring the most runs in international cricket.  

Sachin Tendulkar  

10. International Cricket Council 

Incepted in 1909, the ICC was initially called the Imperial Cricket Council. It was renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965 and changed its name sixteen years later to what is now known as International Cricket Council.  

11. Cricket Gains Popularity 

After nations like India took on the sport, a few countries followed suit. South Africa embraced the game early on in 1888 and New Zealand began playing it in 1930. Pakistan and Sri Lanka followed suit in 1952 and 1982 respectively. 

12. Number of Balls in One Over 

During the first years of the game, cricket players used 4 balls for one over. This changed to five balls in 1889 and shot up to 8 balls in the year 1922. However, the rules changed again in 1947, reducing the number to six balls allowed in one over. 

13. Alec Stewart  

Born on 8, 4, ‘63, Stewart holds a record 8463 runs during his test match playing career. A handy anecdote for any punter or fact-checker out there. 

14. World Cup Overs Winning Streak  

India, probably the most participatory team in cricket next to Pakistan, holds a record for winning the world cup of 60, 50, and 20 overs. This fit was attained in 1983, 2011, and 2007 respectively.  

15. Australia Beat England Twice 

In 1887, Australia beat England with 45 runs while playing at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. A century later, on the same day, Australia repeated the same by 45 runs, against England!  

16. Successful Captain  

The most successful cricket captain to date is Singh Dhoni. He has attained a victory in T20 in Bars in 2007, also claiming a win in The World Cup in Bars 2011, and lastly, Champions Trophy in Bars in 2013.  

17. Highest Ball Playing  

The record for the most ball games played under one career is held by Rahul Dravid. He has participated in 164 games during his illustrious career, under which he also encountered approximately 31,250 balls.  

18. One Day International Triple, Double Century 

Rohit Sharma, India’s top batsman has scored double centuries thrice. These accomplishments spanned three games, namely:  2013 game against Australia, and 2013 and 2017 games against Sri Lanka. 

MCG

Stadium Filled ODI Cricket Game 

19. First-Ever Cricket Match  

The first-ever international cricket game was played in 1844. The United States and Canada faced off in this game for the first time in 19th-century, during an international game.  

20. Banned Nations  

Between 1970 and 1992, South Africa was suspended from playing international cricket. This was due in part to their continued upholding of separatist ideals, known as Apartheid.  

SouthAfrica

South African Cricket Team  

Conclusion 

There you have it. 20 facts to add to your cricket knowledge base and hopefully put you at par with other punters, and debaters of this popular game. Though the list is not exhaustive, it captures some fascinating need-to-know facts for fans and betters alike.  

 



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Expert Guidance For IPL Match Predictions

The latest edition of IPL is already underway, and fans are latching on to some much-needed entertainment. Popular since its inception in 2008, IPL is one of the most awaited cricket tournaments of the year for fans and betting enthusiasts alike. Given the glamor, glitz, and the fast-paced nature of the T20 format, IPL has attracted the attention of millions of fans around the world, making it a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

Usually, fans like to predict the outcome of matches, and how their favorite player will perform. But with the rising popularity of sports betting and fantasy cricket games, these predictions have gained much more importance. Many cricketing experts come out with their own set of predictions before the start of a match. Several cricketing websites also conduct an in-depth analysis of each game before they begin. For many fans and bettors, such websites are a good source from where they can get free cricket match predictions for all major cricket matches. Researching such websites prior to placing bets can help a bettor increase their chances of winning. Betting and playing fantasy games is no longer just a fun activity to pass time, but have become full-time careers for many individuals.

Each match has a different set of parameters. The venue, the toss, the squad, and the weather, all play an important role in determining the outcome of a match. Detailed analysis of each aspect of the game can greatly improve the accuracy of predicting the results of a match.

With the introduction of online betting during IPL, live betting has been gaining much popularity. Rather than just predicting the outcome of a game and betting on that, bettors and bookies now place wagers on a variety of aspects during the course of the game, like the runs scored during power plays, runs conceded in an over, mode of dismissal for the next wicket, etc. Placing bets on such dynamic aspects of a game requires a high degree of knowledge and research in order to beat the odds. While as lucrative as the returns may sound, the potential for making a loss is also much greater.

To place such dynamic and high stakes bets, expert guidance can come in handy in order to improve the chances of winning. There are several dedicated websites that provide in-depth data-driven predictions for each player and every team. Websites like StatsGuru, onlinecricketbetting.net, and CricViz have exhaustive data on each player and every match played. Using their state of the art prediction models, they are the pioneers in providing early match analysis and predictions. Their prediction models factor in all the variable factors which can affect the course of a match, and come up with the most likely outcome.

Blogs from leading betting sites like Betfair provide valuable insights regarding the upcoming games and help bettors and fantasy league players make better selections.

Fantasy league players and bettors who rely on proper research before making their selections obviously have an upper hand on winning, compared to those who place their bets just on a `hunch´ or those who are just testing their luck.

Analytic websites rely on machine learning and mathematical models in order to predict the outcomes of matches.

While data from cricket matches has been gathered and maintained for a long time, it is only now, with the advent of machine learning and data analytics, that it has been put in use to give out reliable advice regarding the outcomes of a match. While no prediction can be 100% accurate, the use of such models greatly improves the accuracy of advice, and nudges bettors towards the right direction, giving them a better chance of beating the odds and earning a handsome reward on their wagers.



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Monday, September 21, 2020

SPORT, GREED AND BETRAYAL: AN INTERVIEW WITH GRAEME JOFFE – PART TWO

In part two of his interview with the CW team, the former CNN International Correspondent speaks to CricketWeb about his new book and the challenges of investigative sports journalism in the Twenty-First Century.

Cricket Web: Did you ever think about joining a mainstream news organization? I’ve always thought the kind of work you were doing would have made a nice fit in the Mail & Guardian, for example.

Graeme Joffe: I used to feed the Mail & Guardian so much information. It was laughable. Carte Blanche, too, is very conflicted. Naspers is the parent company of both Carte Blanche and SuperSport. So the former was never going to do anything with my work exposing the latter. I had George Mazarakis shouting at me on the phone one day because I was accusing them of covering up some stuff. But the trail is there to see. They don’t have any sports journalists on their team, and they very seldom do a sports expose. South African needs a 60 Minutes, a hard-hitting investigative programme for South African sport, in which these guys are grilled—or rather exposed. You’ll never get them on the show because they’ll just decline and decline as they deny and deny as soon as you ask them any tough questions.

It’s sad because the future is looking bleaker and bleaker for South African sport. Now we see, with the rise of BLM, all the revelations of racism coming out of South African sport. It’s not in a healthy place. In fact, it’s been captured. South African sport has been captured, and it got captured under the watch of Fikile Mbalula, the Sports Minister. The amount of corruption is unbelievable. Steve Tshwete was probably the last Sports Minister who actually knew about sport. The rest of them have all been politicians—politicians and dictators, not leaders.

Would you say that the culture you describe in South African sports journalism is unique to South Africa? I follow English county cricket pretty closely, and am so often amazed at the questions that don’t get asked. They had a very promotion/relegation saga themselves a couple of seasons ago. They needed to relegate more counties than usual from Division One. The county got the chop just so happened to be the one which wasn’t too keen on The Hundred, while those who were spared, or promoted, were those who had voted for it. I was amazed to find that no-one in the British media bothered to ask questions about this.

You’ve got a valid point. I don’t think it’s unique to South Africa. We can take two great examples. David Walsh, exposing Lance Armstrong, was a lone crusader for ten years. Everyone said to him, “Oh, stop it.” But he persisted for ten years believing that Lance Armstrong was the biggest cheat in world cycling. A lot of the cycling commentators and journalists turned on Walsh. They wanted nothing to do with them, but he persisted and now look what the story produced. Then we go back to a story which I was reminded of by the documentary series The Last Dance.

Oh, I’ve watched it. It’s brilliant, isn’t it?

Yeah, I was glued to it. There was a reporter for the one of the Chicago newspapers who had started reporting the negative side of Michael Jordan. He had heard from players within the Bulls camp that Michael Jordan was actually a piece of work—a bully, not a great guy, not a team player per se. That journalist was pretty much hounded out. No-one wanted to deal with him. He was getting hate mail. He started getting death threats. And that’s what happens. When you work on your own, it’s very difficult. The message that I give when I talk to a whistleblower is that you need to work with the mainstream media. That’s the way to do it.

But the thing about South Africa is that it has almost zero culture of investigative sports journalism. The British have a lot of investigative sports journalism, but there are people that will refrain from it because it’s just not going to help them in the long run. Another great example: Tiger Woods. There were plenty of golf journalists that must have known all about his affairs, but you’re not going to be a hero by exposing Tiger Woods.

Well, I wouldn’t have been very interested in hearing about his extramarital life. I think that’s his business.

Oh, correct. Does anybody really care? That’s Tiger’s own private life. But then how about USA Gymnastics? How about that Dr Larry Nassar? Absolutely disgusting individual. It happened for I don’t know how many years. There had to have been journalists at the Olympic Games—American journalists—who must have maybe known, or who were paid off to keep quiet about certain of the things that were going on. But it got buried for so long. Again, is it worth your career to go out there on a limb and say, “Larry Nassar is doing this.” It’s almost career limiting. It’s tough.

When you see the repercussions, you almost understand the cowardice and subservience of the culture.

Correct. I get it, especially with what I’ve been through. But then, I have no regrets and would do it all over again. South African athletes are silenced by draconian codes of conduct. You can’t speak up against the system because you get marginalised. There really isn’t freedom of speech. There really isn’t. Again, it’s these big boys clubs that get involved in South African sport. A lot of them have political ambitions, and a lot of them self-enrichment prioritised ahead of the athletes. I think you can count on one hand the amount of clean sporting federations in South Africa.

It’s especially sad to see what cricket has become. There were a couple of cricket journalists reporting on some of the bad stuff happening in South African cricket. Then what happens? The CEO bans these cricket journalists from coming to the press conferences and from the press box, and it becomes a big hoo-ha. These journalists get upset and finally start writing the hard-core truths. And then what happens? A couple board members from Cricket South Africa resign, and then they spill the beans. And that’s what you. That’s what investigative journalism does. You need investigative journalism, so that you put pressure on these board members, so that the good people start saying, “This is not good. This shouldn’t be happening in South African cricket.”

The problem is that a lot of these board members in Cricket South Africa are earning good salaries. They’re getting good perks. They’re double-dipping and triple-dipping. Why would you give up that gravy train? You’re going to stay there for as long as possible.

Cricket South Africa is not an orphan, but there’s so much money that’s gone into the sport, and now you’re getting some of the hard truths about the racism, the corruption, the maladministration, the nepotism, and what’s happened to development and transformation.

Where do you stand on transformation, by the way?

It’s always been a big bugbear. Quotas for me are just not okay. If only Cricket South Africa had ploughed the money into developing facilities in townships and rural areas. Structured development. You can’t just put a cricket pitch in the middle of a township and expect the kids to start playing cricket. You’ve got to have coaches there on a regular basis. You’ve got to have managers. You’ve got to have people overseeing those projects. That’s how you’ll get development and transformation.

The quota system is now coming back to bite South African cricket. A lot of the players who are now speaking out were called “quota players” or “transformation players” when in actual fact they were good enough to represent the country. They weren’t quota players. But the stigma attached to it is awful. I think quotas create a greater racial divide, sadly.

They do fuel a lot of resentment. (English cricket, transparently, is exploiting this: It’s no coincidence that most of the Kolpaks are white South Africans on the periphery of the team.) And although I’d agree that quotas can be used as a window dressing—a means of disguising the fact that you’re not doing enough at the grassroots—I do think transformational targets are important.

Targets are 100 per cent important. The two sports that never meet them are swimming and hockey. In hockey they don’t even have a blueprint for transformation. It should be one of the most transformed sports. The number of players of colour playing at school level and university level, and yet they haven’t met their transformation targets… It beggars belief. And the swimming administration is so bad. They’ve had the same guys running Swimming South Africa for so long, but how many swimming pools have been built in the townships and rural areas, and how many structured development programs are there for swimming in the townships and rural areas? I call it lazy administration.

I’ve actually been having a go of late at the President of SA Hockey, because I’ve heard about some serious allegations of sexual harassment on the part of a national coach who got moved around from the women’s team to the men’s team. Things are just swept under the carpet. I just don’t know how these people can live with themselves, allowing a person to continue in the job or moving him around when there are these allegations hanging over his head. The allegations were very strong, too. Hockey needs a change of leadership. The fact that they haven’t met their transformation targets is a great example of how poor the leadership really is.

Right. Well, I think we’ve got enough now. But there’s one rather difficult, rather awkward question I want to ask you.

Sure.

I’ve followed up most of the claims you make in your book, and found them generally well substantiated. But I’m pretty dubious about one of them.

Oh?

Near the end of the book, you quote an old friend of yours to the effect that after an epic universities match you got Jonty Rhodes to down a whole beer at a fines meeting. I’m gonna need the receipts on that one.

Oh, right! Because Jonty famously didn’t drink!

Exactly.

So I’m surprised. Did I actually say that?

You quoted a farewell message from a friend, written after you’d left South Africa, and—

Oh, Andrew McLean! Yes, Andrew says I’m the only guy that could get Jonty to down a beer. You know what? I think you you’ve caught me out. This could be the only lie in the book. But yeah, I remember him getting about seventy or eighty against us. Boy, he hit us all over the place. That I do remember.

And, finally, I’ve got a gig coming up this summer. I’m doing the cricket stats for SABC on the radio, and I thought I’d ask you if there’s anything you wish you’d known before you sat behind the microphone for the first time?

I wasn’t a natural behind the microphone. I remember my first time on television… One thing I’ve learnt—even more so now, doing my podcast—is that I used to speak too fast. I remember that after a couple months at CNN, they said, “We’ve got to get you a speech coach.” And I remember how she told me how South African inflections sometimes go up, instead of coming down, at the end of the sentence. So slow the pace down a little bit, because not everybody has English as their mother tongue. Keep the pace, keep the flow, be yourself. Is this for SABC Sports?

Yeah, it’s for the cricket. I did a bit of it last summer during the England tour. I still haven’t got used to hearing my own voice. I think I sound like a pompous pratt.

You don’t. Actually you reminded me a lot of Michael Abrahamson. His voice was so easy to listen to. You don’t have to put on any voice. I think your voice is great. For me it’s just about not trying to rush things, taking a breath in between, and just letting things simmer—especially with stats. You want people to absorb the stats, because there’s probably so much stuff going through your mind, so don’t rush them all and give them too many stats at one time. You want to slow it down a little bit, and just go to a nice, gentle medium pace, if you’ll excuse the pun.

Alright. Thanks so much. That means a lot.

No, it’s all good. Good luck with that.

I think we should conclude this interview the way such interviews are always concluded: I say your name: Graeme Joffe. Then the title of your book: Sport: Greed & Betrayal. And then I ask you where people can buy it.

Unfortunately, it’s not available in South Africa because HSM got a court interdict.

Oh, really?

Yeah, they went to all out to ensure that the allegations weren’t repeated. They even went so far as to write to Amazon to stop distribution to South Africa. But if anyone wants a free PDF of the book, please send me your email address. I’m only too happy to share it. I just want the truth to get out.

That’s extraordinary. That’s really worth repeating: A major publisher in the South African media, for whom freedom of speech should be value, tried and succeeded in preventing the publication of a book they didn’t like.

Correct.

Extraordinary. Extraordinary. You couldn’t make it up.

They’re bullies. They hate to be exposed, and they have a lot to lose. That’s the thing.



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Sunday, September 20, 2020

What’s the Latest News for Cricket in India

The Indian national cricket team and other Indian cricket teams have not played any matches since early March as all matches have been postponed. With a long summer without any matches for avid cricket fans in a cricket-obsessed country, we’re left wondering what’s next?

A lot has been going on as the cricket world is still recovering from a cricket-free year. As we’re waiting for news on future cricket matches in Australia, we’re left with the chance to follow live cricket score on sportsadda.com once the IPL season starts in a week.

Let’s see what else we can expect to see from world-class Indian teams and what the latest news is in the world of Indian cricket.

India’s Australian Tour to Be Postponed?

The Indian tour of Australia, scheduled to start in November, includes three ODI matches, three T20I matches, and four Test matches. The tour’s original end date is currently expected to be set sometime in January 2021 if the tour takes place at all.

The tour is in serious trouble and not for obvious reasons. One of the most prominent news media in Australia — Seven West Media, holds the broadcasting rights for the international cricket season in Australia. Along with Foxtel, Seven West Media is the only broadcasting company and the principal company with the rights to broadcast cricket matches in the country and it has reportedly started to cancel its contract with Cricket Australia.

How did it come to this? Seven West Media has expressed significant dissatisfaction with the tour calendar as the Test matches will be played after the ODIs and T20Is. Furthermore, the broadcasting company feels as if Cricket Australia has given in to the BCCI, which led to the cricket season in Australia being pushed back.

If the rumors are true, Cricket Australia will be on the verge of bankruptcy as they won’t have any funds to produce the series. This news from Seven West Media comes shortly after a possible ban of international cricket for South Africa as the Cricket Board has been taken over by the government.

For now, there hasn’t been any official news about the cancellation of India’s tour in Australia or future matches.

IPL in UAE

The Indian Premier League Governing Council (IPL GC) has made a decision regarding the upcoming season of the Indian Premier League. The IPL will start on September 19 in the United Arab Emirates with matches being played in three locations — Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah. The government of India has cleared the tournament which is set to end on November 10.

The 53-day tournament is the first cricket tournament of this magnitude to start since March 2020. The fans can expect to see both afternoon and evening matches starting from 15.30 IST and 19.30 IST, respectively.

The Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) has been discussed by the Governing Council for a successful and environmentally friendly IPL tournament. The SOP will be finalized shortly and published afterward.

Fans can also look forward to the women’s T20 challenge. It will also take place in the UAE with four matches taking place during the IPL playoff week.

New Kid on the Block — Yashasvi Jaiswal

If you’ve been following closely, you’ve probably heard of the young and talented opener Yashasvi Jaiswal. After an overnight rise in ranks for Jaiswal, who has collected an impressive number of runs in List A cricket with an average of 70 in 13 games, it’s his time to shine in his first-ever IPL appearance.

What made Jaiswal stand out among dozens of young, hopeful cricket players was his breakthrough, where he hammered 203 off 154 deliveries in a Vijay Hazare Trophy match against Jharkhand for Mumbai in October 2019. That result led to Jaiswal being the youngest double-centration in List A cricket.

Jaiswal has been picked by Rajasthan Royals for his first stint in the League for about $300k. Jaiswal’s last competitive match was in February 2020, but he said that he’s been looking forward to playing alongside renowned cricket names like Steve Smith, Ben Stokes, and Jos Buttler.

Jaiswal’s future Royals teammate and cricket veteran Robin Uthappa is hoping for a successful IPL season that could bring Jaiswal one step closer to playing for the Indian national team.



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Gerald Brodribb – Forever The ‘Next Man In’

Next Man In was described in The Cricketer in 1952 as quite one of the best books on cricket ever written. It’s subtitle is A Survey of Cricket Laws and Customs, and that is exactly what it is, a brief introduction and then a law by law look at the history of the laws of the game, how they had changed over time and what might happen in the future.

The first edition, which I have to admit to not having seen, was based on the 1947 version of the laws. The copy I have is a second edition, that appeared in 1985, and was therefore based on the 1980 laws. Another and, to date, final edition appeared a decade later in 1995.

Using the 1985 book I will, to give a better picture of what the book is about, take a look at the then Law 22, ‘The Over’. Over time the number of balls in a over has variously been four, five, six or eight. Brodribb gives a timeline for the changes and sets out the arguments for and against each figure.

But there was a bit more to the law. How no balls and wides are treated is one, and what happens if the umpire miscounts another. What is the situation about changing ends, and what if a bowler is unable to complete an over? All are issues that are explored.

When does an over end and when is the ball dead? Does it matter? Of course it does, as one of the featured incidents, Tony Greig’s infamous running out of Alvin Kallicharran in the Caribbean in 1973/74 aptly demonstrates.

The duration of an over, nor the length of bowlers’ run ups have never been directly dealt with by the laws of the game, albeit many different playing conditions have attempted to regulate them, so these important and interesting issues are also examined at length.

What is remarkable, and what gives the book its appeal, is the many examples and illustrations of what he is describing that author Gerald Brodribb had culled from the history of the game. It is, in some ways, remarkable that in a quarter of a century no contemporary writer or team of writers has sought to update this classic tome, although another line from that 1952 review of the first edition perhaps goes some way to explaining why not.

Never forget the amazing industry of the author, to whom very sincere congratulations are due on a superb effort.

Brodribb was a most diligent researcher, always seeking out original scorebooks and sources and never afraid to visit the scene of incidents that he uncovered in order to check the veracity of what he had found and to protect the integrity of his work. In truth there has never been another Brodribb, and even if there were the amount of cricket now played, assuming normality ever returns, would simply mean that there would not be enough time available for one man to approach such a task again.

So who was Gerald Brodribb? One of the more overused words in the English language is ‘polymath’ but, in the case of Brodribb, it seems an entirely appropriate description. Born in Sussex in 1915 Brodribb came from a family that produced a famous Victorian actor, Sir Henry Irving. Brodribb’s immediate family came from a medical background.

As a child Brodribb was a junior member at Sussex and saw his first county match at Hastings in 1924 an occasion when, on entering the ground, he was almost struck by a big hit from the bat of Maurice Tate, something which, as we shall see, no doubt influenced his future writing and researches.

Brodribb was educated at Eastbourne College before going on to University College Oxford where he read for a Degree in English and, subsequently, a Diploma in Education. His tutor at Oxford was no less a literary figure than CS Lewis and, unsurprisingly, Brodribb became a schoolmaster himself, teaching at a number of schools before, in 1954, he bought Hydneye House Preparatory School near Hastings, his own alma mater. In 1969 the school merged with a school in nearby Battle but a decision by the Local Education Authority to build a comprehensive school on the site persuaded Brodribb that teaching was no longer for him.

As far as cricket was concerned Brodribb was hooked that day at Hastings and even the notes on the dustjackets of his books reference the keenness with which he followed the 1924/25 Ashes series in Australia. Brodribb also played the game to a reasonable standard, albeit some way below First Class level.

The name Brodribb first appeared in the pages of The Cricketer as a fourteen year old in 1929 when the editor printed a response to a request for information he had submitted on the subject of the Sussex all-rounder Ted Bowley. His first letter that was published in the magazine appeared four years later, and in 1934 he made his first two contributions, one on the taking of four wickets in four deliveries, and the second on the subject of double centuries. His byline started to appear more frequently after the Second World War, but the fascination with six hitting was apparent from letters that were printed in 1935 and 1936.

Having been instrumental in the formation of what soon became the Cricket Society Brodribb then went on to join Roy Webber in his short lived Cricket Book Society venture and contributed a couple of pamphlets to that before, in 1948, his first book, dedicated to his old tutor CS Lewis, appeared in print. It is an anthology entitled The English Game.

In 1951 All Round The Wicket appeared. This was classic Brodribb. It contained some new material but was essentially an updated and enlarged collection of his essays that had appeared in magazines over the previous decade or so. Its subtitle, A Miscellany of Facts and Fancies of First Class Cricket sums up what it is very well. Many of the essays arise out of a variety of statistical quirks, but they never become mired in the numbers which are, essentially, just a peg on which Brodribb hangs his research.

The following year was that of Next Man In, and there was another Brodribb anthology in 1953, this one of poetry with The Book of Cricket Verse. This broad sweep of Brodribb’s interest in cricket and literature had also been illustrated by a slim bibliography of cricket in fiction that had been published in 1950.

England famously recovered the Ashes in 1953 for the first time in twenty years. Before securing the only result in the series at the Oval in the fifth Test England, or more especially Trevor Bailey and Willie Watson, had performed a famous rearguard action at Lord’s. For the denouement of that match they were joined by Henry Sayen, who flew in from the USA. Sayen was a First Class cricketer who, almost half a century before, had been a member of the Philadelphian side who toured England in 1908 and after Lord’s the England side looked on him as a good luck charm as he stayed in England for the rest  of the series. Three years later Brodribb and Sayen collaborated on an interesting book, A Yankee Looks At Cricket, the bulk of which was concerned with the past, present and future of cricket in North America.

It was to be 1960 before a further Brodribb title appeared, Hit For Six, cementing his reputation as a man with a keen interest in the game’s most spectacular batsmen. The book consists in the main of 32 pen portraits of renowned hitters. Some, such as ‘Jock’ Cameron, George Bonnor, Albert Trott and Arthur Wellard were well known, but there are other lesser known figures as well, men like Guy Earle, Alan Watt and Cyril Smart. There is also a chapter on the biggest of the hits, one on examples of damage caused to persons and property as well as, to round off the study, a few statistics.

Up until this point Brodribb’s research had been geared towards short pieces of writing but, in 1962, the first single subject book appeared from him, and this was a piece of weighty research. Nicholas Wanostrocht, otherwise known as Felix, was a schoolmaster like Brodribb and he lived from 1804 to 1876. In addition however Felix was, for a few years in the 1840s, as good a batsman as there was in England, and in 1845 he was responsible for one of the first classics of cricket literature, the instructional book Felix on the Bat. The best part of a hundred years after Felix’s death Brodribb tracked down a number of members of his family and produced a detailed memoir of Felix, to which he added a complete reprint of the original Felix on the Bat, a title which Brodribb used for his book as well.

On that day in 1924 when he came so perilously close to being struck by Tate’s hit something that remained with Brodribb was a comment of an old man nearby, just like Jessop sonny. In the space of two years, 1974 and 1976, Brodribb added to his oeuvre biographies of both men. Jessop he had met in the 1950s when he realised he lived close by to where he was teaching in Dorset. By then Jessop was living with his son, who Brodribb also got to know and who agreed to allow Brodribb access to the family archive as well as his own memories in order to assist him in writing the book which, unusually for a cricketing biography, was republished a decade after its first release. The title of the book was The Croucher.

Insofar as the Tate project is concerned that must, as a lifelong Sussex supporter, have been a labour of love for Brodribb. It was published by London Magazines Editions, an imprint at that time run by Brodribb’s friend and fellow Sussex devotee Alan Ross. Again Brodribb knew Tate and once more he had the co-operation of the family. The book’s most impressive feature is the list of names in the acknowledgments section, which runs to no less than 85 names, including seemingly all of the great and the good of Sussex and England cricket. The book was dedicated to one of those acknowledged, former Sussex and England skipper Arthur Gilligan. The best part of half a century on Gilligan is still not the subject of a book. It is our loss that that was never a task that Brodribb set himself.

Although he was to return to cricket writing retirement from teaching brought Brodribb a new passion for Archaeology and in time he was to be awarded a Doctorate for work on Roman Building materials, a book published in 1987 being his one non cricket title. In his archaelogical work Brodribb was adept at using the pseudoscience of dowsing to discover what he was looking for although, perhaps surprisingly in view of his successful use of it, he never published anything on that controversial and often maligned art.

The subject that eventually teased another cricket book out of Brodribb was once more his fellow polymath Felix, who in addition to his cricketing and literary prowess was an accomplished artist. The Art of Nicholas Felix was a look at that side of his life and a catalogue of his work that was published by bookseller John McKenzie in a limited edition in 1985.

Four years after Felix tempted him out of retirement Brodribb was persuaded into print again, this time by the Trust that owned Hastings cricket ground. In 1988 the Trustees had secured planning permission to construct a shopping mall over the old centrally located Priory Meadow ground. Fortunately the need to preserve memories of the historic old ground were appreciated and a book was commissioned, Brodribb being the obvious candidate to write it. Cricket at Hastings; The Story of a Ground was published in 1989 in a standard edition and a limited edition.

In 1995 Brodribb turned 80, and would certainly have been forgiven for giving further writing projects a miss, but the lure of Felix was too strong, and he became involved with what became a joint MCC/Boundary Books project to produce a book about Felix’s involvement with William Clarke’s All England Eleven. Whilst that was being worked on he also involved himself in one of those quirky enquiries which characterised his earliest work and in 1997 that produced The Lost Art.

The Lost Art is a history of underarm or lob bowling, an integral part of early cricket but sadly now without a place in our great game. Brodribb charted the rise and fall and, in getting Mike Brearley on board to provide a foreword, enlisted the help of the one county captain who in modern times has ever given the subject any serious thought. The book was published by Boundary Books in paperback and also as a limited edition of fifty hardbacks, individually numbered and signed by Brodribb.

Sadly Brodribb died in 1999 at the age of 84, so he never saw Felix and The Eleven of England make it into print. In 2002 however the book finally saw the light of day as a leather bound, slip cased limited edition of 250 copies, all signed by Hubert Doggert, Ted Dexter and a descendant of Felix. The book is a fitting tribute to its author.



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Sunday, September 13, 2020

IPL 2020 Winner Prediction

The 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is finally here and the wait is over. The tournament has moved to the UAE due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 60 games which will be played across 53 days will be played across three venues – Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah behind closed doors. The eight teams look well balanced and with the league moving to the UAE, the home and away advantage goes away.

Looking at the teams, one will certainly look at the Mumbai Indians (MI) and drool over the depth and the resources they have. There are at least 15 players who can walk into the starting XI any day. The batting boasts of some of the biggest T20 hitters in world cricket. The pace attack wears a solid look too Yes, their spin department is slightly thin and isn’t the biggest or the best but they can be effective. Moreover, the other departments cover up for it. MI have won four titles in the last seven seasons. One of the biggest reasons for their success has been the continuity of the players. Also, they know how to win the big moments. Hence, it may be an even year (MI have won every alternate year – 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019) but the four-time champions will definitely be one of the big contenders this year as well.

MI are definite favourites but who else can challenge them? If we look at the IPL tips from CricBets the first name that will come to mind is Chennai Super Kings (CSK). The MI-CSK rivalry has been one of the biggest in the history of the IPL. Moreover, it is MI who hold the aces and have toppled CSK as many as three times in the final. However, despite the odds being against them, CSK somehow come to the fore and surge ahead. The MS Dhoni-led side just knows how to be successful and be on top. They have some big match-winners and despite the absence of the experienced players like Suresh Raina and Harbhajan Singh, you just cannot count CSK out.

Year after year, Royal Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) name pops into this discussion. However, year after year, they flatter to deceive. They’ve had a horrendous time in the last three seasons, finishing with the wooden spoon twice. The problem for them has been there is barely anyone apart from Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers standing up and delivering on a consistent basis. Death bowling has been a huge issue for them as well. But this time around, things seem different. They’ve tried to plug most of these holes and have a balanced squad. There are some big superstars in all departments and RCB might well be the team to watch out for this season.

There is no doubt MI and CSK will be the top favourites in most people’s list but don’t rule RCB out either. While there is a possibility of seeing MI retain their title and becoming the second team to successfully defend an IPL title, but we might see a new champion crowned as well. Not only RCB, but Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) are looking good too and have some impact players who can turn the game in no time. Thus, watch out for them as well.



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New Online Casinos with Cricket Betting Option

For many gamblers from India, brand new casino sites on the Indian market are always a great opportunity. You can get new bonuses, play new games and also enjoy the latest trends in the gambling industry. But what if you want to get all of these and you want to bet on cricket? You will need to check out these casinos from below. They are all new and they offer various sports betting options, including cricket. But, they still offer plenty of differences.

Casino360

Casino360 was launched in 2020 by Abudantia B.V. The site offers modern and intuitive design. They offer casino games, live casino games, and also sports. If we take a look at the sports section only, we will see various cricket options. These include live cricket matches, international, West Indies, various leagues and so much more. Placing a bet is simple and can be done within seconds. In addition, they do offer other sports such as football, basketball, volleyball, F1, MMA, tennis, and many others.

Promotions include a 100% match on the first deposit up to $100, Sports Free Bet Club, and also up to $1080 as a part of the welcome casino bonus. The casino also offers VIP and a loyalty club that have additional benefits and advantages.

WeltBet Casino

WeltBet Casino is controlled by Bellona N.V. Casinos and they have been with us since 2020. The site offers a mobile-friendly design, almost all payment options are supported and there are fast withdrawal processes. Once they are approved, the funds will be on your account within 24 hours. Live chat is there when you need them. They are available 24/7.

A major difference compared to Casino360 we saw earlier is the user interface. Here you will automatically land on the sports section. From the top, you can select which section of the platform you want to explore. All popular sports are supported, including cricket. You can follow and bet on matches from World Cup 2023, Twenty20 International, Caribbean Premier League, ICC, Big Bash 2020/21, and more. Indian and international matches are supported. All betting formats are supported. Players can choose between decimal, American, Malay, Hong Kong, Indonesian, and fractional.

BUFF.bet Casino

BUFF.bet Casino is a bit older. The site was founded and released in 2018. They are owned by XB Entertainment Group N.V. Some obvious advantages are present. The site is mobile friendly, customer support is excellent and al payment options are supported. Users can browse between casino games, live section, sports, virtual sports, and also esports.

In the sports section, we can see 21 options. Cricket is one of them. However, at the moment you can enjoy only Twenty20 Internationals. There are no other options supported. We believe thy will probably add new ones as soon as possible. Odd format supported is decimal, American, Hong Kong, and fractional.

FEZbet Casino

FEZbet Casino is a new gambling establishment owned by Araxio Development N.V. Casinos. The site was officially launched in 2020. They have prepared an impressive selection of betting and gambling options. You can check out the casino, live, virtual, and sports. The first deposit is paired with a 100% match up to $100. The site offers $10 in free bets, cashout (click on the button when you are going to lose and win a partial amount), and also many other bonuses and promotions. Some examples include 10% on live betting, a 10% bonus as unlimited multibet offer and a 50% reload bonus. This is just the tip of the iceberg. In reality, FEZbet Casino offers many additional and fresh promotions gamblers need to take a look at and use them to promote their odds and win more.

In the sports section, there are 32 sports you can bet on. Cricket is one of them. Players can choose between International, England, Australia, India, or West Indies. There are 14 events available right now. From there, you need to click on the team you want to place a bet, the slip will reveal itself on the right side and you are ready to go. Some interesting additions include Gaelic Hurling and Gaelic Football. In general, you can enjoy all betting desires and have a great time.

321 Crypto Casino

321 Crypto Casino was released in 2019 and it isn’t a brand new gambling establishment, but it is one of the best. They have over 1000 games and the number is increasing as we speak. Besides casino games, users can enjoy sportsbook and also live casino options. One thing to keep in mind, this is a cryptocurrency casino. That means that you can deposit funds and withdraw your winnings using Bitcoin and similar virtual currencies. Supported currencies at the casino are Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, USDT, Bitcoin, and Litecoin.

In the sportsbook section, there are 32 options. Players can bet on almost anything. There are all common sports you can think of, there are Gaelic Hurling and Gaelic Football, virtual games, motorcycle racing, Stock Car racing and so much more. Cricket is one of those sports. You can see that they offer live-action, international, and West Indies. Promotions are generous. You get 100% on casino games the same match bonus on the sportsbook and also additional promos. For instance, users get free spins on Tuesday and cashback on Wednesday. Sadly, most of the promotions are focused on casino games rather than on cricket betting. Don’t forget that for some promotions, you will need a code to activate that offer.



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An Appointment with Krom Hendricks’ Biographer

Let’s begin with who Krom Hendricks was, and why he’s so important.

Okay. Well the difficulty is that, of course, Krom Hendricks is a figure that we know very little about in concrete terms. We have little evidence of his own family, his background and his context apart from the image of a man who is clearly an important figure both for South African cricket and in the context of the evolution of the South African political structure. Hendricks was a Cape fast bowler in the 1890s. His background, as I suggested, is somewhat unclear, although we do have a number of details. He’s part St Helenian, part Dutch in origin. He grows up in the Bo-Kaap, in the Malay culture—a strong sports culture—and he clearly has a great deal of talent. He shoots to prominence in the early 1890s when he plays against Walter Read’s touring team in 1890.

The Hendricks Saga really begins with the 1894 tour of England, which is where I first heard of him. Long before reading your book, I’d gone to the effort of tracking down that very dignified letter he wrote to The Cape Times in January of that year, refusing to tour England as a glorified “baggage man.” (So far as I can tell, Too Black to Wear Whites is the first book to quote that letter in full.) What I didn’t appreciate until reading your book was that Hendricks’s struggles with the Cape authorities extended well beyond that tour: At every point in his career, at every level of the game, he was thwarted and insulted. Perhaps you’d like to give us a précis of the saga.

Yes, that’s absolutely true. The real story about Hendricks is the longevity of the struggle between him and the powers-that-were at the Cape. He was fighting against racism on two fronts.
On one level, he was fighting the Cape’s political structure: Cecil Rhodes, who was prime minister from 1890, and his parliamentary private secretary William Milton, who ran South African cricket, were keen to develop a racialised structure within South Africa—what they called “segregation” at the time, a forerunner to apartheid.

Secondly, he was fighting against a virulent social racism, based on social Darwinism and some of the ideas that that were rampant in English society in the late Nineteenth Century, which saw race as a fundamental basis for Empire, and indeed the basis for life as a whole.

Now, Hendricks struggles with this first of all in 1894, when he’s omitted from the touring team on the instructions of Cecil Rhodes, and as you say, he writes to The Cape Times. There’s a suggestion made that he might be able to go as baggage master and play the odd game—to make sure that his inferior status is specifically recognised. Of course, he’s too proud a man for that, and has the dignity to say, “You must be joking. I’m certainly not going in that capacity.”

And then, of course, his struggle continues. In 1896, he’s selected by the Transvaal to be part of the squad to try out for the Test Match against Lord Hawke’s tourists. He’s prohibited by Milton from going to the Transvaal, so he’s actually blocked from attending, and that’s the last chance he gets to play at international level. He’s not selected for any representative teams in the Western Province, except for one or two “All-Comers against Western Province Cricket Club” matches, where he proves his abilities and shows himself a star player, and terrorises the powers-that-be from 22 yards.

He continues his struggle after the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). In 1904 the issue is raised again, and it’s around the question of whether he should be allowed to be a club professional. He’s initially refused this right in 1897, and then raises it seven years later again—really for the last time—and in each case he’s thwarted by the Cape cricket establishment. They won’t make an exception for him. As far as they’re concerned, the fact that he’s played for a Malay team prohibits him from playing as a professional and playing club-class cricket in South Africa. So he’s written out of the cricketing structure.

The important thing to stress about Hendricks is that if he’d been merely a very good cricketer, his case wouldn’t be much more than a sad footnote in South Africa’s fraught cricketing history. What elevates it to the level of tragedy is that he was rather more than just a good cricketer. He was a truly great one. You quote reams of testimony from a great many fine players who came into contact with him, including seasoned Test stars like George Hearne and Billy Murdoch, who thought the world of him. There’s a remarkable unanimity of testimony on this point: in fact, that he was almost the greatest fast bowler they’d ever faced. The only other bowler in the whole history of the game who matches this—who had virtually all his contemporaries rating him the best—would be George Freeman, the great Yorkshire fast bowler of the 1860s and 1870s. But what makes these claims even more impressive in Hendricks’s case is that he was deep into his thirties, well past the traditional fast bowler’s peak, when they were made. So it seems to me that he ought at the very least to be spoken of in the same breath as other great bowlers from this era—the likes of Fred Spofforth and George Lohmann and Charlie Turner. There are, of course, qualifiers and caveats to be made, but the tragedy of Hendricks is that he never got the chance to vindicate these claims before a big audience and at the highest level.

Yes, exactly. That’s precisely the tragedy. He never got to live out his destiny. It was the beginning of the way in which, owing to politics, sports could not reflect what South Africa essentially was. He was spoken of, as you say, almost unanimously, as the fastest bowler, and by many as the best bowler, that they had ever faced. But of course he had a relatively small engagement with foreign players. Certainly within the South African context he was recognized as the fastest bowler around. And indeed his results, in the chances he did get to play in high-quality cricket, show just how good he was. On one occasion, for example, in a first-league club match that he did get to play, against Claremont, he bowled nine overs, nine maidens, no runs and took nine wickets.

Must be some kind of record.

Pretty astonishing statistic. He was clearly several standards above anybody else. He bowled against English touring sides in the nets, and as you say, he’s getting on a bit in the 1890s. He’s born in 1857, so he’s in his late thirties when Lord Hawke brings the team over in 1896. And Tom Hayward, who’s the star Surrey player, and the best batsman on the tour by some distance, faces him in the nets. At the end of the tour Hayward is interviewed in The Cricket Field and asked who the best bowler he faced on the tour was. Hayward doesn’t think of any of the South African bowlers that he faced in matches or in the Tests, which is where one would expect him to go, but says, “In fact, the best bowler I faced in South Africa was Krom Hendricks. But I didn’t get a chance to play against him; I just faced him in the nets.” And that gives some indication of the esteem in which Hendricks was held, and in fact just how good he was, that he was able to impress somebody like Hayward merely through a net session.

I mean, it seems pretty well established to me—your book does a fantastic job of proving this, I think—that he was South Africa’s first great cricketer, of any race.

Yes. That’s certainly our view: that he’s a considerable distance ahead of any others. All things being equal, had he been able to perform on the global stage, he would have been South Africa’s greatest cricketer of the Nineteenth Century. Jimmy Sinclair, I guess, is the next cricketer to that. Sinclair was a different player, of course. But for sheer ability and for sheer natural talent, I think Krom Hendricks probably would have outshone even Sinclair.

We don’t know much about Hendricks’s personality. Your book, given the limitations of the source material, is less a biography of the man than a history of his war with the establishment, or rather the establishment’s war on him. But you do furnish a number of very suggestive clues. He seems to have been a complicated fellow, and to have struggled somewhat to reconcile his dignity and his personal integrity with his cricketing ambitions. You write, non-judgmentally, of his efforts to “pass” as a white man. Perhaps you’d like to elaborate on that.

Yes, I think one needs to look at the whole question of race in South Africa in its context. Race has become ossified in a particular way in the Twentieth Century. It was much more fluid in the Nineteenth, especially for somebody like Hendricks, whose background was, as I suggested at the beginning, somewhat debatable. It’s not even clear that Hendricks himself knew what it was. For example, we know that his mother comes from St Helena, which suggests, in South African parlance, that she was “black.” People who came from St Helena tended to come over as black indentured workers in the 1880s and 1870s. On his father’s side, I don’t think even he knows who his father is, although he says on a number of occasions that he’s Dutch—and in fact in 1904 says that both of his parents are European. Now, this is this is another interesting development, because his mother, when she finally dies in 1909, is actually buried as a European.

So Hendricks is trying to succeed on the cricket field, as you say, with a great deal of dignity and integrity, and to fight a particular struggle with the authorities, who have decided that he is “black.” Now, this is a subjective judgment. Nobody actually knows—maybe Hendricks himself doesn’t know—but they’ve decided that he is black, and have simply treated him as such, and simply written him out of his opportunities. Whether he is black, or is not, doesn’t actually matter. What matters to Hendricks, of course, is to have a life in South Africa which allows him to have a family, for that family to do as well as they possibly can, and so on.

In the Twentieth Century there’s a kind of parallel process going on for Hendricks. He plays cricket for Crusaders in the City Cricket League, what was known as a “coloured” league, from 1904 all the way through to 1915. He’s still playing in his late fifties. So he comes out, essentially, as a coloured. He says, “Okay, that’s my community. Those are the people I’m engaged with. That’s how I define myself on the cricket field.”

But beyond the cricket field, of course, he doesn’t necessarily define himself as “coloured” in those specifically hard racial terms. As I suggested, his mother is buried as a European, as is Hendricks himself in the 1940s. And most of his children are “European,” but not all. One of his daughters, Winifred, is considered to be “coloured”—and indeed by the 1950s there’s an issue around whether she can be buried with her husband in the same graveyard, because of course they’re of different “racial groups.”

But that’s when race becomes a specific classification which determines all aspects of life. It doesn’t necessarily do that in the early years of the Twentieth Century and in the late Nineteenth, and as a consequence of that it’s about finding one’s place in a very fluid environment. Part of the history of Hendricks is really the history of how race becomes essentially the hard line, the rigid framework, within which all life is developed and operated. But that’s a slow process, and Hendricks is very much part of this confusing maelstrom of people and activities and engagements where a person’s race is not able to be established or classified, nor indeed particularly relevant—except on the ideological level of Cecil Rhodes.

One of the challenges of writing a book like this, on an era like this, must be the language. Most of your sources are written from the perspective of these ideologues, and it must be quite difficult (as I think I showed in the awkward way I phrased my question) to avoid speaking in these terms yourself, or taking certain of their priors for granted.

Yes, that’s right. It’s very difficult to be able to take that context and reduce it into terms which not only make sense in the current area, but also provide the right degree of dignity and analysis. There were a number of issues in writing about Hendricks: first of all around the fluidity of the situation and trying to establish what happened within the context of that fluidity, knowing that the rigidity of the response to Hendricks within what was a fluent situation and how one balances that out; and then secondly, of course, there was the problem of sources and material and how you write history. As historians most of us are used to being able to go into the archive, sift through the material, make fine judgments on what’s in the material, deal with things that are contradictory, and come out with stuff that makes sense and allows one to move the story forward.

In the Hendricks case there’s so little core material that it’s extremely difficult really to assess what Hendricks is at any given moment and what’s really happening to him. And one of the real interesting points about this book, I think, is the challenge that the lack of primary materials presents. We have, as we were discussing, Hendricks’s letter to The Cape Times. To my knowledge that is the only material we have from Hendricks at all. We have nothing else that he’s written. We have nothing else that he’s even reported to have said (apart from a few comments in The South African Review). There’s almost nothing at all that we can directly attribute to Hendricks. We don’t have members of his family who’ve spoken to him. We don’t even have members of his family who remember him. His descendants, while they’re clearly very interested in who he was (as they would be) also simply don’t know who he is. There’s no one yet who’s come up and said, “Ah, Krom Hendricks! I remember William Henry Hendricks very well!” Nobody has. Nobody does.

So we were writing a book within an extremely isolated context, trying to develop the significance and the character of an individual about whom we have very little hard evidence, but a great deal of evidence which points to what he was likely to be and what his context was, and I think the reason that we were able to write about him is that there is so much peripheral material (newspaper reports being the most obvious). And he is such a “name,” and he has such recognition at the time—he’s clearly so significant—that we were able to write about him, and were able, I hope, to come out with conclusions which essentially reflect where Hendricks was and how he moved over time and what happened to him over that 25-year period. The longevity of his cricket career, and indeed his political career—although he would never have seen himself as having a political career, but really he did—provides a really clear window into South African society.

Just as an index of how badly needed this book was, I logged on to CricketArchive just this morning to look him up. Their entry for “Krom Hendricks” describes another player entirely—one of his contemporaries. I really should write to them and get that fixed.

Yes! Just on that point, I first wrote about Hendricks—he first came to my attention—in 1992. I thought at that stage, with the anniversary of the first-ever South African visit to England (1894) coming up, that it might be interesting to have a look at that tour. And, of course, once you start reading about that, Hendricks jumps out at you. What I discovered was that there were a number of reports about Hendricks, but they all had different views on who he was. There were several Hendrickses in the Malay match. There was “A. Hendricks,” who opened the bowling with him—

It’s Armien Hendricks whom they confused on the website for Krom.

The reason they confuse him is that Armien Hedricks in that Malay match was actually the guy who took the wickets. He took four-fer, whereas Krom Hendricks took one for 29, so people automatically assumed it must have been Armien. In Rowland Bowen’s book on cricket, which came out in 1969 or 1970, and has the first significant mention of him in a proper cricketing history, he talks about “T. Hendricks,” who also played in that game, but he was a batsman! So there’s been a lot of confusion. The first article I did, in 1992, was called “The Real Mr Hendricks,” and it was about who this guy was. That was the first thing that motivated me: to establish what I could about this clearly extremely important and significant figure in early South African cricket. And just to nail down who he was took us a long time.

Once we nailed down the fact that it was Henry Hendricks, it was then a matter of trying to find out who he was—find his birth certificate, and so on—and we finally did that. We established the family background. It was a difficult process. But we were able at least to provide the human side to the cricket, because that human side—who he was—is so fundamental to the cricketing side. In a lot of cases you can separate those things. You can write cricketing biographies which are about the cricket. But in Hendricks’s case it’s really all about him.

Hendricks, of course, wasn’t the only victim of the Hendricks tragedy. You—and of course by “you” I intend a second-person plural, including your co-author Jonty Winch—write very movingly of the fate of Hendricks’s champion, one Harry Cadwallader. My friend and colleague Aslam Khota has suggested to me that he’d make a fascinating supporting character in any movie about this saga.

Yes, he would! Jonty’s done quite a lot of work on two journalists who were really significant in this period. One was Harry Cadwallader, who was the first secretary of the South African Cricket Association (SACA), in 1890, and took on Hendricks’s case. He was Hendrix’s most significant supporter leading up to the 1894 tour, and as a result of supporting Hendricks effectively lost his job as secretary of SACA, lost his job as potential manager of the tour, and in fact died a few years later in penury.

The second journalist was a guy called Charles Finlason, who played for South Africa in 1888/89, when Aubrey Smith brought his first lot of tourists over. Finlason and Cadwallader were bitter rivals. Both worked in Kimberley, but for different papers. In fact, Finlason played for South Africa while he was a journalist—while he was writing about it—which created a massive controversy during the 1888/89 tour. Cadwallader was his opponent in that controversy.

Cadwallader also set up SACA. He knew that it was necessary to try and bring the various parts of South Africa together. South Africa was at the time a number of different countries. There was the Cape, which was a colony; the Southern Republic of the Transvaal, which was an independent country, under Paul Kruger; the Free State was independent as well; Natal, too, was a separate colony; and so on. And there was massive rivalry both across the subcontinent and also within the Cape, between Kimberley, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. And so a lot of the struggles in the cricket world are essentially economic and political struggles as well.

Cadwallader and Finlason were very much involved in that process, taking different sides. Finlason was a South African, reflecting South African interests—a “South Africa First” character: “These guys coming over from Britain know nothing about Africa,” and so on. Cadwallader a was more of a Brit, more on the imperial side. Rhodes, of course, found itself on the South African side in the end. The politics of all of that provide a really fascinating background to all of this.

But Cadwallader himself (to get at last to your question!) was an extremely interesting character. He clearly had a great deal of empathy for what Hendricks was going through. Cadwallader’s mistake was that he fell in the middle: If, as seems likely, he was involved in the discussions over Hendricks and the “baggageman” compromise, he would almost certainly have lost Hendricks’s sympathy, having gone over his head, having not negotiated it properly with him.

At the same time his support for Hendricks meant that he got hammered by people like AB Tancred, who at the time was described as the “WG Grace of South Africa.” He was the Test opening batsman, and a Transvaal lawyer. He had a great deal of engagement in this, and was very dismissive of Hendricks, calling him “impudent” and whatever. So what happened to Cadwallader was simply that he fell in the middle.

But yes, in terms of a film, he’d be a delightful counterpoint to Hendricks’s particular struggle, because he’s got his own particular struggle. But they’re all within the same political environment.

A word in conclusion about the project of which Too Black to Wear Whites forms a part. I think even the most casual reader of cricket literature will have noticed in recent years the wealth of new material we’re getting on South Africa’s cricket history—the extraordinary efforts of the likes of Andre Odendaal and Krish Reddy and Bruce Murray and Ashwin Desai to widen the lens beyond the traditional white-establishment game. I wasn’t aware, before I read the acknowledgements section of your book, that this was an organised, collaborative effort. I’d love to know more about the genesis of the project and how you feel it’s progressing.

Well, I think “organised” is maybe a little bit strong, but certainly it’s been a project which was developed and is building very much on the work of Andre Odendaal and Ashwin Desai and so on. The collaborative bit has been partly with Andre Odendaal, who’s obviously just finished volume two of his history of South African cricket, but also a collaboration that we developed partly in South Africa, partly in the UK, which has kind of worked in parallel to Andre’s collaborative project, which is itself the history the history of cricket. I can’t remember exactly how far he’s got in Divided Country, but I think it’s around the Sixties.

The collaborative project that we were working on was to develop a series of essays—and it’s a slightly more academic approach—around the genesis of the relationship between sport and politics in South Africa. It’s less a history of the cricket, more a history of the way in which the relationship between cricket and politics has been fundamental to the development of South African society and the South African state. There have been a number of people involved in that particular collaboration: Jonty and I, of course, and others such as Bernard Hall, Dale Slater and Jeff Levitt. We’ve published two volumes so far: one called Empire and Cricket, which was published by Unisa in 2010 or 2009, and a second volume which was published a couple of years ago, called Cricket and Society in South Africa, which takes us up to about 1970 We’ve brought together a number of scholars in the area and tried to produce this history: people like Raf Nicholson, who’s written on women women’s cricket in South Africa and the D’Oliveira issue; Patrick Ferriday, who’s written stuff on it, too; and so on. We’ve tried essentially to provide a transformationist history, some background and context to what the history was about. I did some stuff, for example, in the second volume on Frank Roro and black cricket on the rand and the mines, and the relationship between labor on the mines, strike action and cricket. It’s quite a it’s quite an interesting and contradictory process around this question of migrant labor and stable workforces and the significance of cricket in that environment.

But it started off with an essential idea—and it really comes from Hendricks: Here we have somebody who is clearly an outstanding cricketer, and yet he’s deprived of opportunities for political reasons. It’s remarkable just how close the political environment is to the cricketing environment. The political leadership and the cricketing leadership are essentially the same thing. William Milton is the most obvious example, being right-hand man to Rhodes, the governor of Southern Rhodesia, and also captain and selector of the South African cricket team, essentially running the whole operation. Of course he’s not the only one. There lots of people in that situation, and if you go to the governors of Southern Rhodesia, for example, they’ve all played cricket, and they’ve all been involved in the Western Province Cricket Board, and they’ve all been guys who’ve said no to Hendricks. So there’s a really very close relationship there.

On the other side, when you look at the African leadership, coming out of Lovedale and the mission schools, all of those guys are also politicians: Bud-M’Belle and Sol Plaatje in Kimberly, and the guys in Cape Town, and so on. They’re the people who are involved in the origins of the ANC—what was initially called the South African Native National Congress. They were behind the political missions to the UK in the 1900s, when the UK was basically selling them down the river to allow the Union of South Africa to be formed on a racially-based franchise, with the exception of the Cape.

So the people who play cricket and who run cricket are very closely connected in these stages to the people who run politics, and this just tends to be the case all the way through. That’s what that project was about: to chart that relationship, to see how it was established and maintained.

And where the project goes from here: in principle, of course, we we’re looking at the possibility of doing a post-1970 volume, taking us to the beginning of the end of isolation. It becomes much more difficult when you get closer to the current moment, so I’m not quite sure how that will go, but there’s a discussion about us doing that. It’s meant to be a kind of a parallel project to what Andre is doing with his History of South African Cricket Retold. The goal is to provide a context to that very necessary cricket history.

I’m working myself on a book at the moment about the politics behind the English cricket tours to South Africa, and the role played by the MCC between 1889 and 1964, what’s going on behind the scenes, and what’s going on in the cricket as well. I’m trying to draw out all of those strands and essentially provide a transformational history of South African cricket.

So I’ll have to wait a little longer for your biography of Frank Roro. He’s the other major figure in this era of whom I’m desperate to read a full length treatment.

I’d love to do it. I think we’d both be keen to do this. It was a bit like Hendricks. The literature which allows you to pin down anything other than a very vague bio of him is very hard to obtain. There’s just almost nothing. Nothing that tells you where he came from and who he was, and why he was so good. But he clearly was. That whole area—the mission-school background, the Kimberley mine labour, the Rand mine operations—is really critical, I think. Somebody needs to work on that. We don’t know nearly enough.

Right. Well, thank you, Richard. That’s more than enough to fill a tea interval. I’m sure readers will be very grateful.

Yeah, it’s a pleasure, Rodney. It’s great to talk to you. Thanks very much.



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Friday, September 11, 2020

Sport, Greed and Betrayal: an Interview with Graham Joffe

The former CNN International Correspondent speaks to CricketWeb about his new book and the challenges of investigative sports journalism in the Twenty-First Century

Cricket Web: I suppose I should start with my earliest memories of you, which are of groaning every morning at your “Stupid Sports Joke of the Day” on FM radio. You were a pioneer of the sort of cringe comedy that made Ricky Gervais and Steve Carrell their fortunes. So I’m delighted to see that Sport: Greed & Betrayal is chock-full of dad jokes. On successive pages:

  • “Looks like the hockey girls got the short end of the stick!” – p. 48
  • “The president of SASCOC, Mr Gideon Sam is a trustee of the Thoroughbred Horse Racing Trust. But believe you me, there’s no ‘horsing’ around when it comes to the salaries of some SASCOC officials.” – p. 47

I had this history very much in mind when I reached the chapter in which you recount a meeting with George Rautenbach, a major figure in what you call “the South African Sports Mafia.” He asks you at one at one point, “What happened to the old Joffers everyone used to love?” Although he posed it for cynical, gaslighting reasons, this seems to me a very good question. The transition from “Joffers my Boy” to “Graeme Joffe, Muck-Raker,” is a pretty radical one. Perhaps you’d care to tell us how it about?

Graeme Joffe: Good question. And it’s true. I really was the happy-go-lucky “Joffers” on 94.7. Jeremy Mansfield created that persona for me; he helped us all to create our own on-air personas. And “Joffers My Boy” became kind of a household name in South Africa—the guy who did the sports bulletins and did the terrible sports joke at 08:30 every morning. And yeah, I loved it. I used to build it up, to make as though every day’s joke was the best joke ever. I guess people used to laugh more at me laughing than at the joke itself, which was always terrible. I don’t think there was ever a good one.

But you know, I was always a sports journalist first, having worked at CNN for seven years as an international sports anchor. Journalism was my passion, and I was never going to be a comedian; that’s for sure. It was purely by default that I got into investigative sports journalism. It came about in 2012. I had gone out on my own, and was doing my own show called Sports Fire on Radio Today, and at about that time there was a huge controversy between the Lions and the EP Kings, two South African rugby franchises: Who was going to be promoted to, and who would be relegated from, the Super Rugby league? SA Rugby (SARU) had done them both a huge disservice, because there was no promotion/relegation system.

And there were some very strange media coming out of Cape Town. Highbury Safika Media (HSM)—Mark Keohane and his buddies, through SA Rugby magazine—were pushing the agenda of the EP Kings, and I couldn’t understand it: How could you want the Kings to get into Super Rugby when they weren’t even in the top tier of the Currie Cup, South Africa’s domestic league? On poking around a little, I discovered that Keohane was an unaccredited agent for Luke Watson, the Kings captain. If the Kings got into Super Rugby, Luke Watson would make more money, and Mark Keohane would make more money. Ha!

He did not divulge his conflict of interest to the rugby public, but he pushed the agenda via his media empire. It was just extraordinary that he could be doing this kind of stuff under the guise of journalism. No objectivity whatsoever. I asked him what was going on. He (and his cronies) responded by trying to blackmail me on Twitter: “Oi, Joffers! Tell everyone why you left CNN…” They were just diverting from the real issue, of course.

Then I dug a little bit deeper, and found out that Keohane was also the spokesperson for the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC), and that HSM was getting paid millions for PR work—in consequence of a so-called “tender”. In fact, the contract had never gone to tender; it had just been handed to them. SASCOC President Gideon Sam lied about this. Keohane lied about it. I had them to rights. And it all developed from there. It turned into a bit of a soap opera. People started going, “Joffers, this is unbelievable! Finally there’s someone who wants to stand up and speak out for the athletes and what’s going on in South African sport.” As you know, there’s little to no culture of investigative sports journalism in South Africa, sadly.

So I started out as this lone crusader, and it became a pure addiction. I loved it. I loved the digging, the hunt. It changes your whole life. It turns your life upside down. There is the danger of being consumed by negativity, of course, but I couldn’t sit on the information. Coaches, administrators, athletes—anyone who had been treated unfairly or who knew something—were trusting me to put that information forward. I had to make sure that it got out there, and I carried on reporting without fear or favour. It snowballed from there.

HSM is a fascinating entity: a PR machine masquerading as independent journalists. Could you spill a bit more tea on Keohane and his other conflicts of interest? He used to pose as something of a whistleblower himself. I have a vague memory—way back in the early-to-mid-2000s—of his being held up as a brave voice in the wilderness, much as you are today.

Exactly. When it suited him, for his personal agenda and his personal gain, he loved that kind of thing. It’s all about him. It started with “Kamp Staaldraad,” that infamous boot camp set up for the South African national rugby team ahead of the 2003 World Cup. He made as though he was the big whistleblower there, when in fact it was a guy called Dale McDermott who really put his neck on the line. I feel there’s no place for these kinds of guys in South African sports journalism. It’s incredible how he’s infiltrated the systems. HSM has a lot to answer for.

I remember when I first became aware of them. It would have been the early 2000s, when two major South African cricket magazines hit the shelves almost simultaneously. There was The Wisden Cricketer, and there was SA Cricket magazine. I think it speaks rather poorly of the South African reading public that the latter won out. The thing is barely readable: twenty pages of advertisements, fifteen of full-page photographs; and what little prose there is tends to be a near-paraphrase of the work of others. The only guy worth reading on their staff was Tom Eaton, who seems since his days on The Mail & Guardian to have made a career of elevating the trash around him. He does that for Business Day now.

True. On that point, by the way—SA Rugby and SA Cricket—it’s a very interesting thing. How’d they even came to own SA Rugby, which is typically a SARU brand? There are no royalties paid over to SARU—or are there? That strikes me as an important question. I never got any answers when I inquired into it. But it is suggestive that they were using SARU sponsors in the magazine…

I guess it all works out. One hand washes the other. You’re never going to criticise the system when you’re so entangled with it. Just the other day we saw Keohane coming out with this beautiful glossy piece about how incredible, how noble, how brilliant Mark Alexander and Jurie Roux (Deputy President and CEO respectively) are at SARU…

I know that SA Cricket, too, has a cosy relationship with the powers that be. One even finds the likes of JP Duminy and other Proteas players sitting on their editorial board.

HSM_129

Excerpt from Issue 129 of SACricket Magazine, showing JP Duminy on the editorial board at HSM 

How can you cover these guys objectively and critically if they’re on your team?

Ryan Vrede, Keohane’s lapdog, is now the editor of SA Cricket. He, together with Keohane, was instrumental in creating an anonymous website on a server in Panama to defame and discredit me. I’d been exposing them week after week, with all their lies and all their dirt, so what’s the best thing to do? Try to discredit Graham Joffe. They tried everything. I mean, to be honest, I just … [sighs] … I find them to be disgusting individuals.

And you’re satisfied at this point that Vrede is the man behind that website?

Two forensic linguists arrived independently at that conclusion: Colin Michell from the Faculty of General Education Programme at the Fujairah Women’s College, and Isabel Picornell, PhD, CFE, from QED Limited. I had already been told by insiders at HSM that Vrede was one of the authors. But to get it confirmed by professionals is always nice—as I did with any other story or lead. I always made sure that my source wasn’t just a disgruntled individual. I always backed my intelligence up with two or three others, just to make sure that the facts were correct.

Let’s move on to a question you’ve probably been asked a million times (and therefore presumably answered a million times), but maybe you’d oblige us once more: the story of your battle with SASCOC and your exile from South Africa.

Sure. The SASCOC stuff started in about 2012, when I figured out that Keohane was the spokesperson, and that HSM had landed this multi-million-Rand contract without its ever having gone to tender. I reported this, and everything started to explode from there. I had athletes, coaches and administrators confiding in me, telling me about what was going on. Within SASCOC itself I had whistleblowers—they used aliases, of course—and I used to read the emails from athletes in particular, and almost have tears rolling down my face, thinking, How can this be happening to South Africa’s top athletes?

SASCOC was just filthy with corruption. Sam Ramsamy, who is the pioneer of the Olympic movement in South Africa, was still running the roost. He’d been good friends for a long time with Tubby Reddy, the CEO, who was now running SASCOC like his own private business. No-one could touch him. Gideon Sam, the president, became a puppet. Reddy and the CFO, Vinesh Maharaj, were doing as they pleased with the resources. SASCOC is the biggest beneficiary of National Lottery funding; no athlete in South Africa should ever be short of funds. But it’s just amazing, in the last ten years, how many sporting federations have gone bankrupt, and how many athletes have had to pay their own way to represent their country.

I mean, how can you transform South African sport in these conditions? How does an athlete from the rural areas or township become a top South African sportsperson if he or she is picked not on merit, but only because he or she has the needful financial resources. I’m not talking about the major three or four sporting federations, like soccer, cricket and rugby—they have sponsors—but smaller federations like swimming, track and field, and cycling, where the athletes have to pay their own way even for kit. If you’ve got to pay R30,000 out of your own pocket to represent South Africa at an international meet, how is it possible to transform the sport and get more people involved? It’s sickening.

Again, the money was there. The problem was that a big percentage of the funding that SASCOC got from the Lottery was used to enrich themselves: business-travel vacations, dinners, birthday parties—it was frightening what was going on.

What’s extraordinary is how blatantly wrong it is. At one point you cite a provision in the Olympic Charter which stipulates, quite clearly, that bodies like SASCOC aren’t allowed to pay salaries to their administrators:

This you juxtapose with a screenshot of a page from SASCOC’s accounts. And under the heading “Salaries,” you see all these administrators getting paid six-figure fees:

Yes. In direct contravention of the IOC charter. They say, “No! No! No! They’re not they’re not ‘salaries.’ They’re ‘remuneration for travel’ and stuff like that.” But some of the expenses numbers are identical, so the person who travels from Jo’burg or Cape Town—you mean to tell me that they’ve had the exactly the same expenses, to the cent? The problem is that you’ve got more dictators involved in South African sport than leaders. These guys have prioritised self-enrichment ahead of the athletes. They’re these big-boys clubs that you just can’t get out of power. They stay there as long as they can, until there’s a fallout over money. No honour among thieves.

Tubby Reddy and Vinesh Maharaj were eventually fired from the organisation three or four years ago, but it was incredible the amount of graft they got done before their ouster. Tenders—that’s the easiest way for people to get money out of these organisations. Kind of like Fikile Mbalula did with the R70-million SA Sports Awards: His friends got the tenders. It’s laughable what goes on.

Indeed it is! From a comedy point of view, the Sports Awards are worth every cent…

Oh my god, you’re so right! I used to cringe. Of course, when I started in investigative journalism, I instantly became persona non grata at these evenings. It was quite sad. I used to do the Lions cricket dinners, the Lions rugby dinners, etc. And I did them for nothing, because I just loved it, and I felt it was a good way of giving back. But then I got backlisted. No-one wants to be seen to be close to a whistleblower, especially not in South African sport. But it didn’t matter. I was addicted. I was going to finish the job that I had started, and I didn’t care. I was going to report without fear or favour. As a journalist, you’ve got to have your ethics and integrity. It was as simple as that.

But it got deep, you know. SASCOC sued me for defamation, for R21.1 million, in my personal capacity. I was writing for News24 and The Citizen at the time, but they sued me in my personal capacity.

It should be said that News24 is a subsidiary of Naspers, one of the biggest media organisations in the world, with some of the deepest pockets. A minor disgrace—well, a major disgrace actually—that they didn’t come to your aid, given that they were publishing the supposedly defamatory material…

Well, it was all conflicted. The driving force behind the lawsuit was Keohane. He used to fly to Jo’burg and meet with a top media lawyer at Webber Wentzel. It’s really so sad: Dario Milo, who ostensibly fights for media freedom, was now representing SASCOC against a journalist. How that happened I still, to this day, don’t know

So they sued me for R21.1 million. Naspers said they wouldn’t help me because I wasn’t a full-time employee. It didn’t bother me, to be honest. But obviously SASCOC wanted to bully me, to cripple me financially, and to discredit me, for the purpose of scaring off all other sports journalists: “Look what we’ve done to Graeme Joffe. This will happen to you if you start digging.” It sent out a message to a lot of people.

It was such a malicious lawsuit. It was absolutely pathetic. It hung over my head for four years, which really was so unfair.

Just as an example of the sort of thing they regarded as “defamatory,” you sent out a tweet on March 24, 2013: “Great news re: @Mugg_and_Bean sponsorship of SA men’s hockey. Just hope SASCOC don’t (get) their ‘grubby/tubby’ paws on any of the money.” The damages claimed on that one alone were R500,000. To be defaming someone, of course, you have to be making a factually incorrect claim about them. You can’t defame someone with a “hope.” I, for example, may “hope” that my next-door neighbour doesn’t commit murder. This seems a reasonable hope to have.

It made legal history. I was the first person in South Africa ever to be sued for a tweet. They’re a sick bunch, and they’re well protected at government level. A lot of these presidents and CEOs have political ambitions, or are linked to government. They become untouchables. There’s also the auditors, who turn a blind eye to a lot of the corruption. Eventually they, too, got sick and tired of me. They didn’t want to answer my questions. South African sport is in the grips of something systemic: a cancer of corruption, nepotism and maladministration. It’s ugly.

Lest anyone think that the behaviour you’ve described isn’t bad enough to warrant your description of these people as the “South African Sports Mafia,” perhaps you’d like to tell us about how you were hounded out of the country.

Well, there was no federation that I wasn’t going to dig into if I got information. It started with the Olympic committee, and then it just filtered down into the various federations. What happens is that, right at the top, you’ve got the Department of Sports and Recreation, which is corrupt; then a little lower down you’ve got SASCO, which is corrupt; and, you know, if No. 1’s corrupt, it allows everybody underneath to think that they’re entitled to do the same. And there’s no watchdog.

Anyway, I carried on digging and digging until things started getting very ugly for me. George Rautenbach from Megapro—you mentioned him earlier—paid a company to follow me and illegally to tap my phone. (I’ve got the invoices for this, which are also in the book.) And I started getting some strange phone calls. I started getting visits at my apartment in Morningside. And HSM created that anonymous website on a server in Panama. And I just—I started feeling very uncomfortable in Johannesburg. My health was starting to get away from me. I didn’t want to go out at night. I was looking over my shoulder the whole time. And so I decided at the end of 2014, just to get away from the heat, to move back to Grahamstown—

Just as I was leaving Grahamstown, incidentally. We might have bumped into each other about six years ago with a bit more luck!

I’m sorry I missed you! What a great place! Great times.

But yeah, what happened was this: On April 1, 2015, I got a call from a guy called Clem de Santos, who was involved in South African Equestrian. “Graeme,” he said, “we’ve got some big, big stuff with South African Equestrian, and would like to come and see you.”

“Look, guys,” I said, “I’ve got a lot of information on Equestrian already. Send me the information by email, because I’m now living in Grahamstown. It doesn’t make sense for you to come and see me from Jo’burg.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

About 15 minutes later he calls again: “We’re flying in. We’re coming in our private jet. We’re going to land at about three o’clock at the Grahamstown Air Force Base.”

This sounded ridiculous. I thought I was in a movie. It was just such a bizarre feeling. There was no-one else around, and there I was, standing in this middle of this airfield, and I’m looking at the date on my watch: April 1. I’m thinking, Graeme, you fool. There’s no one coming to visit you.

People need to appreciate how isolated Grahamstown is. I lived there about half a decade, and I don’t think I saw any air traffic in all that time.

That’s so funny, because that same night I went into the bar at the Albany. The guys were saying, “Did you hear that jet coming over the town?”

I was like, “Boys they came to see me!”

Anyway, there were three guys that met me, and they spoke to me for about an hour about the corruption in South African Equestrian. Usual story: People were enriching themselves, and the athletes were being charged ridiculous sums to enter the competitions, because someone had the monopoly on the entry systems. Lottery funding was being abused. A whole wide range of stuff. I was taking my notes.

“Close your laptop. We now want to talk about rhino poaching.”

“Ugh,” I said. “Guys, hold on. No, no, no. You’re going to get me killed. I’ve got a small digital publication, for sport only, and now you want me to get involved in—you want me to investigate and expose—a rhino-poaching syndicate which is somehow linked to South African Equestrian? Come now.”

Needless to say, the stuff was mind-blowing, but I said, “Look, guys. The rhino poaching is out of my league, but I’m only too happy to do the equestrian, because I’ve got a lot of other information which corroborates the stuff that you’re giving me.”

“Alright. You expose the corruption in equestrian, and we’ll help you in return. We’ve got a private investigator on our books. He’s looking into the rhino poaching, and he’s going to help you with the problems you’ve been having with Rautenbach and co.”

Anyway, they kept their word. Four days later I got a call from a private investigator called Theo Bronkhorst in Bloemfontein, who had a look at my phone. He said, “Look, Graeme. Your phone’s got four diversions.” Four different people, in other words, were listening to my calls.

The thing is, I knew it already. I knew my phone was being tapped. I had opened a criminal case with the Sandton Police Station before I left Johannesburg. But because I was implicating the Sports Ministry and SASCOC, the police just laughed it off. It got swept under the carpet. MTN, my service provider, wouldn’t help me either. No-one was prepared to help. I wrote to the South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) to try and get some help from them. No help whatsoever.

But this private investigator was helping me—and I could see that he was helping, because he had put a block on my phone, and every day afterwards a message would pop up on my screen about “an irregular or illegal attempt to access your device.” Someone was trying to re-tap the phone. They’d hacked into my emails. They knew everything that I was doing. My day-to-day movements had been put on that anonymous website.

Anyway, it was a Friday night, about ten o’clock. I was in my apartment in Grahamstown. I think it was April 15. Suddenly I get a call from Tim Marsland, one of the equestrian guys who’d come in on the jet. He was paying the private investigator. “Graeme,” he said, “get out of your condo! They’re coming to get you this weekend!” He told me the private investigator had “intercepted an immediate threat to your safety.”

I drove to a friend’s house in Port Alfred. Obviously never slept that night. Next morning called Tim Marsland. What should I do?

“Come back to Jo’burg. Let’s identify the threat before you do anything crazy.”

I hardly knew the guy, but I didn’t know what else to do, so I took his word, and I’ll never forget arriving at Jo’burg International Airport. He meets me there. We go down to his car in the basement. It’s got tinted windows. I can see he’s packing a gun. He sees that I can see. He says to me, “How do you know I’m not the bad guy?”

What a thing to say.

I stayed at his place for about two or three days in the south of Jo’burg. I couldn’t do anything. I was lost. I asked him, “What is the private investigator saying?”

“Well, he’s diverted your phone to Rustenburg, but they’re still looking for you.”

He wouldn’t tell me who was looking for me. Supposedly it had to do with my big exposure about lottery funding or whatever. “Look,” I said. “What should I do? Should I go to the US? My sister lives over there, and I’ve told her that I may need to get out pretty soon.”

Eventually he said, “Yeah, the private investigator thinks it’s still very hot for you. It’s probably a good idea to get out of the kitchen and go to the US.”

I got my sister to book me a ticket from the US, so they couldn’t trace me in SA, and flew out on a ten-year tourist visa to Cincinnati with a suitcase and a laptop, and applied for political asylum. To this day I’m still not sure who was behind the threat. Since publication of my book, in fact, I have reason to believe that I was double-crossed by the private investigator. I’ve since found out that he’s a proper scam artist. I’ve seen Facebook pages [ask Joffers for a link to these] on which people testify as to just how bad he is, how he’s taken their money. And Tim Marsland? The guy who was “helping” me? The guy who was paying for the private investigator? He’s currently sitting in jail. He’s been there about ten months, awaiting extradition to Botswana for his alleged involvement in a massive fraud scandal.

Oh my goodness. And these are the people you were getting help from!

Beautiful, isn’t it? I used to think I was a good judge of character, but when you become desperate … I don’t know. I didn’t know where to turn. And Tim, you know, was very good to me. I stayed with him and his wife for a few days in their house in the south of Jo’burg, and I really believed the guy was helping me.

You quote long stretches of your exchanges with Marsland—via WhatsApp, I think—in your initial months in Cincinnati. I was thinking, even as I read them, How do I know anything Marsland’s telling you is true? All that stuff about “pending arrests” which were never made, the inside track he claimed to have with the police… Do you now suspect that all that was nonsense?

Yes. 100 per cent. I think now it was … I mean, some of it may be true, but to be honest, for the most part I think it was BS. The fact is, he tried to get me to come back. He said me, “Graeme, things are getting hot, but the police want you to come back to give your testimony, because arrests are imminent. The private investigator will help you with his private security service and bodyguards and stuff like that.”

“Arrests of whom?” I would ask. It felt like a set-up.

He seemed to be claiming to know far more than he possibly could about the police’s thinking.

Correct. And to this day I don’t know what he was expecting me to do with those WhatsApp messages. Eventually I gave up: “Tim, this stuff just sounds ridiculous. You guys have been promising me arrests for how long now? Nothing’s ever happened.” And then the private investigator supposedly got threatened, too, and had to put his wife and daughter in a safe house or protective care. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. I kept following up with the police as well. Basically the SA Police just wrote off the case. It was all swept under the carpet.

At this time and place I do believe that I was double crossed, that someone paid the private investigator or Tim Marsland to get me out the country. Get me out the country, so that I’d stop my digital publication, so that I wouldn’t have access to the information, so that I wouldn’t be able to testify at the SASCOC Commission of Inquiry. Mark Alexander, president of SARU and SASCOC board member, has filed a criminal-defamation suit against me, so that as soon as I land in Johannesburg, I’ll be arrested. He knows that I have the dirt on him and how corrupt he is.

It’s just—it’s crazy that no-one’s prepared to dig any further or actually to run with the story. I guess a lot of sports journalists turned on me as well.

Well, yeah. That was going to be my next question: Did you get much solidarity from your peers?

Nothing. Nothing. There were two or three guys who said, “Jeez, Graeme. Great stuff. Really support what you’re doing.” Robert Marawa has always been a really solid journalist who asks the tough questions. He’s not scared to back down from asking any question. But for the most part…

Some of these sports journalists are literally on the payroll of the sporting federations. HSM isn’t an isolated case. Others get free trips and free dinners. But a lot of them are just fans. They’re fans before they’re journalists. They become too friendly with the people they’re covering. If you’re having a braai with a South African cricketer or administrator at his house, are you going to expose him for anything bad he might be doing? The same thing happened with Oscar Pistorius. How many journalists became huge fans of Oscar, and then couldn’t report the truth of what was happening in his life? I mean there were even one or two who would brag about the fact that they were drinking with him before his eighteenth birthday!

It’s become fashionable in recent years to write of Oscar that all the warning signs were there. But I believe you were among the first to blow the whistle in advance of that horrible night.

I’m not sure if I really blew the whistle ahead of time, but…

“Blowing the whistle” is probably the wrong way to put it, but it’s certainly true that you weren’t on board with the uncritical praise of him. When he behaved in a dubious way after losing one of his finals, you were pretty critical. I think you said, publicly, even before things came to a head, that he needed help.

Ah, yes. I had in mind that time he got drunk driving a boat and crashed into a pier. I pointed out that he could have killed people. He almost killed himself! He had to have facial reconstructive surgery. Then that gun goes off in Tashas restaurant. Then he storms out of an interview with the BBC when they asked him tough questions. Then he blows up when he loses in the Paralympics. He had a short fuse. Fame and fortune changed him. I liken it a lot to the OJ Simpson case. There were stories that were developing underneath—there was something boiling—and yet no-one was reporting about what was going on. I heard about parties that Oscar used to go to where recreational drugs were freely available and stuff, and there were journalists who knew about it. A lot of these things I didn’t know about, because I wasn’t around at that time. I like to keep my distance from the athletes, as much I’m friendly and have mutual respect with a lot of them. But others were closer. Others knew.

South African sports journalism is in a very poor place. The majority of sports journalists are fans before they’re journalists.

Ironically, you started as a fan. It was your outrage, as a Lions supporter, at how they were being treated that first led you along this path.

True, but I remember one of the first rugby columns that I wrote, exposing non-existent promotion/relegation system, and I said right up front, “I’m a die-hard Lions fan.” I put it out there right up front. Compare that to Keohane. The fact that you’ve got an accredited agent pushing one agenda and being a journalist at the same time—I mean, right up front he should just have said, “I’m Luke Watson’s unaccredited agent, and this is my story,” so that people know exactly where it’s coming from.

The sad part is that the more of this work I did, the less and less of a fan I became. I just couldn’t believe what was going on in the systems in South African sport.

You say you lost your patriotism as well.

Correct. I lost my patriotism. No-one could understand that. Up until probably about 2010/11, it mattered to me, but after that it didn’t really, because when South Africa were winning or doing well, it only papered over the cracks. For a month or two there would be euphoria. Everybody would be happy, as if there were no corruption to worry about, no maladministration, no nepotism. But it never goes away.

 

Part two of this interview will be posted shortly.



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