Chris Dube

CHRIS DUBE

Just as we started to make significant noise about how little we get to see our black brethren in the greens of the cricket team, we are hit with a bomb!

Lonwabo Tsotsobe is under the law spotlight for influencing results of the great game.

Lefty allegedly threw some of those highly paying Ram Slam games. How they can throw games that end after only 20 overs boggles the mind but lo and behold it has allegedly been done. A ban has already been thrown at the one called Bodi.

However, we only raise our eyebrows and voices when it is a black man that is being accused. Now that we want to tell them where to get off about giving all our erstwhile black cricketers so little game time, they come up with this match-fixing story!

Then we hear spinner Aaron Phangiso is being investigated for illegal throwing of the cricket ball. He’s been throwing the same way for the past three years.

These bowling prefects did not see that he was chucking and not bowling? The lad has taken enough wickets to fill a 1-ton bakkie and only now he gets reported?

The rat I smell is longer than a T20 match. The T20 World Cup is upon us and these two very good bowlers will not get a chance to run up and hit a few more wickets. Illegally influencing the result of a match and illegally bowling a ball are frowned upon in the gentlemen’s game.

I know way too little to be able to shout from the rooftops that the boys are totally innocent of these unholy acts but I will say that the timing of the allegations really stinks. Just before we go and give England another hot T20 klaap, we have to be defending our players. Black players nogal.

The same players who are not getting as much time as their white counterparts. We seem to be fed with a certain number of black players at specific times in the national team. When did we have five black players, I mean black, not Coloured or Indian, all striding onto a cricket field as part of the first XI? When?

We have had more than five black players in the Proteas, have we not? How many active black Protea players are doing positive things in the local game right now? Why are they not in the team? Is it really selection on merit? How many off-form players are still featuring in the national team? Why are they rested? Black players get tired after one test series?

A player takes 13 wickets and is promptly rested. I mean, if that player is not the most pumped up squad member, with enough momentum to bowl the entire 50 overs then my surname is not Dube!

Maybe we just need more education about this game. Ever heard in football about a coach gladly announcing that he’s resting the man who scored five goals in the previous game? The coach would be tossed out on his backside before he even finishes that sentence!

There is probably a good explanation as to why these boys seem to yoyo in and out of Protea games. Thing is, I don’t really want to hear. I want to see black players hitting those sixes, bowling those yokers and flying around in the field catching and that, as they say, is that. Feedback chris.dube@premier-logistics.co.za