India and South Africa are in an oddly comparable situation as they begin a month-long tour on Sunday with a three-game T20 series. The ODI World Cup will be bittersweet for both teams. Both sides experienced troubles prior to the main tournament, but South Africa wowed Australia in a home series, and India wowed at the Asia Cup. And they made the rest of the globe look at them later during the ICC event. In the T20 series, both teams are looking for new faces to propel them forward.
Off the pitch, both countries are casting their nets in similarly varied areas in search of talent. South Africa has been social-engineering their teams with black quotas to reflect the bigger population of the country for some time, but they have come under fire for it. One of the less persuasive accusations has been that the black community is uninterested in the game. Telford Vice, a renowned South African journalist, dispels the myth.
“Claiming black South Africans aren’t keen on cricket is like arguing that Indians aren’t keen on football. Of course they are, just not as much as they like cricket. Cricket isn’t any race of South Africans’ favourite sport, but it is a major game for all race groups,” Telfor says.
“If that’s true, people watching cricket in South Africa may wonder why the crowds are so white.” Because all but one of the major grounds are located in areas that were exclusively reserved for whites until the 1990s. Those regulations are no longer in effect, and our crowds are now the most diversified in the world.”
For a long time, India’s catchment region has been diversified; this is the age of the Mofussil cricketer. With figures indicating that 54 percent of Indians will still be from the hinterland by 2040, it stands to reason that the Indian cricket board has been accessing this pool for some time. Advertisement companies that appear on television screens during live India games give a tale as well. Many B2B – Business to Business – products, such as cement and tiles, are seen vying for the attention of sellers and dealers.
Cricket in both nations is moving in this exploratory, market-widening, nation-encompassing direction, and the introduction of a cricket series couldn’t have come at a better financial time for South Africa.
South Africa T20 squad: Aiden Markram, Ottniel Baartman, Matthew Breetzke, Nandre Burger, Gerald Coetzee, Donovan Ferreira, Beuran Hendricks, Reeza Hendricks, Marco Jansen, Heinrich Klaasen, Keshav Maharaj, David Miller, Andile Phehlukwayo, Tabraiz Shamsi, Tristan Stubbs, Lizaad Williams.
India T20 squad: Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav (C), Rinku Singh, Shreyas Iyer, Ishan Kishan (wk), Jitesh Sharma (wk), Ravindra Jadeja (VC), Washington Sundar, Ravi Bishnoi, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Mohd. Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Deepak Chahar.
