Effectiveness of the cricket transformation process in increasing representation and performance of black cricketers at provincial level in South Africa

Abstract

Objectives. This study investigates the effectiveness of the crickettransformation process in firstly increasing representation of black players and secondly improving performance of black players in the South African 4-day provincial competition between the 1996/1997 and 2007/2008 cricket seasons.Methods. Cricketers were categorised as white, black African or coloured/Indian. Whenever the category ‘black’ is mentioned alone, it refers to black African and coloured/Indian. All data were obtained from www.cricinfo.com.Results. The number of white players decreased and the numberof black African and coloured/Indian players increased between the 1996/1997 and 2007/2008 seasons. White batsmen had significantlyhigher batting averages than black Africans, but were only better than coloureds/Indians in the 2001/2002 season. Coloureds/Indians had better batting averages than black Africans in all seasons except 2001/2002 and 2004/2005. There was a significant improvement in the batting averages of coloureds/Indians but not of whites and black Africans over the 12 seasons. White bowlers had significantly better bowling averages thancoloured/Indian bowlers for seasons 2002/2003, 2004/2005 and 2006/2007. There were no significant differences in the bowlingaverages between white and black African players and between coloured/Indian and black African players over the 12 seasons.There was a tendency towards a decreased bowling performancefor coloureds/Indians, whereas there was no significant decrementin the bowling performance for whites and black Africans over the 12 seasons.Conclusion. The increase in the number of black cricketers performingaccording to standard suggests a reasonable successful transformation process. However, representation and batting performance of black African batsmen remain a concern.