Adam Bacher weighs SA20 success against cricket’s sadness

Over the past 30 years, I’ve interviewed Adam Bacher at least five or six times. Since leaving his playing days behind, he’s relaxed, becoming more thoughtful, which means I seldom depart without an insight or some human nugget, whether it be on cricket or life itself. 

Bacher once told me, for example, that he realised after he’d left the game that he was “selfish” as a player. He said it with a mild note of self-admonition, which has stayed with me ever since. 

International sportsmen – Bacher played 19 Tests for South Africa – are by nature selfish because ambition narrows their focus. Admitting to that selfishness, however, is a different matter entirely. I always felt that Bacher was more human – and more admirable – for being able to admit to something that didn’t flatter him. 

Other than interviewing him as a player – if I remember correctly, the first time I interviewed him was for the Sunday Independent in 1996 – I’ve interviewed him as a thoughtful observer of the game and a possible independent board member for Cricket South Africa (CSA). With his intimate knowledge of international cricket combined with his commercial savvy, he could have brought wisdom to the CSA board but didn’t get the position. Read into that what you will. 

More recently, I’ve interviewed him as a fan and a watcher of family talent. In my latest interview he enthused, for example, about young Jarren Bacher, his nephew. The Bishops-educated mystery spinner was called up by the Joburg Super Kings in the latter stages of the recently-completed SA20 but, unfortunately, didn’t get a game. 

On the subject of the SA20, the fourth edition of which was completed in incredible fashion on 25 January at Newlands, as the Sunrisers Eastern Cape marched to their third title in four years, Bacher can only glow. “John Perlman was saying on Radio 702 recently that he was in the crowd at the Wanderers, and he realised that no-one left the ground unhappy,” says Bacher. “That’s wonderful in a way. The format is just right for families and great for South African cricket and its profile. I think you have to respect that.” 

It wasn’t always thus. There were two failed attempts before the SA20, Haroon Lorgat’s T20 Global League, as well as the short-lived Mzansi Super League. Given that one never left the runway and the other nosedived after two years, it looked for a period as though South Africa would never be able to generate a plausible rival to the Indian Premier League and Australia’s Big Bash. 

“I clearly remember being on the golf course. It was December 2022 and we’d been pulverised in a Test series in Australia, losing the second Test by an innings, and people were walking away from the game,” says Bacher. “The mood was so terrible that you didn’t even want to talk about cricket.” 

“And, then, suddenly, the SA20 comes along – it must have been the tournament’s first edition shortly after – and it was like cricket received a vitamin B12 shot. Incredible.” 

While Bacher enthuses over the SA20, he’s not blind to its shortcomings. He says, for example, that he finds it “difficult to remember games” because they come so thick and fast. On a more general note, he adds that as far as international cricket as a whole is concerned, “relevance had become a huge issue”. 

“Striking some sort of balance between business and competition, if you like, is now one of the major talking points in international cricket.” 

Bacher is often gentle in his opinions rather than doctrinaire or absolute. As far as the recently-completed Ashes is concerned, however, he strikes an uncharacteristic note. “It was dreadful,” he says, “a huge disservice to cricket – I almost don’t know what to say about it, having Test matches over in two days. England are absolutely determined to play it the way they see it, it’s just as if they aren’t answerable to anyone anymore. The Ashes were just a terrible, terrible advert for the game.” 

In the same way that I was struck by Bacher’s use of the word “selfish” many years ago, I noted his use of the word “sad” several times in our latest interview. Like a slower ball in an over of pace, so the word was slipped into conversation, sometimes knowingly but sometimes – I thought – unwittingly. 

I didn’t ask about it in the interview itself but Bacher’s sadness, I think, comes generally from a game that appears to have run commercially out of control. Cricket is now a sport where the “Big Three” – India, England, and Australia – play five Test series, while South Africa plays no more than two Test series, partly because CSA hasn’t prioritised the five-day game. Sometimes they don’t even manage to do that. 

“I find it incredibly strange that we’re playing no Test cricket this summer,” he says. “Test cricket is where your captains come from. It’s a special form of the game. Where do you find captains from in situations like the one we find ourselves in now?” 

• Luke Alfred was a sports journalist for decades, and was Sunday Times sports editor and senior cricket writer. He has also written three books on cricket.