CSA misses mark with mace tour as domestic season starts in secret

Cricket South Africa (CSA) missed an enormous opportunity to boost interest in the start of the 2025/2026 season by not aligning it with the Test Mace Trophy tour that ends in Cape Town on Friday. 

Three months after Lord’s, it feels a bit lame that players are still taking open-top bus rides to a few schools and cricket grounds where they were greeted by enthusiastic children. 

Meanwhile, the domestic season started on Thursday with three Division One matches in the CSA Four-Day series in Gqeberha, Paarl and Potchefstroom.

Some of the World Test Championship winning Proteas were in Gqeberha on Thursday as part of the trophy tour, but CSA chose Grey High School as a venue for a panel discussion involving Temba Bavuma, Aiden Markram, Kagiso Rabada and one of the school’s alumni, Tristan Stubbs. 

Five minutes from where they were, the Warriors were facing Western Province at St George’s Park.

Players such as Jordan Hermann, Matthew Breetzke, Sinethemba Qeshile, Dane Patterson (who was part of the WTC final squad) and Beuran Hendricks were in action — and while interaction with the youth is to be encouraged, growing awareness of a domestic game badly in need of better marketing would have been more valuable. 

Instead of one school, CSA, through Eastern Province Cricket, could have encouraged and assisted more schools from the region to go to St George’s Park, where children could have viewed the Test Mace, obtained autographs and photos and in between watched a little bit of domestic cricket, thereby raising awareness. 

It’s the same for Cape Town on Friday, where an open-top bus ride at the Grand Parade could have been replaced by a visit to Boland Park, where Boland is facing the Titans.

At CSA’s AGM last week, the organisation’s CEO Pholetsi Moseki said the lack of spectators at domestic matches was a concern for CSA and its provincial affiliates.

“There’s been a huge effort, financially and in human resources, to try to get crowds back to support domestic cricket,” he said.

“We want to see people coming back to the game. Domestic cricket is in a good space, you can see that by the number of players coming out of the system. It’s up to us and the franchises to make sure we show the public that and get them to come back to the games.

“There are resources that have been allocated by management and the board to see how we can push the numbers up annually,” he added. 

However, an easy opportunity has been missed this week.

Victory in the WTC final, the rise of Lhuan-dre Pretorius, the improvement seen from Dewald Brevis and the impact made by Codi Yusuf in Zimbabwe illustrate some of the good domestic cricket results. 

CSA social media feeds are also lacking in information. The last post on the CSA Domestic Leagues X feed is from a week ago, and on Instagram the posts from domestic teams' home pages indicating the starting XIs of some sides have been reposted.

Matches can be streamed via CSA's YouTube page, but neither the X page nor Instagram page tells the public that. 

Next season there are expected to be changes to the structure, which will add to the challenge of marketing it to the public.

With the lack of international fixtures for the men’s Proteas this summer, the domestic competitions have a load to bear.

South African cricket’s playing resources will also be tested in the absence not only of the Proteas, who tour Pakistan and India from October until late into December, but also the second and third tier of players who will be involved in the SA A team’s tour to India in November.