Warriors saga highlights South Africa's not so secret second scorecard

The Warriors have been docked five points in the wake of Cricket South Africa's men's One-Day Cup match at Kingsmead on February 16 that they won by 126 runs. Four of those points have been awarded to their well-beaten opponents, the Dolphins.

That cost the Warriors a spot in Wednesday's qualifier, which will be at Kingsmead between the Dolphins and the Titans - who would have hosted the qualifier in Centurion had the Dolphins not been awarded the four points. Wednesday's winners will meet Boland in the final in Paarl on Sunday.

Hang on. The Warriors were convincing winners over a side who were then bumped above them in the final standings? The losers, the Dolphins, were given four points for free and thus propelled into the playoffs? The Titans have been denied the advantage they earned of playing a crucial match at home?

How could this happen? Kindly suspend your disbelief at this point, because you really couldn't make it up.

If you're part of cricket in South Africa you don't have to make it up. CSA's suits do that for you. Essentially, you work with two scorecards. One is the analysis of batting and bowling that we're all familiar with.

The other is strictly South African. It doesn't count runs, wickets or any of the usual stuff. Indeed, it doesn't note whether your team wins or loses, or even if your players are any good at cricket.

This scorecard has one job: to count how many black, how many brown and how many white players are in your XI. Pertinently, it measures whether your team meets the transformation targets set by CSA, who in turn are compelled to meet government targets.

It doesn't care whether your players - all of them, black, brown and white - are happy to be part of this exercise in social engineering. It cares only that you field the requisite minimum of black, in particular, but also brown players. Whites are optional extras. Hence selectors and coaches are compelled to jump through black hoops while squaring brown circles, all the while ensuring they don't go up white ladders or down white snakes.

The Warriors failed to satisfy the tenets of the scorecard at Kingsmead on February 16, when they fielded two - rather than the stipulated three - black players. They weren't forced to do so because of injury, in which case an explanatory letter to CSA asking for permission to deviate from what are ubiquitously called "the numbers" can be written and a reprieve obtained.

No such permission was sought by the Warriors, and so the axe fell. Slowly. The Warriors' fate was communicated to them on Sunday night - 21 days after the match was played - and revealed at 10.02am on Monday, when the final official standings were released.

A note attached to the standings explained that the Eastern Capers had been punished "for a breach of clause 3.2.2 of the administrative conditions for not complying with the on-field target requirement [for senior domestic matches] of a minimum of three black African players in the starting XI".

Despite that, a story headlined "Boland reach final as Titans, Warriors [sic] in playoff" was posted on CSA's website at 9.42am on Monday. The article remained published even after CSA issued a statement at 4.30pm titled, "Warriors lose playoff spot following sanction".

The statement said the decision to take action followed "a comprehensive review and investigation" and that a monetary penalty had also been imposed. Half was due before the current financial year ends in February next year, and the rest suspended for five years. It would "only be activated if a similar breach occurs within that period". How much money was involved was not revealed.

How did we get here?

Cricket, like every other aspect of South African society, has been riven by racist inequality since the British brought the game to the country in the early 19th century. Apartheid was defeated at the ballot box in April 1994, but racism persists - and could still infect the selection of XIs. Hence the imposition of what used to be called quotas, and which remain in place as a guardrail against a return to the awful ways of the past.

Black and brown South Africans have played cricket for centuries, but because of apartheid's ongoing social and economic effects and the continued location of all but one of the country's major grounds in affluent, formerly white areas, the myth persists that the game is predominantly a pursuit of the pale.

Of course, because trying to right serious historical wrongs involves human beings rather than theories, however well-intentioned, of how to do so, matters don't always go according to plan. Or even make sense.

Like the term "target requirement" used in the note attached to the standings. A "target" is something to be striven for. A "requirement" is mandatory. A "target requirement" is at odds with itself, a contradiction in terms. Is it a target or a requirement? It cannot be both.

Neither should it be neglected that, geographically, the Warriors have access to the greatest repository of black talent in the country. Of all people, how could this happen to them?

It cannot be forgotten that they are coached by Robin Peterson, who is not white. He is also not black. He is brown. That changes everything in this moment of South Africa's journey towards a fairer society.

Under apartheid, whites artificially topped the legislative, economic and social totem pole by some distance. They were followed by brown people, mostly of Malay heritage or racially mixed background - who mostly self-identify as coloured - as well those whose ancestors came from south Asia. Blacks were firmly at the bottom, and kept there by brutal laws designed to crush every moment of their lives.

Attempts have been made since 1994 not to reverse that order but to equalise it. Those efforts are ongoing and they should continue. One reason why is that although apartheid was scrapped more than 31 years ago, only 4% of privately-owned land in South Africa belongs to blacks, who compromise more than 81.7% of the population. Consequently, calls for a better life for blacks have become more urgent and strident.

In cricket terms, this has led to ever louder questions about the lack of black players at the higher levels of the game. Similar questions used to be asked about brown players. No longer. It's as if they don't matter anymore, or are considered dishonorary whites. They are players like Peterson was before he became a coach.

And Craig Marais, who started the last of his 22 first-class matches exactly nine months after South Africa's inaugural democratic election. Marais played those games, and a dozen list A matches, on the white side of cricket's apartheid picket fence. Other brown players did, too. But that didn't make them any less brown, and thus subject to racism.

"Transformation is and was completely necessary to address past imbalances, but in 2025 it is just discriminatory and racist," Marais posted on social media on Monday in response to the Warriors debacle. "Coloured cricketers weren't white enough in the bad old days, and now they're not black enough!"

Marais asked pointedly whether South Africa "should have penalised themselves" because they dared to reach the 2024 men's T20 World Cup final with Kagiso Rabada as the lone black member of their squad.

There's anger in those words but also hurt. You can feel that above any amount of colour-coded hoop-jumping, circle-squaring and games of snakes 'n ladders. There's a lot more where that comes from South Africans of all races. We do not have the privilege of suspending our disbelief.