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The Rediff Interview / Dr Aaron (Ali) Bacher

'A good captain can, through strategic brilliance, win a game on his own'

Still on technology, would you support the earpiece Cronje sought to use during the World Cup?

No, not at all. I think that captaincy in cricket is such an important component in the game. It's not like in soccer or rugby, where the manager standing on the sidelines dictates what the players do on the field. Here in a five-day game, brilliance in captaincy is often a highlight of the play. Captaincy wins games; good captaincy lifts a team which is down. A good captain can, through strategic brilliance, win a game on his own. There have been some great captains. Mark Taylor and Mike Brearley were great captains. You can't take that away from the game.

But a counter argument could be that if you are going to send the twelfth man out with towels and drinks any time the coach wants to pass on a message to his team, you might as well have a earpiece. Or the digital watch Woolmer was talking about?

No, I don't agree. I think it will take away from one aspect of the game, the generalship of the captain. And I think we should not take that away from the game. I have seen captains win the game by brilliant strategy, tactics out on the field engineered by himself under stress. That is a vital, exciting component of the game and we cannot afford to lose that.

You head the ICC's development committee. What was your vision when you took the responsibility?

My vision was to globalise the game. To advance the game beyond the existing boundaries, because as of now, the big numbers are only because of the subcontinent. When you talk of the number of countries where cricket is high profile, where cricket has major sponsors as well as government support, you are talking of less than ten countries.

In that context, cricket is not huge. Plus we ave competition from soccer, rugby union. In South Africa they play rugby ten months of the year, so we have great competition from them. So the answer is to globalise, to take the game to new territories, new markets, get new sponsors and new audiences.

South Africa is hosting the next World Cup, in the year 2003 - how do you see that shaping?

It's a unique opportunity to lift the profile for cricket in South Africa like never before. It's a one off opportunity for our people to be part of a global cricketing event. It must go beyond cricketing people, I want government involvement, and I want people involvement. It is a wonderful opportunity to make a lot of money for the world of cricket and for South African cricket, so that our financial future is secured. It is also for the world of cricket to make a lot of money to develop the game.

To cut to a ticklish issue - would you advocate reservations in the team for coloured folks, or would you prefer that your national team is picked on merit?

It must be the best team available; you are running into serious problems if you start putting people into the international team because of their colour and not their ability.

We have some coloured players who are serious contenders for the national team and with time, that pool is going to get larger and larger. So, we are quite happy about the future. We will send a South African 'A' team to the West Indies in August-September this year, and there will be six, seven coloured players in that squad, strictly on merit.

So, we are nearly there, and it is just a matter of time. For instance, the South African Under-19 team, which went to Colombo, had six coloured players in it. And the captain was a coloured African. He was there because he was the best choice for captain of the side.

Rushdi Magiet was telling us that the South African team would never again be an all-white outfit. Care to comment?

That is the intention. And he was right in saying that.

Your own career was cut short by apartheid and isolation - does that leave you with any regrets?

Never, I think forward. If I have made mistakes, which I have, I rectify them and never look back. I go day by day.

You helped organised rebel tours during the apartheid years. Did you not at that point think of how much that would hurt the sentiments of the coloured population?

It was an accepted notion at the time that we would be isolated indefinitely, that apartheid would never go. And we felt that we needed to sustain interest in the game. We needed some form of international competition. We naively imagined that the coloureds didn't mind the tours. It was only when Gatting led his team on tour and freedom of demonstration was allowed, that we saw the anger of the coloureds and we realised what they really felt. Had we known their feelings earlier, we would have thought twice about those tours. We did not realise that it was so hurtful to the coloured people of our country.

What is your dream for South African cricket?

In the short term, to host a successful World Cup. On a longer term, for cricket to become our national sport, for the national team to carry the hopes of every South African, irrespective of his colour.

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