August window confirmed for rescheduled Test collection towards Australia
“With series lost in Covid and the challenge is you have eight white-ball events in eight years now, you have got IPL extending – trying to fit your calendar cycle in is a great challenge for everybody. So you need to review, you need to stay with the times. And you need to make sure we keep putting South African cricket on the map.
“Our group – each women and men – must be performing effectively and be recognised and other people wish to play us. But we want to verify when issues are taking place in world cricket South Africa is on the forefront.”
As well as causing a fixture pile-up, not playing during the pandemic has hit CSA’s bottom line – the Australia cancellation resulted in losses to the tune of Rand 30 million (US$ 2 million) to Rand 40 million (US$ 2.6 million), while England’s withdrawal halfway through a limited-overs tour meant a US$ 1.5 million hit on TV rights.
“Cricket is a difficult panorama in the meanwhile,” Smith said. “If I simply take into consideration our nationwide group now: 52 days within the bubble towards India, 10 days arising in New Zealand for quarantines then the Test match there, house for Bangladesh, two months in IPL, full England tour, India once more, [T20] World Cup.
“So how you manage players, management in terms of the stresses that they are facing in these biosecure environments, the amount of cricket we got to play to catch up [with] losses and various other things, so it’s a planning nightmare. And hopefully we will get that concoction right and we will see success.”
